B-2
A great read for anyone who will take the time. Anyone thinking of investing in a high dollar analog tuner or spending money on upgrading their analog tuner should read this article.
Here's one quote that everyone should understand.
FM IBOC features a total RF bandwidth of a little under 400Khz.
Does the average analog radio listener understand the implications of this? If you don't, it simply means that where there are 100 locations (200Khz apart) on your dial for radio stations, with IBOC there will be 50 (400Khz apart). Your potential choices will be effectively halved. I myself prefer more choices.
(IBOC)<-- Less is not more! -->(analog).
The other quote is:
IBOC is not an open technology like AM or FM radio is. Every transmitter and receiver will include a royalty to cover the use of the patented IBOC technology. While this helps bring a standard to all digital radios, it also puts a private entity at the center of the radio industry that all parties must depend on and pay to make use of the RF spectrum. This does raise public interest concerns in that we won't see competition for digital radio and will see cost built into both broadcast and receive parts of the process.
Ideally we will see Ibiquity, the owner of the IBOC technology, provide RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing terms for those interested in providing IBOC / HD Radio related products and services. Without these terms, there is little incentive for both innovation and cost reduction of IBOC related services and radio gear. Additionally, software radio technologies are still developing at this time. Most of this work is Open Source. Will HD Radio broadcasts remain invisible to software radios due to licensing issues? Should they be, given the public interest in the radio spectrum? These and other questions surrounding the licensing of the IBOC technology remain a growing concern in the longer term that should be addressed before the use of the technology becomes to pervasive.
I ask you, since when has single point control of a technology been a good thing? When I see the name Ibiquity I think MicroSoft. Yeah I use MS Word and MS Excel almost every day at work. I use it at the house too. BUT my computers crash because of MicroSoft's shitty operating system and general wide open door to viruses and hackers. If we all had cars that ran like MicroSoft operating systems none of us would have jobs because we couldn't get to work on time. We'd be buying horses and bicycles. That is what I envision when Ibiquity owns "our" airwaves.