[BC] HD Radio -- Folks we have to get it right!

[Robert Orban]

At 07:11 AM 10/18/2005, you wrote:
>From: Robert Meuser <Robertm at broadcast.net>
>Subject: Re: [BC] HD Radio -- Folks we have to get it right!
>To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List <broadcast at radiolists.net>
>Message-ID: <4354A91A.9060606 at broadcast.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
>
>Robert Orban wrote:
>
> >
> > I think that there will always be a market consisting of people who are
> > too busy or distracted to carefully plan their listening (which sounds a
> > lot like hard work to me)
>
>Bob:
>
>I seems like you are not yet in the non linear universe. I tell my system 
>what I
>want to watch on a recurring basis. It goes out and finds and schedules the
>desired content. It is sitting on my DVR when I decide to view it.
>
>If radio had a parallel, I could punch in Grateful Dead Hour and when ever it
>was on, regardless of channel the radio would record.
>
>Of course now it seems the RIAA wants to not only destroy itself but take 
>radio
>down with them.

I love my HDTiVo, but I turned off its "suggestions" feature after finding 
that 95% of what it was recording automatically didn't interest me at all. 
To me, it was yet another example of tech promising more than it actually 
delivered (another failure of "artificial intelligence" to deliver the 
goods). Right now, I use season passes and have set up some additional 
search criteria. (Oddly, the availability of the material in high 
definition is not one of the available filters in search.) Ultimately, I 
end up with more material recorded than time to watch it.

Also, and not to be too facetious, I have been in the nonlinear universe 
ever since I had a record collection, could choose what to listen to and 
when, and could make taped compilations of material from the collection. In 
order to choose new music to buy, I read magazine reviews and listened to 
the radio. The only thing that is different about the new technology is 
that the "push" is now automatic and more convenient. The new tech is not 
all that revolutionary -- it just searches a large database for you instead 
of requiring you to be proactive in searching out new material for 
yourself. Indeed, to identify truly revolutionary, paradigm changing tech, 
I would have to go all the way back to the availability of consumer audio 
tape recorders (which happened in the early '50s) and, probably even more 
important, the availability of VHS and Beta video recorders so that 
consumers could finally time-shift television. Almost as revolutionary was 
the advent of high quality consumer recording on compact cassette and 
Sony's introduction of the Walkman.

I am one of those consumers who has watched virtually no live television 
for the last 20 years (except for news). Almost everything I watch was 
recorded for time-shifting, first on VHS, then on SVHS (I had two  machines 
to avoid missing overlapping programs), then on DVD-RW (a disastrously 
unreliable Philips machine), and finally on TiVo. And yes, I was skipping 
commercials. I also watch a lot of fansubbed anime, available via 
BitTorrent and USENET newsgroups.

So yes, there's an interesting new world of entertainment out there, but I 
see it as an evolution of tech that been developing over the last 50 years. 
The REAL revolution came with the first recording devices available to 
consumers.

Bob Orban