WIRED checks in today with the latest State of HD Radio story. What’s that, you say? Precisely. The comments are more revealing than the story, methinks, which is essentially an apples-oranges comparison of the HD system in Britain (a consortium of public-private stations with heavy Government backing) versus that of the USA (“HD? Yeah, we’ve got both XM *and* Sirius radios here at Best Buy.”) If only they’d called it “Digital Radio” instead….
NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ in HD would be like “Meet the Press” in technicolor …
We now know, that with 75% of Americans aware of HD Radio, at some level, the number of HD radios sold each year, will probably decline:
http://beradio.com/eyeoniboc/instat-digital-radio-set/
To check on-going interest in HD Radio, which is flat:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22hd+radio%22
To check interest in HD Radio versus Satellite and Internet Radio:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22hd+radio%22%2C+%22satellite+radio%22%2C+%22internet+radio%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Even after a $200,000,000 advertising campaign, by the HD Radio Alliance, the popularity of HD Radio, Satellite Radio, and Internet Radio, are just blips on the screen, compared to iPods and MP3s:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22HD+Radio%22%2C+iPod%2C+MP3%2C+%22Internet+Radio%22%2C++%22Satellite+Radio%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
HD Radio/IBOC is a farce – IBOC causes adjacent-channel interference and has only 60% the coverage of analog. The HD channels are only low-bitrate streams of the same old repetitive material, and will eventually, contain comercials.
Senator Sununu, may put an end to FCC mandates, anyway:
“SUNUNU: FCC TECH MANDATES MUST BE BANNED”
http://www.sununu.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=267281&&year=2007