High Definition FM. What's the story with that?

[Woochifer]

HD Radio is relatively new, but a surprising number of radio stations have already begun their HD broadcasts. The Yamaha RX-V4600 I know has a HD radio tuner (which is somewhat odd because the newer RX-V1600/2600 only include XM satellite radio tuners), and I've already seen the Boston Acoustics HD Receptor table top radio as well.

HD radio has totally flown under the radar with all the publicity that satellite radio and HDTV have gotten. But, some OTA broadcasters see HD radio as their ace-in-the-hole because it's a step up in sound quality and signal reliability, and I think that the FCC is allowing radio station owners to simulcast multiple feeds on the HD radio channels. For example, if you have a favorite radio station, you could have several different streams to choose from when you tune into that station.

Obviously, the eventual goal with HD radio, as with HDTV, is to eventually free up the broadcast spectrum currently used by AM and FM. But, I doubt that will happen for a very long time. There are just too many radio tuners out there, and unlike with TV where the majority of them are already connected to satellite or cable, almost all radio listeners use over-the-air tuners. If anything, the net effect just might be to make broadcast radio more competitive with satellite by increasing the signal quality and allowing for more listening options.

[markw]

Of course, for that to happen the hardwarde mfgs will have to embrace this technology and start releasing products that will support it. They seem to be pushing (gasp!) satellite radio. I wonder if/when we'll see mass market HDFM components start appearing in the bigboxco stores of the world.

Being from NYC, I would invest in a popularly priced tuner just to seee how it is. WBGO, a local PBS station, does quite a credible job with their analog signal. It's gonna have to be quite an improvement to make me prick up my ears on this one.

I wonder if the BA recptor has line level outputs?

[Woochifer]

Of course, for that to happen the hardwarde mfgs will have to embrace this technology and start releasing products that will support it. They seem to be pushing (gasp!) satellite radio. I wonder if/when we'll see mass market HDFM components start appearing in the bigboxco stores of the world.

Being from NYC, I would invest in a popularly priced tuner just to seee how it is. WBGO, a local PBS station, does quite a credible job with their analog signal. It's gonna have to be quite an improvement to make me prick up my ears on this one.

I wonder if the BA recptor has line level outputs?

I think it will eventually become standard issue on the hardware side, especially if hardware costs and backwards compatibility aren't huge issues. This isn't like AM stereo where you had four competing standards, and even with stereo sound, none of the usual shortcomings of AM got fixed.

But, it also seems that satellite radio hardware is marketed more heavily (makes sense because XM and Sirius make more of their money on the subscription side). I think that if the major radio stations start simulcasting multiple channels, then they might try to create demand for HD radio, since local multicasting is one way that they can try to keep listeners from defecting to satellite.

The size of the radio audience has been in continuous decline since the 1996 telecommunications reorganization, but conversely the value and profits from radio have skyrocketed as ownership consolidates (and quality of programming tanks). At some point, the station owners have to increase or at least maintain the size of the audience to maintain the profitability of those operations, especially with competition from satellite radio heating up. If they start promoting their HD radio broadcasts, then we might see some traction in the market.

I have a feeling that eventually, you'll start seeing tuners that can handle HD radio, XM, and Sirius at the same time. That would give listeners the most choices (I can easily see people subscribing to both XM and Sirius, since both networks have a lot of exclusive programming).

My hope is that with HD radio allowing for station owners to do multicasting, the airwaves can finally break out of the restrictive and repetitive formats that have been developed over the last decade. Or at the very least, some forum can open up that will allow for more adventurous and non-mainstream music (or just plain new music, rather than the same jukebox playlist over and over) to get airplay.

[nightflier]

Some other respected players in the HD-radio camp:

- Arcam (Diva DT91)
- Cambridge Audio (Azur 640T)
- Rotel (RT-1084 HD)
- Day Sequerra (M2 & M4)

Of course, these aren't inexpensive, and if HD Radio is going to take off, they better start offering less expensive options, particularly for those who already have a complete sound system and just want to add HD radio. I just can't imagine anyone is going to spend $600+ just to add clearer FM reception. And to answer the other question, BA does not offer RCA in/out.

So either XM/Sirius are doing everything they can to keep manufacturers from adding HD Radio to their product lines (a good possibility), or Ibiquity, the company that's pushing HD Radio in N. America is sitting on its hands (they certainly haven't been working very hard the last two years). And I am a little skeptical of a single company like Ibiquity having sole control over what is still (and that could also change), a publicly owned medium.

What ever happened to competition in the market place? Have our politicians completely given up on fair market practices?

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now...

[Woochifer]

Some other respected players in the HD-radio camp:

- Arcam (Diva DT91)
- Cambridge Audio (Azur 640T)
- Rotel (RT-1084 HD)
- Day Sequerra (M2 & M4)

Of course, these aren't inexpensive, and if HD Radio is going to take off, they better start offering less expensive options, particularly for those who already have a complete sound system and just want to add HD radio. I just can't imagine anyone is going to spend $600+ just to add clearer FM reception. And to answer the other question, BA does not offer RCA in/out.

I still think it's very early in the game to start making assessments about HD radio. The hardware has only been available since late-summer, but from what I understand, there are already several stations that have launched HD radio broadcasts. Look at how long it's taken XM and Sirius to start making inroads into the market. The HD radio hardware will go down in price as production ramps up.

So either XM/Sirius are doing everything they can to keep manufacturers from adding HD Radio to their product lines (a good possibility), or Ibiquity, the company that's pushing HD Radio in N. America is sitting on its hands (they certainly haven't been working very hard the last two years). And I am a little skeptical of a single company like Ibiquity having sole control over what is still (and that could also change), a publicly owned medium.

What ever happened to competition in the market place? Have our politicians completely given up on fair market practices?

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now...

I don't know. Like I said, at some point in time, I can see receivers featuring HD radio, XM and Sirius in one unit. It just makes too much sense for someone not to attempt it sometime in the future.

As far as competition goes, the last thing you want on the airwaves is competing incompatible standards. The way that I'm reading it, Ibiquity developed the HD radio standard, it got approved, and they're now licensing the format to hardware manufacturers and broadcasters. This is no different than when dbx and Zenith won federal approval for developing the broadcast stereo TV standard. Their MTS system won out over other proposals because it offered up the best audio performance and included the SAP secondary audio channel. They had the best proposal, and they've reaped the licensing revenues for stereo TV. If more than one format got approved, then TV makers would have had to license all of them, or force consumers to choose one over the other, with the risk that whatever format they go with could eventually die in the market thus making their hardware investment obsolete. Even though Betamax and VHS competed in the market for years in the U.S., they both used the same NTSC video standard.

Or more recently, the HDTV standards were adopted in 1992. Even with one unified broadcast standard, it's still taken this long for HDTV to almost reach mass acceptance. With more than one competing broadcast standard, just think about how messy a situation we'd have if all of the major networks each went with their own proprietary HDTV standard, and none of the hardware was compatible (different pixel and screen ratios, and levels of resolution).

The situation of AM stereo allowed for competition, by approving four different formats. Ultimately, it just created a mess in the market because hardware manufacturers had to license all four formats in order to guarantee that listeners could hear all available stereo AM broadcasts. Not all of them did. I remember that the OEM radios on Toyotas only included two of the four AM stereo formats. Ultimately, AM stereo failed because none of the formats overcame the inherent sound and interference problems with AM.

[nightflier]

As far as competition goes, the last thing you want on the airwaves is competing incompatible standards. The way that I'm reading it, Ibiquity developed the HD radio standard, it got approved, and they're now licensing the format to hardware manufacturers and broadcasters. This is no different than when dbx and Zenith won federal approval for developing the broadcast stereo TV standard. Their MTS system won out over other proposals because it offered up the best audio performance and included the SAP secondary audio channel. They had the best proposal, and they've reaped the licensing revenues for stereo TV. If more than one format got approved, then TV makers would have had to license all of them, or force consumers to choose one over the other, with the risk that whatever format they go with could eventually die in the market thus making their hardware investment obsolete. Even though Betamax and VHS competed in the market for years in the U.S., they both used the same NTSC video standard.

Well, but with a single company like Ibiquity, we have the problem that they set the price too high. This is the reason the Boston Receptor is $149 regular and $500 with HD. The only difference between the units is the HD radio reception. While I suspect that the hardware involved only adds about $25, that means that the rest is licensing fees. That means that the licensing fees augment the price over 100%. Not even Microsoft gouges their customers that much.

I think we have lost sight of the way competition is supposed to work. Essentially, the competition-phase should occur early in the development, where companies put forth their technologies and then a governing body selects the best solution. If I remember right, Ibiquity had no competitors because at the time, HD radio was not considered viable. Ibiquity owned the rights to it, but just sat on it. Sort of like when Bill Gates purchases all future digital rights to famous art pieces. When demand for the technology finally arrived, Ibiquity said well, we have that in a vault somewhere, and here is what it'll cost ya. No one batted an eye, and those politicians who are supposed to protect the consumer? They were paid off with money that Ibiquity didn't have, but would be assured from being allowed to gouge consumers later by those same politicians. So here we are paying 8x as much for the license than the technology.

Ibiquity may own the license, but there ought to be a fair price it should be permitted to charge for it; especially if no one is allowed to compete against it now that the standard has been established. There should also be a reasonably timely expiration to this exclusive right to the license. But guess what? Our politicians were paid off to extend that too!

I don't think the price will come down much, and hence the future of the technology is not bright. Competition is initially an issue of technology, yes, but in the end it always becomes an issue of price. Ibiquity never competed in either technology or price so the consumer has to pay the difference.

[Woochifer]

Well, but with a single company like Ibiquity, we have the problem that they set the price too high. This is the reason the Boston Receptor is $149 regular and $500 with HD. The only difference between the units is the HD radio reception. While I suspect that the hardware involved only adds about $25, that means that the rest is licensing fees. That means that the licensing fees augment the price over 100%. Not even Microsoft gouges their customers that much.

Like I said, it's way too early in the game to assess one way or another how the HD market will go. If you'll recall, when closed captioning and stereo broadcast TV first came out, the standalone decoders for those formats cost upwards of $200, and that was over 20 years ago. Costs obviously went down in a hurry once those formats got widely adopted by broadcasters and new products integrating those formats started flooding into the market. I don't see how HD radio won't be any different. No point in speculating about licensing fees at this point, especially with the format only going live a few months ago and hardware only beginning to trickle into stores.

The Boston Receptor is not the best example because the model that comes with HD radio has a lot of other differences from the regular Receptor model (one of which sits in our bedroom) aside from just HD radio reception. For example, the HD Receptor has stereo sound, comes with a remote, can accept external audio inputs, and has a stereo headphone jack. Not sure if that makes the radio worth $500, but that's the price of being an early adoptor for any new format.

I think we have lost sight of the way competition is supposed to work. Essentially, the competition-phase should occur early in the development, where companies put forth their technologies and then a governing body selects the best solution. If I remember right, Ibiquity had no competitors because at the time, HD radio was not considered viable. Ibiquity owned the rights to it, but just sat on it. Sort of like when Bill Gates purchases all future digital rights to famous art pieces. When demand for the technology finally arrived, Ibiquity said well, we have that in a vault somewhere, and here is what it'll cost ya. No one batted an eye, and those politicians who are supposed to protect the consumer? They were paid off with money that Ibiquity didn't have, but would be assured from being allowed to gouge consumers later by those same politicians. So here we are paying 8x as much for the license than the technology.

Well, the alternative would be approve any and all formats and let them duke it out in the market. End result of that process would potentially be more expensive products because the hardware would have to license every format, or general confusion that impedes market acceptance.

If Ibiquity developed the technology for HD radio (presumably holding some patents on it as well) and was waiting until market conditions warranted rolling the format out (i.e. when competition from satellite radio starts eating into the broadcasters' market share), then that's their right. And do you know for sure that they've been sitting on the technology rather than marketing the format and not finding a lot of takers? What if it was simply the case that broadcasters did not want to pay for the hardware and transmitter upgrades? Or that manufacturers did not want to license a technology that had yet to go live with any programming?

If Ibiquity is overcharging for the HD radio format and keeps on overcharging for it, then they'll only have themselves to blame when it fails in the market. Or if they're serious about ensuring the long-term success of the format and they indeed are overcharging, then they'll have to lower the fees at some point in order to stimulate demand. I don't see the price gouging argument here because the format is not essential to trade and commerce, it's not a finite commodity that's in short supply, and most importantly, there's limited consumer demand for it right now.

Ibiquity may own the license, but there ought to be a fair price it should be permitted to charge for it; especially if no one is allowed to compete against it now that the standard has been established. There should also be a reasonably timely expiration to this exclusive right to the license. But guess what? Our politicians were paid off to extend that too!

I don't think the price will come down much, and hence the future of the technology is not bright. Competition is initially an issue of technology, yes, but in the end it always becomes an issue of price. Ibiquity never competed in either technology or price so the consumer has to pay the difference.

But, again you're speculating here, especially about who got paid off and whether competition would have resulted in lower prices at the outset. Fair price is whatever the market will bear. Especially since HD Radio is not an essential commodity like energy or food, if the price ain't fair, consumers ain't buyin'. The pattern for any new technology time and time again has been for initial pricing points to be set very high, and then come down as it gains mass market acceptance. You're already sounding the death knell for the format, yet it hasn't even gone live yet on most radio stations and the hardware only first appeared on store shelves over the summer.

The competition will occur on the hardware side. Consider that XM and Sirius receivers cost over $200 when introduced five years ago, and now I can readily find them in stores for under $40 or included as standard equipment in OEM car stereos. If the price for HD radio does not ever reach a point where consumers feel compelled to purchase them, then it won't ever gain market acceptance. It's that simple, and whether or not the price ever reaches that mass market level is something that neither of us has an actual answer for at this early stage.