B
benji
Guest
Well, i've enjoyed catching up on the first couple days of posts on this new board this morning, and i realize i may be talking to the wrong audience with this topic, as it seems to be mostly engineers on the board so far (not that there's anything wrong with that!!)
But i'm curious what everyone thinks about the two distinct suggestions for how to actually label these HD stations to the 'great unwashed' - i'm sure that most are aware of the study that bob neil commissioned at Cox (and many of you may have received the lengthy yet very logical missive from owner Russ Oasis a couple weeks back) which stated that their research had shown that not a SOUL would understand the concept of "ninety six point one hd two" or "ninety six point one layer two" or however you'd like to call it - "dash two", etc. Rather, Cox's research showed by an overwhelming percentage that the listener would understand and prefer the 'phantom frequency' idea - whereupon stations would simply make up an expanded FM band (not actually broadcasting on those frequencies), which would then match up to that generation of HD receivers - so that "109.5" could actually be 96.5's HD2 layer.
The purists in most of us would probably say "hogwash" to such a concept - but remember - the general public aren't radio geeks like we are, and most aren't tech geeks...and if HD is to become a viable service, it's going to have to be accessible to the lowest common denominator. When you think about it, both XM & Sirius have done the very same thing by giving the public easy channel numbers to tune to, and practically nobody (listeners) understands how the stream is actually delivered to the radio and then decoded, etc. they just know to tune to channel 150, etc.
Would the same not apply here?
I'm very excited about the board. I purchased a Boston Receptor desktop model in December and now anxiously await Atlanta radio to give me something to listen to (i can wait another week.)
But i'm curious what everyone thinks about the two distinct suggestions for how to actually label these HD stations to the 'great unwashed' - i'm sure that most are aware of the study that bob neil commissioned at Cox (and many of you may have received the lengthy yet very logical missive from owner Russ Oasis a couple weeks back) which stated that their research had shown that not a SOUL would understand the concept of "ninety six point one hd two" or "ninety six point one layer two" or however you'd like to call it - "dash two", etc. Rather, Cox's research showed by an overwhelming percentage that the listener would understand and prefer the 'phantom frequency' idea - whereupon stations would simply make up an expanded FM band (not actually broadcasting on those frequencies), which would then match up to that generation of HD receivers - so that "109.5" could actually be 96.5's HD2 layer.
The purists in most of us would probably say "hogwash" to such a concept - but remember - the general public aren't radio geeks like we are, and most aren't tech geeks...and if HD is to become a viable service, it's going to have to be accessible to the lowest common denominator. When you think about it, both XM & Sirius have done the very same thing by giving the public easy channel numbers to tune to, and practically nobody (listeners) understands how the stream is actually delivered to the radio and then decoded, etc. they just know to tune to channel 150, etc.
Would the same not apply here?
I'm very excited about the board. I purchased a Boston Receptor desktop model in December and now anxiously await Atlanta radio to give me something to listen to (i can wait another week.)