12-27-2011
We leased a new car at our house and a Toyota Scion left the garage to be replaced by a ?cute? (my wife?s description) BMW Mini. It?s small in statue, but a really fun car to drive. I was looking forward to checking out the first car I have owned with an HD radio. The Mini?s standard radio is a six speaker number with AM, FM, HD and Sirius satellite radio. That?s a lot of choice and a crazy number of presets.
I started to write about the content offerings of HD Radio and the deeper I was in, I reached the conclusion that while the new ?band? shows some promise, the whole thing is just too damn complicated. There is a significant price that Radio is paying for this complexity. The most successful electronics brand today is known for its simplicity. Apple makes products that perform a complex set of tasks and they make it simple and elegant. I have often told friends about my Mac products, ?they, just work?
I should share at this point that I have always been an HD radio supporter. Who wouldn?t want extra bandwidth and the ability to add graphics and data to our transmissions? The heart of the HD radio opportunity and problem are those hidden stations. Each radio manufacturer has to wrestle with the complex problem of helping the user find and use the ?hidden stations?. BMW has their approach. Ford, Chevy, Toyota and the others each take a unique approach and the consumer has no standard. I am sure the fellas at Ibiquity do their best to help but the result is keeping users from the HD opportunity.
It didn?t have to be this way. I was involved with this issue at Susquehanna Radio when the industry was first considering its roll out of HD Radio. Cox Radio made a strong and compelling argument that a new HD radio band be created that would have extended the FM dial starting at 108.1. This would have allowed a clear and marketable new band. It would have allowed all radio manufacturers to use a standard approach. The arguments fell on deaf ears and today we are stuck with a complicated challenge that?s not going away.
The BMW Mini user tunes an FM analog frequency. If the station is HD it will spool the data and blend to the HD digital signal. If there is a HD2 the dial will show a setting called ?list?. Then push that button, the display shows HD 2 availability Scroll down to HD2, Hit enter, wait for the radio to acquire HD2 and finally you have audio. If you are lost here, imagine the average user. It?s too damn complicated. Should we blame BMW? There is lots of blame to go around but we are lacking a simple and elegant interface and it robs radio of the HD radio opportunity.
I'll have more on radio's missed digital opportunity next time.
Dan Halyburton is EVP McVay Cook and Associates and can be reached at 214-707-7237. Follow Dan @danhalyburton. E-mal Dan at dan@halyburton.com
(12/27/2011 11:38:17 AM)
Hi Dan,
Obviously, I read your article in Radio Ink. I've got a 2011 Scion XB that I bought with an HD radio as an option. While I can't recommend the Alpine unit because of a lack of functionality in other parts of the system, the radio works well, and easily. If you don't use the presets, you tune in a station, and if there are HD sideband stations, another set of up & down arrows appear on the touch screen, which you touch to go to the HD sideband station. Darned easy.
Scott Gilbert
The Radio Mall
888-757-2688
Fax: 888-977-2346
www.radiomall.com
I bought an HD receiver for my car in '07 and I wasn't impressed. The AM broadcasts had more clarity (albeit in a 1996 web-stream sort of way) but I could only hear one for a minute or two (at best) until I drove past power lines or a city bus. On FM the music sounded flat with a sparkling edge to it and talk also had that raspy web-stream quality. When the radio finally crapped out I bought a plain old analog receiver and I haven't missed HD one bit.
(12/27/2011 9:44:14 AM)
"HD radio band be created that would have extended the FM dial starting at 108.1"
Big Group Radio, as iNiquity investors, would have never gone for this idea. Partly, HD Radio/IBOC was designed to be in-band-off-channel, in order to jam the smaller, community, adjacent-channel broadcasters. See, HD Radio really doesn't offer "more radio stations", as in hybrid mode, the HD2s/HD3s replace those adjacent channel analog stations with interference. Analog-only Listeners actually lose the adjacents, but HD Radio listeners pick up the HD2s/HD3s, instead. Biquity is trying to localize radio, by forcing listeners onto their local HD Radio stations, only.
Amen Dan! Also scary....try to buy a simple RADIO in a department store or big-box electronics retailer. I looked for a simple RADIO my 80 year old father could listen to on his kitchen table as he starts his morning. I was stunned. An easy-to-use radio nearly doesn't exist. You'll find complicated clock radios or clunky boomboxes, loaded with tiny, hard-to-read buttons. We don't have a chance getting in-home listening back! And I hope we don't bury our opportunities in-car.
(12/27/2011 3:33:41 AM)
"HD Radio set to botch its first impression"
"It is patently stupid to tack on HD stations to existing analog frequences (as in 98.5-1, 98.5-2, 98.5-3) and then put three different things on those frequencies... Furthermore, the names are so incredibly clunky, moving newfangled digital radio strongly in the direction of even clunkier HAM radio. It's a confusing mass of digits, decimals, and dashes. We would be better off reconceptualizing the entire dial and taking this opportunity to simplify it across the board. For example (and brace yourself), how about numbering our stations 1 to 100? If this sounds like Satellite Radio, just remember HD Radio was your idea, not mine."
http://www.markramseymedia.com/2005/08/hd-radio-set-to-botch-its-first-impression/
Did you also enjoy the dropouts on HD2s to silence, and the echoing affect on the HD1s with constant flipping? A kludged system that mostly doesn't work. BMW and Volvo have outstanding TSBs against HD Radio, as standard. But, the Chipset Salesman probably doesn't even care. Ford still doesn't have HD Radio as a factory-installed option, after four years. Hear the law firms coming down the train tracks? LOL!
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