[BC] HD Radio's lack of upgrade capability

[Mike McCarthy]

At the Madison Broadcasters Clinic last week, (and at a local SBE meeting 
the week before) this was a pointed topic.  Ibiquity's coding standard and 
the rigid limits they have on the dynamic flexibility of the system make it 
very difficult to upgrade in the field.  As others have pointed out, once 
the receivers are out the door, it's going to be extremely difficult to 
un-ring that bell short of making the RX's OTAR upgradeable. The FCC only 
last year made that feature legal here in the USA. The multi-casting 
escapade is a prime example of this short sighted vision Ibiquity has with 
it's keeping the coding system private plan.

One of my bigger beefs with Ibiquity is they are holding back 25% of the 
total phase 1 capacity for future data only transmission....at the expense 
of audio quality on HD2 and HD3. I think that choice should be left to the 
broadcaster who is paying dearly for the license.  In the next couple 
years, there will be a complete glut of outgoing data capacity for all 
things media. If we are to put our best programming forward, it needs to be 
competitive with the audio quality of those services.

Licensees are literally GIVING a good chuck of THEIR spectrum to Ibiquity 
for this "data" segment which has yet to be defined.

MM

At 06:45 PM 10/17/2005 -0400, Dan Strassberg wrote
>Phil Alexander singled out HD Radio's lack of upgrade capability as the
>system's greatest single flaw. I wholeheartedly agree (and Phil and I have
>generally not agreed on much). I posted about this problem on this list
>about a month ago. There were more than a dozen responses, and all but one
>(which was somewhat ambiguous) said that easy software upgrades are the LAST
>thing that IBOC needs. Notwithstanding the resounding disapproval of my
>point, I continue to believe I am right and that those who are wrong are all
>of the people who told me that I am wrong. Phil has greater credibility here
>than I do, so maybe he can persuade at least a few of the doubters.
>(Actually nobody was a doubter; with one exception, everybody who responded
>believed that upgrades are a worse idea than a design that makes the
>purchaser throw out the radio if the system is upgraded--and given the
>degree of integration of radios with modern cars--sell the car at a distress
>price if an upgrade obsoletes the radio). Enough good engineering plus a
>suitable infrastructure could even--I suppose--yield a system that would
>perform software upgrades in a manner that would require no user
>intervention and would be invisible--I guess that should read
>"inaudible"--to the listener while the upgrade was in process. A project to
>add such a capability would be far from cheap, but I believe that without a
>viable upgrade capability, the system is doomed. OK, I believe that the
>AM-band system is doomed without the capability; the FM-band system might be
>good enough.
>
>--
>Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg at att.net
>eFax 707-215-6367
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