IBOC - The Inside Story
mhardy6647 said:
I believe that IBOC is a coined acronym for the big broadcast conglomerates (Clear Channel, etc.). I think the prognosis for all (at least, all high-quality) analog broadcasting is poor, as the bandwidth is now considered SO valuable for digital, wireless stuff.
Unfortunately, I think I have enough analog tuners now :-( Well, I would still like to get a Scott, but I think I'll pass on a REL or a Marantz 10B if either (or both) happened to come my way...
IBOC is actually Ibiquity Corporation's (The company behind IBOC) acronym for In-Band On-Channel Digital Audio Broadcasting, AKA "HD" radio.
Here's a URL for their technical page:
http://tinyurl.com/7j8z9 and you can get to their home page from here.
IMHO, what you will read are all lies and misrepresentations. AFAIK, the BEST signal data stream they can broadcast on any of their subcarrier channels is 328K :tears: , not a high quality signal.
The two major problems with IBOC are as an IBOC broadcaster uses more channels available to him on a single frequency (like if 94.1 wants to broadcast multiple IBOC subcarriers), he has to drop the data rate for each additional IBOC channel broadcast, so you could end up with a 32K or a 56K data stream being sent to your IBOC tuner. Who wants to listen to something this bad? You can get better sound from a a $19.95 WalMart MP-3 player. :sigh:
The second major problem is that almost no stations properly set up and calibrate their IBOC equipment and their signal "bleeds" into adjacent channels on both side so the hypothetical station at 94.1 makes stations at 93.9 and 94.3 virtually unlistenable. In extreme cases I've read postings in the FM Tuner Group in Yahoo about an entire 4 to 6 Mhz section of the FM spectrum being knocked off the air by a poorly engineered IBOC station.
uke:
A significant number of bits from the original digital source (say a regular CD) are lost in the BEST of the IBOC encoding schemes and this is apparantly acceptable to some: Read message 32540 in Yahoo's FM Tuner Group where a "Mr. Einstein" writes that 256K sounds perfectly good to him through his tube amps and expensive speakers. I'm sorry, but I have to politely disagree with him.
IMO, Ibiquity is now at a crossroads regarding their corporate survival: GM and Chrysler have contracts locked up with XM Radio and SIRIUS, respectively and I'm not aware of a single car manufacturer currently offering an HD radio in their product line. I do know that Panasonic makes one for the aftermarket. And the Proton table radio is the only HD radio I'm currently aware of that can be purchased for home use.
Ibiquity has sold millions of $$$ of their stuff to the big commercial chains of the basis of "Better than CD Sound Quality" but it is technically impossible for them to deliver on this promise. I'm certain their sales people pitched this system to the station's top management and owners and bypassed the engineers, as so often happens when big companies purchase questionable technology (I saw this happen many times at GTE when I used to work for them).
Now these IBOC stations are pressuring Ibiquity to deliver the listeners and there's none out there in radioland. I can tell you in the corporate suites of Clear Channel and Infinity and others, blistering calls that could melt a phone are being made to Ibiquity demanding to know why they made this huge investment in equipment that was supposed to bring in a new wave of iPod-savvy listeners and most IBOC stations can count their new IBOC listeners with less than two hands. People's jobs are on the line at these broadcasters and you've probably seen the press rumors that several of the giant radio chains are looking at divesting themselves of some stations and downsizing. This is merely a short-term strategy that will allow to keep their stock price propped up (been there, done that myself)
Ibiquity is so desperate that at the beginning of December they launched a "trade-in" program so you could buy a new car radio or Proton (only current choices AFAIK). I tried their site and learned that a Marantz 10B or a McIntosh MR78 or a REL tuner have zero trade-in value. So, if anyone here has one of these tuners they would like to trade in for an IBOC radio, I'll pay you the princely sum of $100 for any of these tuners, sight unseen!
And let's not forget the politics here. The current administration has significantly cut back programming funding for the public radio and TV stations in the past 6 years because of it's perceived liberal bias, yet they provided literally millions of dollars in funding to all Public Radio stations that would permit them to purchase an entire Ibiquity IBOC system at almost no cost to the station. The only "catch" was that these funds COULD ONLY BE SPENT on Ibiquity's IBOC equipment and NOTHING ELSE, including better analog broadcast equipment or better programming. Given all the revelations coming out of Washington recently and the recent resignation of the Republican Congressman from CA for accepting millions of $$$ in bribes from a defense contractor, I'll let you draw our own conclusion here. :nono:
When I priced a Denon 3805, a respectible A/V receiver, I got a price that was slightly less than half the average price of the last 30 days of sales on eBay for this model. So only a idiot :nerd: would even consider taking Ibiquity up on this offer. So this leaves me thinking the same bozos that pushed Dolby FM, Elcassettes, "Digital" cassettes, and the MiniDisc digital recording format re-assembled at Ibiquity so they could add another dismal failure to their resumes.
In closing, I CAN say one good thing about IBOC: Congress and the FCC have shown no interest up to this point in appropriating the 87MHz to 108MHz frequency spectrum and IBOC has likely helped here in deflecting Congressional interest in auctioning off this frequency spectrum like they plan to do with TV's VHF and UHF spectrums. and look how many of us still don't have an HDTV set.
© 2005 by Timothy M. Britt (timbritt@cyber-wizard.com)