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Radio world: Glynn Walden says IBOC was only temporary

K

KB1OKL

Star Participant
I guess because IBOC has been such a rousing success it's now time for "the digital transition"?
IBOC proves that if you've got a bad product with no reason for being but have enough money and clout it will never die.

"Glynn Walden, senior vice president for engineering for CBS Radio and former iBiquity Digital engineering executive, noted that the current hybrid digital system was always meant to be temporary, as stations would make the digital transition when it made economic sense.

Going further, Walden says he fears there’s not much indoor listening to AM happening much anymore due to the ever-rising noise floor. “Offering digital service is imperative. Analog’s time is past. It’s time to move on,” Walden declared."


Read more fascinating malarkey from one of the capos of IBOC at:

http://www.radioworld.com/article/all-digital-am-field-tests-to-wrap-this-fall/272330
 
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Well, he is truthful in stating that the hybrid broadcasting going on today was always intended to be temporary. Even in its earliest days, the IB(A)C model was designed to eventually allow stations to go fully digital when they were ready, presumably when the marketplace had gone just crazy enough over the technology to make those not using it the minority. But, of course, that never happened and never will, so his call for an wholesale switchover is premature at best and a toddler's temper tantrum at worst. I'm leaning toward the latter.
 
KB1OKL said:
Going further, Walden says he fears there’s not much indoor listening to AM happening much anymore due to the ever-rising noise floor. “Offering digital service is imperative. Analog’s time is past. It’s time to move on,” Walden declared."
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I got a good laugh out of this - since when does AM HD decode in areas of strong interference? AM HD is extremely sensitive to interference and drops at the slightest hint.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
I got a good laugh out of this - since when does AM HD decode in areas of strong interference? AM HD is extremely sensitive to interference and drops at the slightest hint.
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This - is one of multiple reasons why I despise the current form of HD / digital AM.

When I first was hearing about digital radio being possibly in the future for broadcasting (even before IBOC had even been tested), one of my expectations for digital was robustness in degraded environments. For example, if you can detect any presence of the signal at all using analog equipment (whether it's seeing the carrier trace on an SDR, or even if the signal, although detectable, would be too weak for a skilled operator to ID whether it's PSK31, QRSS CW, SSB, AM, etc), you would still get perfect digital decode.
That very weak signal example is assuming a quiet environment; a noisy environment shouldn't degrade reception of the digital signal. (For example, if you have a signal at threshold in the middle of an abandoned field in a desert, it should still decode perfectly even with an operational unshielded plasma TV and weed grow lights in direct physical contact with the radio/antenna. Also it should be done WITHOUT relying on some other mode of transmission as a "backup". (The backup would be ok of course, but for use when the main signal fails at the source, like the transmitter goes off the air, not to have a fall-back decode option or something like that.)

Obviously that does NOT happen with IBOC. :(

Other criteria I had/have for digital, which IBOC does not meet, include good spectral efficiency (like at least 16-32 kbps/kHz or whatever 56k phone modems do), brick wall selectivity (so a "faint" signal would have perfect decode when using a local first-adjacent's transmitting antenna as your receive antenna, even with a receiving radio with the selectivity of a single-stage very-low-Q crystal set), no interference with analog (so an analog radio, when using the digital radio's transmitting antenna as its receive antenna, could receive weak distant co-channel analog stations without degradation), and probably a few others.
 
pianoplayer88key said:
This - is one of multiple reasons why I despise the current form of HD / digital AM.

When I first was hearing about digital radio being possibly in the future for broadcasting (even before IBOC had even been tested), one of my expectations for digital was robustness in degraded environments. For example, if you can detect any presence of the signal at all using analog equipment (whether it's seeing the carrier trace on an SDR, or even if the signal, although detectable, would be too weak for a skilled operator to ID whether it's PSK31, QRSS CW, SSB, AM, etc), you would still get perfect digital decode.
That very weak signal example is assuming a quiet environment; a noisy environment shouldn't degrade reception of the digital signal. (For example, if you have a signal at threshold in the middle of an abandoned field in a desert, it should still decode perfectly even with an operational unshielded plasma TV and weed grow lights in direct physical contact with the radio/antenna. Also it should be done WITHOUT relying on some other mode of transmission as a "backup". (The backup would be ok of course, but for use when the main signal fails at the source, like the transmitter goes off the air, not to have a fall-back decode option or something like that.)

Obviously that does NOT happen with IBOC. :(

Other criteria I had/have for digital, which IBOC does not meet, include good spectral efficiency (like at least 16-32 kbps/kHz or whatever 56k phone modems do), brick wall selectivity (so a "faint" signal would have perfect decode when using a local first-adjacent's transmitting antenna as your receive antenna, even with a receiving radio with the selectivity of a single-stage very-low-Q crystal set), no interference with analog (so an analog radio, when using the digital radio's transmitting antenna as its receive antenna, could receive weak distant co-channel analog stations without degradation), and probably a few others.
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The only glimmer of hope I have for all digital HD was the surprising (or alarming) presence of HD sideband pairs in a remote area of Eastern New Mexico. With so few AM stations on the air, only one or two even receivable, the receiver's AGC was able to open up to maximum gain. Even with the inadequate windshield antenna got faint telltale pairs that corresponded to CHICAGO and Minneapolis. There are no other potential sources of things like sidebands on 660 and 680, 710 and 730 - the 710 obliterating what was left of KGNC, 770 and 790 - same comment about KFYO, etc. This leads me to believe that there is a potential, in low interference environments, for close to 1000 mile daytime AM digital reception - far better than analog coverage. But I don't know how robust the reception would be in high interference environments. There are no power lines along 87/64, no interference sources at all in that remote rest stop where I did the test. So it might help the few hundred people in Grenville NM and other small forgotten rural western towns, but as some on this board are eager to point out, Chicago stations don't care about skywave / DX listening so the additional range would mean nothing unless it translated to better reception inside Chicago, which won't happen unless people buy HD radios.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
I got a good laugh out of this - since when does AM HD decode in areas of strong interference? AM HD is extremely sensitive to interference and drops at the slightest hint.
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I was going to mention that also, Walden's being disingenuous at best. Of course after this test they are going to proclaim pure digital signal is invincible! Pure digital signals received on the moon with no drop outs! This crowd's penchant for hyperbole knows no bounds.
And if you want a real world thing to compare it to: What happened when TV went all digital? The range was severely limited, people who received OTA TV with antennas were forced to go with cable, forcing them to pay. I wonder if this is also in the IBOC Alliance's ideas for "our digital future?"
 
He's right about one thing: “Offering digital service is imperative. Analog’s time is past. It’s time to move on,” Walden declared."

If you don't agree, buy an AM station and try to make money with it. Try selling advertising on AM-only. Take a look at AM usage from any survey you choose to believe. It's all bad news.

We all know the limitations of HD. It's a 20th century fix to a 19th century technology that's trying to work in the 21st century. Stations have already made the transition to digital. That's why Clear Channel just renamed their company iHeartMedia. Over at CBS, they are big players in the digital space with radio.com. Cumulus has rdio. So the transition already happened. The only thing left behind is AM. AM is to radio as Detroit is to cities.
 
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TheBigA said:
He's right about one thing: “Offering digital service is imperative. Analog’s time is past. It’s time to move on,” Walden declared."

If you don't agree, buy an AM station and try to make money with it. Try selling advertising on AM-only. Take a look at AM usage from any survey you choose to believe. It's all bad news.

We all know the limitations of HD. It's a 20th century fix to a 19th century technology that's trying to work in the 21st century. Stations have already made the transition to digital. That's why Clear Channel just renamed their company iHeartMedia. Over at CBS, they are big players in the digital space with radio.com. Cumulus has rdio. So the transition already happened. Then only thing left behind is AM.
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All digital will be the final nail in the coffin if you are one of the people who subscribe to the notion that AM is on it's way out of which I am not one. Does anyone actually think anyone would go out and buy a receiver for all digital AM? Will that be ibiquities next great push, to include a receiver in the dash for all digital AM? Better content and better sound will perk it up. AM radio should accentuate it's positives such as it's ability to broadcast long distances. For example many people listen to AM 740 out of Canada because it has good programming and it's powerful, it comes in over a large area. Every "fix" that has been done to it since evil FM came on the scene has only made it worse.
 
KB1OKL said:
All digital will be the final nail in the coffin if you are one of the people who subscribe to the notion that AM is on it's way out of which I am not one.
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Sorry to break it to you, but when you pass away, AM will go with you. The funeral will be on the same day. As I said, just look at the usage statistics.

I'm not talking about "digital AM." I'm talking about deserting OTA AM radio completely. You're right about every fix. That's why NO ONE is proposing anything else for AM except leaving it. Even the FCC has no other plan. The all-digital AM idea is as impractical as IBOC for the same reason: It requires people to buy new radios, and we've already seen that no one's buying.
 
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KB1OKL said:
And if you want a real world thing to compare it to: What happened when TV went all digital? The range was severely limited, people who received OTA TV with antennas were forced to go with cable, forcing them to pay. I wonder if this is also in the IBOC Alliance's ideas for "our digital future?"
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That's probably not likely, and the reason for that is simple: IB(A)C uses most of the existing bandwidth for transmission. It was intentionally designed to move the whole of the two hybrid sidebands into the primary bandwidth, theoretically making it a more robust signal that eliminates the interference to adjacent channels. You can read all about it in Section 5 here.

The difference between that setup and ATSC is that ATSC uses significantly less bandwidth than NTSC did, so the signal would travel significantly farther than it's predecessor at the same power level. The problem with stations being underpowered is rooted in that fact, and it was entirely the product of the FCC not having any clue what all of the technical details meant (which, as I stated in another thread, is what happens when you have lawyers doing an engineer's job). They severely cut stations' power to make up for the decrease in bandwidth without doing any significant real-world testing to show that their formula didn't quite cut the mustard.

So the fact that fully-digital AM IB(A)C uses most of the bandwidth of its analog counterpart makes the decrease in power unnecessary. Of course, this also negates iNiquity's claim that the fully-digital AM IB(A)C signal would travel farther than the analog signal does. The signal may be listenable to the same extent at a slightly greater distance, but as soon as another station on the same frequency comes into range, you're screwed, and in an all-digital environment utilizing the same frequencies and power levels as indicated on everyone's existing licenses, that means no more distant reception than what exists now. Better audio quality than analog for the entire coverage area, certainly, but an increase in coverage area? Hardly.
 
KB1OKL said:
And if you want a real world thing to compare it to: What happened when TV went all digital? The range was severely limited, people who received OTA TV with antennas were forced to go with cable, forcing them to pay.
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How limited is it? I pick up a station 60 miles away with an antenna in my attic. I don't know what it was pre-digital since TV reception before digital wasn't very good and I relied on cable. Now picture quality is better than cable and I dropped my cable TV subscription and supplement free OTA with Netflix.

Cable TV subscriptions are falling and some of the smaller providers are dropping TV entirely to concentrate on their Internet service. http://consumerist.com/2014/10/01/s...-dropping-tv-and-customers-dont-seem-to-mind/
 
SaltyDog said:
How limited is it? I pick up a station 60 miles away with an antenna in my attic. I don't know what it was pre-digital since TV reception before digital wasn't very good and I relied on cable. Now picture quality is better than cable and I dropped my cable TV subscription and supplement free OTA with Netflix.

Cable TV subscriptions are falling and some of the smaller providers are dropping TV entirely to concentrate on their Internet service. http://consumerist.com/2014/10/01/s...-dropping-tv-and-customers-dont-seem-to-mind/
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You must be in a very good area for TV reception, do you live on top of a hill? You're the first person I've read about that claims good digital OTA TV reception
 
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KB1OKL said:
You must be in a very good area for TV reception, do you live on top of a hill? You're the first person I've read about that claims good digital OTA TV reception
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Honestly, I'm just trying to clear up what I believe to be misconceptions. My own neighbors think the same thing based on the crappy antennas they tried. I actually live at the bottom of a hill with significant tree canopy. I have a "Antennas Direct ClearStream4 HDTV Antenna" that I bought on Amazon for $125 and distribute the signal to 4 TV's. I had my doubts about being able to get the most distant TV station but it comes in extremely well.

Cord-cutting is becoming a huge trend and without digital-quality OTA video, there's no way I would have done it.
 
SaltyDog said:
Honestly, I'm just trying to clear up what I believe to be misconceptions. My own neighbors think the same thing based on the crappy antennas they tried. I actually live at the bottom of a hill with significant tree canopy. I have a "Antennas Direct ClearStream4 HDTV Antenna" that I bought on Amazon for $125 and distribute the signal to 4 TV's. I had my doubts about being able to get the most distant TV station but it comes in extremely well.

Cord-cutting is becoming a huge trend and without digital-quality OTA video, there's no way I would have done it.
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I applaud cutting the cord on the huge monopoly cable is but I don't think many people are going to spend 125.00 on special a new antenna for digital TV.
 
KB1OKL said:
I applaud cutting the cord on the huge monopoly cable is but I don't think many people are going to spend 125.00 on special a new antenna for digital TV.
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Most people spend more than $125 a MONTH in cable TV. Imagine spending that amount ONCE to ensure you get all the channels you want.

That's partly why cable companies are buying up content companies to lock down those channels so they won't be available for free.
 
I'll give you an example, Salty: I'm about 70 miles due south of Lansing, the center of my DMA. Just about the same distance from Toledo, and about 100 from Grand Rapids. Now, I can't speak to how reception was at my present apartment pre-transition, because I only moved here just over three years ago, but I can tell you that my reception on two lengths of speaker wire strung up along the wall of my previous ground-floor apartment was halfway decent in analog. WILX and WSYM came in with zero problems, WLNS was lousy but watchable, and WLAJ had its good days and bad, but was always there. WTVG was usually in decent condition, WTOL only slightly less so. WOTV was a bit fuzzy at times but reliable. I could even pull in WOOD on a good day. WHTV, however, was a complete no-go.

Today I live in an apartment complex where each set of two buildings is served by a rooftop antenna on one of those buildings (three masts in total), all pointed north. Naturally WTVG and WTOL are out of the question, coming from the east-southeast, but WTVG does occasionally make it. But the stations from Lansing and Grand Rapids should make it easily... and most of them do. Even WHTV ever since they upgraded power, despite having moved to a tower further away. And I even gained another FOX affiliate in WXMI. But the real pain in the neck is WLNS. Despite being on 36 instead of 6 (the latter of which inherently has problems due to its proximity to the FM radio band), because of the FCC's mandated reduction in power levels and thanks to ATSC's all-or-nothing capabilities, it can be there one minute and then gone for the next two days. Quite literally. And since I can't pick up WTOL at all anymore, that leaves me without a CBS affiliate. I can't even pick up WWMT because their transmitter site is too far to the west of me on the compass rose.

And that's a minimal problem compared to what other markets are dealing with. It's just a crappy situation all the way around.
 
JoshTheRadioDude said:
I'll give you an example, Salty: I'm about 70 miles due south of Lansing, the center of my DMA.
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I don't doubt you but there are two things that struck me about your post. One, I had to look at a map to see what is 70 miles due South of Lansing and yes, that's probably pretty challenging. I don't mean to imply that every place in the U.S. can do this but I'm about 20 miles South of Greenville, SC so this isn't a huge area either. (It's the WLOS antenna that I worried about which is across the state line in North Carolina.)

The other thing is, I have no idea of how good a job the management of your apartment complex did of making sure the antenna is optimally set up and distributed to each apartment.

You probably know this but for anyone reading this who doesn't already know, the FCC and other sites (www.tvfool.com) do a good job of mapping what your reception is likely to be at your address. Mapping an area approximately 70 miles South of Lansing tells me that area should get a dozen channels with an attic antenna. A rooftop of course would do better.

As I said, this is getting to be a very popular way to get rid of cable and dish. http://www.digitaltrends.com/topic/cord-cutting-101/
 
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KB1OKL said:
I applaud cutting the cord on the huge monopoly cable is but I don't think many people are going to spend 125.00 on special a new antenna for digital TV.
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You don't need a special new antenna, and most people know that. The crappy situation will still be just as crappy on your regular old rabbit ears with UHF loop or standard mast/rooftop antenna as it will be with an "HD" antenna. It's just a marketing gimmick. And believe it or not, some people actually did fall for it, because somebody greased the NAB's palms before the switch got flipped.
 
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