HD Radio™ will be available in 2008 Fords – a dealer-installed accessory, not a factory-installed option. Translation: expensive. You can also get an HD Radio™ in your very own 2007, 2006 or 2005 Ford if you drive or tow it to the Ford dealership.
Here in the Nation’s Capital, public station WAMU is riding on top of the Hybrid-Digital (HD is not “high-definition”) wave with three programming streams. Regular FM transmitter: 50,000 watts. Two HD transmitters: 500 watts each. HD Radio™ is perfect if you drive your Ford on a neighborhood paper route. In the right couple of neighborhoods.
The station says your old TV roof antenna makes a dandy accessory for your new HD Radio™. I guess you could put one on top of your Ford.
Image by Mike Licht and a famous low-speed racer.
October 5, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Did you get that idea from SUPERCASTER’s site/blog:
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1548/1415/640/221513/HDRadio-DigitalAntenna-1a.jpg
October 6, 2007 at 12:01 am
HD’s unfortunate downside is a bottomless cavern reverberating with shrill hissing. The stealth plan they had in mind for you, the American citizenry, was this: Go all digital by 2012. All existing radios, yours included – ‘billions of receivers worth trillions of dollars’ – instantly become worthless. This was by fiat of an FCC in an as yet unexplained cozy relationship with BigRadio Monopolykasters. Did they hope to foist HD off on an unsuspecting public?
HD jams. If it didn’t, many, undersigned included, would gladly support it. But if Color TV did to Black and White what HD does to all existing radios, we’d still be watching the old DuMont. HD is not only backward-incompatible, it’s backward-destructive. HD costs you money and delivers little. HD is about losing. Your public airwaves are at stake.
HD promises you ’streams’ – ‘they sound like bad webcasts’ – which contain exciting new ’stations between stations’. As with everything HD, isn’t that misleading? For decades prior to HD’s noisy arrival, listeners long enjoyed hearing ’stations between stations’. But that was before HD’s noise jammed them.
Cui Bono? – Who Benefits? Not you, dear citizens, nor do competing broadcasters. A small handfull of large broadcast chains, the absentee owners of ‘local’ stations stand to gain by this scheme.
The HD gang long stridently denied HD interfered. They denounced as liars anyone who dared state that HD jams. Now, as if in admission that HD jams – worse than imagined – Cumulus ordered all night HD broadcasts be stopped, immediately.
Why? You the listeners don’t count. But it seems Cumulus at last realized what many warned of for years, HD jams. Cumulus, in irony typical of these ‘carny shills’ was jamming itself.
FCC once protected your airwaves. It didn’t indulge monopoly broadcasters, their dubious schemes, or their peculiar Wall Street backers.
HD gang hoped to stealth its noisy little stinkbomb past the American citizens. Imbued with an air of entitlement, many promoters condescendingly told disenfranchised listeners, ‘We’re going digital – get over it’. “I have balls…I’m achieving historical greatness…(by going HD)”.
Nice crowd, eh? All these shonks need is a checked jacket three sizes too small, and white socks to accent those scuffed shoes. They’d look great on 50’s Bronx used car lots, enticing car buyers with offers of ‘free HD for the kiddies’. Your new Torquemada will be right up – as soon as our mechaninc, Don Cheech, stuffs the tranny with banana peels.
You’d have to be bananas to believe any of the fanciful claims and overblown denials that emanate from the HD crowd.
Dr. Paul Vincent Zecchino
Manasota Key, Florida
05 October, 2007
October 6, 2007 at 8:09 am
PocketRadio: I hadn’t seen Supercaster’s site. What an uncanny similarity. I guess co-inventor OJ and I should rush to the Patent Office with our design . . . .
October 6, 2007 at 8:14 am
Dr. PVZ: I notice that Hariis Corp., although in the HD Radio cabal, also manufactures the DRM+ equipment used in Europe for digital broadcasting. As I understand it, DRM sounded worse that HD when it started, but the new version far surpasses it, without many of the drawbacks you cite.