Wal-Mart Enters HD-Radio Business

“Sirius, XM, and HD: Consumer interest reality check”

“While interest in satellite radio is diminishing, interest in HD shows no signs of a pulse.”

hear2.com/2007/02/sirius_xm_and_h.html

“What kind of digital radio are listeners searching for?”

hear2.com/2006/10/what_kind_of_di.html

“HD Radio on the Offense”

“But after an investigation of HD Radio units, the stations playing HD, and the company that owns the technology; and some interviews with the wonks in DC, it looks like HD Radio is a high-level corporate scam, a huge carny shill.”

eastbayexpress.com/2007-03-07/music/hd-radio-on-the-offense

“RW Opinion: Rethinking AM’s future”

“Making AM-HD work well as a long-term investment is seen as an expensive and risky challenge for most stations and their owners. There is the significant downside of potential new interference to some of their own AM analog listeners as well as listeners of adjacent-channel stations.”

rwonline.com/pages/s.0044/t.557.html

The FCC has just given away our free airwaves to a few corporate thugs, including iBiquity Digital Corporation. Especially on AM, HD/IBOC causes adjacent-channel interference, which I have confirmed listening to WTWP in Wash., D.C.- the digital sidebands are over-powering on 1490 and 1510 and would clobber any existing stations on those frequencies. Few HD radios have been sold, as consumers have not bought into this farce. This whole setup is just to the advantage of the HD Radio Alliance, as they own most of the 1,200 stations broadcasting in HD - the small mom-and-pop stations have lost coverage and will probably disappear. This FCC sole-source, non-competitive contract award to iBiquity is a total travesty !

Wal Mart should be aware of the growing number of broadcast professionals who are against IBOC.
Hopefully many smaller stations will never broadcast digital. All TV transmission will become HDTV in 2009, but there is NO REQUIREMENT for FM or AM stations to install they very expensive IBOC equipment. In fact, since I've never met anyone with digital hearing, I hope that IBOC dies a quick death much like AM stereo.

Technically IBOC will never work on AM due to the interference at night. FM wasn't broke so why fix it? Because greedy corporate people found a way to "print money". Here's how it came about. Digital radio from space scared earthly broadcasters into thinking that they also need to offer digital quality transmission. Then along comes the promise of multiple channels of programming when everyone has a digital radio. More channels equal more commercial sales opportunities. What these station owners don't know is that there will be additional licensing charges from the patent holder for every additional channel they broadcast. So, what radio stations will be doing by going with IBOC or HD Radio is force consumers to buy a new receiver. While digital radio may sound better than CD quality, what we really need is better programming on radio stations. My theory is this, given a choice to spend money for an IBOC capable radio to hear the smae radio stations broadcasting the same commercials...or buy an XM or Sirius receiver and get commercial free music, well I'm betting on the latter. So the very thing that is driving corporate radio owners to spend $30,000 plus to upgrade to IBOC, will ultimately drive listeners to Space Radio!