The country's regulator is expected to formalize the decision this spring:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/rw_20100407/#/45/OnePage
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Navigating Convergence: Charting Canadian Communications Change and Regulatory Implications
IBOC isn't getting a rousing endorsement north of the border...
Broadcast digital radio
Although broadcast digital radio was generally considered to have a key role in alleviating spectrum scarcity in major markets, the L-band DAB and IBOC technologies have been slow to evolve in Canada, to the extent that there is considerable doubt as to whether they will have a role to play in shaping Canada’s future radio landscape.
L-band DAB
Industry Canada and the Commission proposed L-band DAB, defined as 1452-1492 MHz, as a replacement technology in the mid-90s, believing that AM and FM radio stations would voluntarily migrate to L-band to take advantage of the superior sound quality associated with the technology.
The Commission licensed digital radio services (79 authorized, 44 on-air as of June 2007) using L-band DAB, based on the Eureka-147 standard. However, widespread migration to the L-band has not materialized as planned. From a consumer standpoint, L-band also has several drawbacks, including the lack of original services and the limited availability and cost of receivers on the market.
Furthermore, the U.S. did not follow Canada’s lead and in October of 2002, the FCC adopted IBOC instead of L-band DAB as the digital radio standard. Also, in a May 2007 letter to the Commission, Industry Canada announced that it had stopped issuing broadcasting certificates for L-band transmitters and is awaiting the results of a future policy review to determine the future of the L-band in Canada. This has led to considerable doubt about the future prospects of L-band in Canada.
IBOC
While a number of radio stations (1,750 out of 13,000 AM/FM stations) in the U.S. are operating IBOC transmitters, sales of receivers remain sluggish. Further, AM IBOC rollout has essentially stopped in the U.S. in 2008 due to interference issues.
For its part, the Commission, through its digital radio policy (Broadcasting Public Notice 2006- 160),89 stated that it would be prepared to authorize services using the IBOC technology. Industry Canada is preparing rules and regulations for the operation of IBOC which could include an amendment to FM Broadcasting Procedures and Rules (BPR-3). It is not actively looking at AM IBOC.
However, where the Canadian market is concerned, IBOC is at a very nascent stage and an eventual large-scale deployment in the Canadian market remains highly uncertain.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
HD Radio To Go, Or Just Going, Going, Gone?
HD Radio To Go, Or Just Going, Going, Gone?
Have you, unlike what seems to be the majority of electronics customers, been pining for a cheaper way to try out HD Radio? A new portable model on sale now in Best Buy stores brings the entry-level cost for HD Radio to its lowest point ever, $49.99. But somehow, I don't think it's going to do much for this digital-radio technology's questionable prospects.
Have you, unlike what seems to be the majority of electronics customers, been pining for a cheaper way to try out HD Radio? A new portable model on sale now in Best Buy stores brings the entry-level cost for HD Radio to its lowest point ever, $49.99. But somehow, I don't think it's going to do much for this digital-radio technology's questionable prospects.
Insignia NS-HD01 portable HD radio hands-on and impressions
Insignia NS-HD01 portable HD radio hands-on and impressions
HD Radio has been desperately trying for years to become important in a world where most Americans are perfectly fine with tinny, 96kbps MP3s, and by and large, it's been unsuccessful.
HD Radio has been desperately trying for years to become important in a world where most Americans are perfectly fine with tinny, 96kbps MP3s, and by and large, it's been unsuccessful.
Friday, April 10, 2009
HD Radio Crying Out to Be Heard
HD Radio Crying Out to Be Heard
By DAVID POGUE
Published: April 8, 2009
Q: How do you make an HD radio executive bang his head against the wall?
A: Ask him, “What’s HD radio?”
The HD radio alliance has spent millions of dollars on promotion, ads and educational efforts. Yet even after four years of this, most people still don’t have any idea what HD radio is.
By DAVID POGUE
Published: April 8, 2009
Q: How do you make an HD radio executive bang his head against the wall?
A: Ask him, “What’s HD radio?”
The HD radio alliance has spent millions of dollars on promotion, ads and educational efforts. Yet even after four years of this, most people still don’t have any idea what HD radio is.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
HD Radio: The Brand Extension Is Dead
HD Radio: The Brand Extension Is Dead
A theory that's gaining momentum is that our time is running out to get the public interested in HD Radio. There have been numerous letters to the editor in this very publication where readers compare HD Radio to AM stereo technology. It sounded pretty good if you ever got the chance to hear it, but so what?
A theory that's gaining momentum is that our time is running out to get the public interested in HD Radio. There have been numerous letters to the editor in this very publication where readers compare HD Radio to AM stereo technology. It sounded pretty good if you ever got the chance to hear it, but so what?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
HD Radio stalls out
HD Radio stalls out
by Scott Fybush
So 2008 wasn't "the year" for HD Radio's long=promised breakthrough into mass success, either. A handful of new stations added HD signals, a few others shut theirs off, either temporarily or permanently, and while receiver penetration in the marketplace increased (thanks in part to a few impressive new radios such as Sony's XDR-F1HD), it was only incrementally, not the exponential gains the system's proponents had hoped for.
Any hope of exciting new format development on FM HD multicast channels in the commercial world was pretty well quashed by the budget realities that made funding tight even for main-channel programming; indeed, if there could be said to have been any real trend in HD programming, it was the repurposing of existing programming - mainly CBS' news and talk AM stations - on HD2 and HD3 channels of their FM sister stations.
And when the FCC opened the gates for public comment on a proposal to increase FM digital power levels tenfold to solve one of the system's frequent complaints - poor coverage compared to analog - many commenters were strongly opposed, citing the potential for increased interference to analog listeners. (It's an open question, too, whether cash-strapped broadcasters could or would spend the money needed for such a power increase if it were to be permitted.)
HD on AM radio? While the corpse hasn't quite stopped twitching yet, the AM system ended the year looking awfully stiff, with only a handful of broadcasters (most notably CBS, Crawford and New York's WOR) still pushing it at the corporate level, even as some of their local staffers quietly admitted that the adjacent-channel nighttime interference issues between closely-spaced stations such as WINS, KDKA and WBZ reduced usable analog coverage and rendered the digital signal all but unusable even within much of their home markets at night. And if there was a single new digital AM installation on the air anywhere in NERW-land this year, we don't know about it. (Nor, was there any action on that pending interference complaint from Bob Savage's WYSL against Boston's WBZ.)
As for the long-pending promise of HD as a standard feature in new cars, the auto industry's near-death experience appears to have put a halt on further progress in that area for a while.
Now here's the part where the handful of anti-IBOC diehards over on the message boards (hey, Bob! how's it going, Greg?) will stop quoting: there were also some interesting signs of life on the FM HD side. Several public stations - WRTI in Philadelphia, WNED in Buffalo, WXXI in Rochester, VPR in Vermont, to name a few - found plenty of demand from listeners for programming that was otherwise unavailable on their analog signals, and the advent of less-expensive radios made it possible for them to offer receivers to listeners as pledge-drive premiums. A few adventurous stations - WFUV at Fordham University, WXPN at Penn, WSOU at Seton Hall among them - used their HD subchannels to develop new programming, some of it with live DJs, even. And Emmis found a new commercial application for one of its HD3s in New York: it announced a partnership with a broadcaster who will lease the channel for a South Asian service promising better sound quality and wider reach than the usual SCA subcarriers.
(The rival FMExtra system, for all its staunch supporters, made HD Radio look lively by comparison in 2008; at year's end, it was still receivable by only a single $300 tabletop radio, and looks to have a future primarily as a means of studio-transmitter distribution at the rate things are going.)
by Scott Fybush
So 2008 wasn't "the year" for HD Radio's long=promised breakthrough into mass success, either. A handful of new stations added HD signals, a few others shut theirs off, either temporarily or permanently, and while receiver penetration in the marketplace increased (thanks in part to a few impressive new radios such as Sony's XDR-F1HD), it was only incrementally, not the exponential gains the system's proponents had hoped for.
Any hope of exciting new format development on FM HD multicast channels in the commercial world was pretty well quashed by the budget realities that made funding tight even for main-channel programming; indeed, if there could be said to have been any real trend in HD programming, it was the repurposing of existing programming - mainly CBS' news and talk AM stations - on HD2 and HD3 channels of their FM sister stations.
And when the FCC opened the gates for public comment on a proposal to increase FM digital power levels tenfold to solve one of the system's frequent complaints - poor coverage compared to analog - many commenters were strongly opposed, citing the potential for increased interference to analog listeners. (It's an open question, too, whether cash-strapped broadcasters could or would spend the money needed for such a power increase if it were to be permitted.)
HD on AM radio? While the corpse hasn't quite stopped twitching yet, the AM system ended the year looking awfully stiff, with only a handful of broadcasters (most notably CBS, Crawford and New York's WOR) still pushing it at the corporate level, even as some of their local staffers quietly admitted that the adjacent-channel nighttime interference issues between closely-spaced stations such as WINS, KDKA and WBZ reduced usable analog coverage and rendered the digital signal all but unusable even within much of their home markets at night. And if there was a single new digital AM installation on the air anywhere in NERW-land this year, we don't know about it. (Nor, was there any action on that pending interference complaint from Bob Savage's WYSL against Boston's WBZ.)
As for the long-pending promise of HD as a standard feature in new cars, the auto industry's near-death experience appears to have put a halt on further progress in that area for a while.
Now here's the part where the handful of anti-IBOC diehards over on the message boards (hey, Bob! how's it going, Greg?) will stop quoting: there were also some interesting signs of life on the FM HD side. Several public stations - WRTI in Philadelphia, WNED in Buffalo, WXXI in Rochester, VPR in Vermont, to name a few - found plenty of demand from listeners for programming that was otherwise unavailable on their analog signals, and the advent of less-expensive radios made it possible for them to offer receivers to listeners as pledge-drive premiums. A few adventurous stations - WFUV at Fordham University, WXPN at Penn, WSOU at Seton Hall among them - used their HD subchannels to develop new programming, some of it with live DJs, even. And Emmis found a new commercial application for one of its HD3s in New York: it announced a partnership with a broadcaster who will lease the channel for a South Asian service promising better sound quality and wider reach than the usual SCA subcarriers.
(The rival FMExtra system, for all its staunch supporters, made HD Radio look lively by comparison in 2008; at year's end, it was still receivable by only a single $300 tabletop radio, and looks to have a future primarily as a means of studio-transmitter distribution at the rate things are going.)
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