[BC] IBOC "secrets" and my opinions.

[Rich Wood]

------ At 12:12 PM 3/27/2007, Johnson, Richard wrote: -------

>I have been investigating some of what has been said on this
>list about IBOC on AM. It appears as though it is really a
>receiver problem. Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating
>trashing 150 bazillion conventional AM radios so that IBOC
>will work. Instead, as I am beginning to understand the
>technology, if an AM radio was designed with more modern
>technology, digital demodulation of AM with a wall filter,
>there would be no buzz. There really is plenty of bandwith
>available for IBOC on AM. The feds were not bamboozled.
>The problem is that AM radios of conventional design,
>superheterodyne with envelope detectors, cannot handle the
>adjacent channel IBOC interference at reasonable cost.

We don't have to trash 150 bazillion radios, just 800 million.

I think I mentioned my retailer visits when we had lunch some months 
ago. The bottom line is that there's no market for the system. Every 
retailer in my area who has carried current receivers has had 100% of 
them returned, they say. I think it's more like 99.9999% because I 
kept mine. They don't seem to be factoring in the radio station folks 
who are close enough to get an RF burn and receive the signal.

>What the industry really needs is a decent AM radio using
>modern technology.

In a perfect world, you're right. However, we'd need to get 
proprietary information from iBuckuity, then get them to approve a 
modern technology design that could be sold for under $50. Rumor has 
it that the per receiver fee is $40.

This whole concept is riddled with deception and PR puffery. The 
other problem that's beginning to be noticed is that we'd jump from 
just under 15,000 stations to about 22,000. There isn't an 
advertising market for that many stations. I'm considering a 
secondary to be a station. I think we all remember the years of 
complaints about Docket 80-90 that added many more stations to 
already glutted markets.

>So, I think that instead of complaining that the new
>technology is not compatible with 85 year-old radio
>design, some entrepreneur(s) should take the bull by the
>horns and develop a decent radio. They don't actually
>need to get such a radio into production. Leave that
>for the Pacific rim. What they need to do is generate
>the "IP" intellectual property with as much as possible
>embedded into a single chip. Then they license this
>technology and, perhaps, the chip design.

The intellectual property is owned by iBuckuity. To do what you're 
proposing would require a different system, from beginning to end. 
Again, for an entrepreneur to take an interest he or she would have 
to ignore the current aggressive apathy on the part of consumers 
toward the whole issue. The second Bridge Ratings report showed more 
people knew about the system and fewer were interested than in the 
first one. It seems the more they know, the less interest they have.

Rich