Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing

According to Wikipedia, HD Radio is neither a standard nor an acronym for High Definition radio, like one might expect.  As it turns out, HD Radio is a brand name of the company iBiquity. It is a set of protocols being adopted by US broadcasters and regulated by the FCC for Hybrid Digital broadcast with the existing analog broadcasts in the existing AM and FM channel allocations currently being used. 

The basic data rates for HD Radio put 36 Kbps out on AM bands and 96 Kbps out on FM bands.  The full bandwidth is unlikely to be used anytime soon as there is no federal mandate to turn off analog broadcast radio like there is with TV. So, the RF spectrum will still be shared with analog broadcasts.  Like ATSC tuning, you'll be able to tune to a normal station and the receiver will determine if digital is available or not.

Multiple audio channels are possible as well as audio encoded in 5.1 or other formats.  Current subcarrier data channels may ultimately move to HD data, but receivers would have to be updated for those services. 

Like ATSC but unlike satellite radio, these broadcasts will still be freely available by just owning an HD Radio.  License fees are paid on both the receiver and transmitter side for thee technology by the manufacturers.

It's easy to find receivers on Amazon, but are there broadcasts in  your area to use them? Probably, but it may be hard to find out exactly first.  I'm in Santa Cruz, but HDRadioFind.com only lists stations for San Francisco (13) and San Jose (only 4).  Every station listed has two digital stations, too. For instance, KSAN 107.7 has 107.7-1 for Classic Rock and 107.7-2 for New Rock.  This HD station finder at HDRadio.com is much better and more official, too.  It lists my area but also lists many fewer in San Francisco. Hrm.

Although used in the US, international standards bodies like ITU and IEC have adopted Digital Radio Mundiale for frequencies below VHF and Digital Audio Broadcasting for those VHF and above (DRM and DAB, respectively). DRM includes both shortwave and medium wave broadcasts, so SWL could be getting interesting these days...

Posted by Shane on April 17, 2007 8:34 AM | Permalink