Not only do most cars not have HD, in many radios which do receive HD, it takes extra steps to hear the HD channels. I've had two cars with HD. On the first one, I was finally able to figure out how to turn HD off, as it suffered from so many dropouts as to be annoying. In the second car with HD, now about 4 years old, the radio requires some setting to find HD on FM. I never bothered to figure that out, so don't listen to any HD or HD-2 on FM.
But not only do most car radios not have HD... or difficult to use HD features if they have the "feature"... but what everyone from iBiquity on down the HD food chain ignores is that two-thirds of radio listening is not in the car anyway.
I'm probably the exact opposite - the ONLY over the air listening I do in the car is HD-2, because Houston's creative formats are almost all on HD-2. So in spite of being a vocal critic of the technology, I am forced into using it to get formats like oldies, smooth jazz, and Christian rock. Of course I use satellite and streaming as well, but the audio quality is better on HD-2's. HD-3 is a different matter, it is noticeably worse.
We are talking the average consumer - the ones that couldn't program the clocks on VCR's 20 years ago. IF HD FM is working - and that is a big IF considering the myriad of technical issues, the ad campaign about "the stations between the stations" makes some sense, because the consumer can merely hit the "scan" or "tune up/down" button and sure enough the HD-2 appears to be between adjacent frequencies. But the use of "tune up / down" is probably rare compared with "scan", so the HD signal better be there or the radio proceeds to the next strong local.
I find the FM system robust enough in my car - 70 mile HD reception is adequate for a metro area. But that is in the car with the best DX car radio on the market with a real whip antenna. I am concerned that average car radios will get considerably less range, the average home probably has a lot of attenuation in these days of radiant barriers, HOA's forbid outdoor antennas for the small minority of consumers willing to use one. Office buildings have even more attenuation, so you are left with a system that has very limited range. 10 dB increase is paltry and insufficient to solve the problems, especially under airport approach / departure patterns. NOBODY at Ibiquity thought through the IF image problem, and that causes most HD FM dropouts in my car. I could give you the ratings for some Houston stations just based on how many times a nearby car or home receiver jams my HD reception. All the sudden that 10.6 to 10.8 MHz spacing rule is meaningless, because even non-HD radios are pumping out IF images from 10.4 to 11 MHz, making a whole lot more combinations of frequencies that don't play well together. Obviously experienced DX'ers are going to put up with the problems, radio engineers will know what is going on and know the signal will come back, and people like me who are forced to HD-2 to get the formats we want have to put up with the problems. But the average consumer? The moment there is a dropout, the are GONE from the station, on their iPods or Pandora or other over the air - and probably won't give HD another chance. I hear some of that in your post. Unfortunately for radio - HD TV came first with an expectation of "perfect, relaible picture". When HD radio failed in the reliability department, and wasn't really that much of an improvement over the audio quality of a good analog signal chain - most consumers got apathetic. Ibiquity didn't do themselves any favors by hawking trendy table radios - you won't hear the difference. They should have gone straight to the audiophiles - the ones that are left, and the home theater enthusiasts who have sound systems that can really reproduce the music adequately. But - who is going to sit in a home theater room staring at a blank screen, and listen to music? Except for HD-2, HD FM didn't really bring anything compelling to the game, so consumers yawned.
I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but if iBiquity is to have any chance at all, they need to analyze where the listeners are and adapt the system to better suit those listeners. Of course this is 11:59 PM on the day HD died, so it is probably too late to re-capture the consumer market. There will be a lot of HD radios out there with nobody listening to HD, then stations not broadcasting it, then car manufacturers stripping the decode circuitry out. Just try to be a C-Quam car radio today --- that will be HD radio in 20 years or less.
