[BC] HDradio & our digital future

[Phil Alexander]

On 21 Dec 2006 at 22:10, Jim Tonne wrote:


> Pocket?  How long will a 9 volt battery last powering an IBOC
> chipset?  Look at the size of the power transformer in that 
> "mostly empty" chassis.  And remember they are working on
> getting the power drain down to "only" 100 milliwatts.

Looking at the tiny boards in the Sangean, and considering that
there was no real effort to minimize size or current draw, I
expect the 3rd or 4th generation of HD receiver product probably
will look like and have the battery life of an i-pod.

I remember when we were lugging "portable" NEC laptops around
15 years ago with batteries big enough to choke a horse to get
an hour an a half working time before plugging in for a charge.
Before that (several years before) I recall the Osborne, but
today, we have Palm's and Treio's.

I don't know the exact time frame, but using history as prologue
to tomorrow, it can't be more than a few years away. Right now,
the biggest problem appears to be a prohibitively high license
cost to try to extract quick $$$ from the market. In the long
run, that has always been counter-productive and encouraged
functional workarounds. Consider Lotus as an example, but there
were others who thought they "owned" "essential" technology,
and where are they today?

I still think we are much closer to pocket IBOC radios than most
people are saying, but I could be wrong. I also think iBiquity
will be studied as a classic way of assuring a company does not
reap long term gains from its technology, but I could be wrong
about that too.
 

---------------------------------------------
Phil Alexander, CSRE, AMD
Broadcast Engineering Services and Technology 
(a Div. of Advanced Parts Corporation) 
Ph. (317) 335-2065   FAX (317) 335-9037