• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Toyota to Offer Traffic and Weather Delivered to Cars via HD Radio

B

Barry

Toyota has an agreement with Clear Channel's Total Traffic Network to utilize some of their HD radio signals to deliver visual traffic and weather information to specially equipped vehicles. I believe this is similar to the traffic data that is already being used by some of the more costly vehicle GPS devices. Traffic information will be updated as often as every two minutes, and will not carry a subscription fee. That should offer competition to data services from satellite radio, which do have a monthly fee.
Perhaps this is an indication that it is premature to count HD radio out. Together with using it to feed translators, it may be beginning to bear fruit for at least some of the radio broadcasters that are using it.

Radio Delivered Data In Toyotas: http://insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2601532&spid=32061#.UOrdktgo51s
 
This may actually work using HD Radio. Traffic info is more important inside a city meaning you should be close enough to the transmitter to get an HD signal. Temporary dropouts would not affect it since the traffic data probably doesn't take very long to send before its repeated. I suppose this is just a way to keep HD radio relevant while few are listening to the audio portion of it.
 
Now suppose that somebody out there discovers some audio formats that actually take off on HD or we finally come up with a system that ameliorates the issues with HD. Then either CC is stuck delivering data on the HD channel or there will be a lot of unhappy Toyota owners when the system is turned off. Short term gain, long term issues.
 
Great, traffic information dropouts due to unreliable HD. I have that problem with Garmin Nuvi right now, supposedly its traffic comes over HD, and it is so slow with traffic updates it is almost useless. I consult the web before leaving to go somewhere.

When HD radio inevitably folds, all these HD traffic systems will go down permanently.
 
That's sure to be a source of dealer complaints, just like the Volkswagen radios which support iTunes tagging and artist album cover images... but owners complain that all they get is a blank screen, because very few FM HD stations are actually transmitting the data needed to make those features work.

And besides, isn't it a bad idea to display weather and traffic information as text and graphics on the radio display, forcing the driver to take their eyes off the road? I know some automakers have an RDS OFF option on their radios in case the driver finds the scrolling RDS text to be too distracting.
 
I don't know if it's the same system as I have in my Tom Tom (which is called HD Traffic) but it's not HD radio (thank God), it actually works most of the time unlike HD radio.
 
As best as I can tell, there are essentially two different real-time traffic services offered to motorists today.

One consists of data assimilated by NAVTEQ, and which is disseminated by various means to subscribers, including RDS, Sirius/XM data, and HD Radio data. I don't know that any one of the means provides any more detail or other advantages than the others, although of course RDS and HDR data streams can be localized, while the Sirius/XM data stream must have national scope.

The other is the TomTom "HD Traffic" service, which has nothing to do with HD Radio. HD Traffic uses the data capabilities in GSM cellular telephony systems (e.g., AT&T and T-Mobile) for bidirectional communication with the subscriber (as opposed to NAVTEQ's unidirectional system). HD traffic develops crowd-sourced data on traffic delays by having the subscriber units continually report their positions. As a result, coverage is generally more extensive than just the major highways that the states have instrumented, and potentially more timely.

Privacy concerns aside, the bidirectional communication capability of HD Traffic seems intuitively superior to me. My hunch is that bidirectional systems will ultimately replace unidirectional systems, whether they be done through GSM data or the in-vehicle telematics systems, such as OnStar (which uses Verizon as the carrier).

- Jonathan
 
From what I've been told, SiriusXM's traffic data is the most sparse, covering just interstates and major highways. NAVTEQ via RDS (Total Traffic) or HD radio tends to be a little more reliable and robust, and the HD feeds offer more surface streets than the RDS feeds. But the bidirectional HD Traffic is far and away the superior system in my opinion. Waze (for Android and iPhone, maybe Blackberry too) crowdsources traffic just by running the app in the background, and in areas where there are many users it works very well.

Since the traffic data is a very small amount of data, I can see the smart phone app stuff really becoming ubiquitous. The downside to a phone app like Waze (which I use and also edit the maps for) is it drains the battery quickly as it's using GPS all the time.

That said, I don't think HD traffic data takes up enough data to be a hill of beans. Stations run it and subchannels at the same time with little or no issue, just like they run HD and RDS at the same time.
 
jhardis said:
As best as I can tell, there are essentially two different real-time traffic services offered to motorists today.

One consists of data assimilated by NAVTEQ, and which is disseminated by various means to subscribers, including RDS, Sirius/XM data, and HD Radio data. I don't know that any one of the means provides any more detail or other advantages than the others, although of course RDS and HDR data streams can be localized, while the Sirius/XM data stream must have national scope.

The other is the TomTom "HD Traffic" service, which has nothing to do with HD Radio. HD Traffic uses the data capabilities in GSM cellular telephony systems (e.g., AT&T and T-Mobile) for bidirectional communication with the subscriber (as opposed to NAVTEQ's unidirectional system). HD traffic develops crowd-sourced data on traffic delays by having the subscriber units continually report their positions. As a result, coverage is generally more extensive than just the major highways that the states have instrumented, and potentially more timely.

Privacy concerns aside, the bidirectional communication capability of HD Traffic seems intuitively superior to me. My hunch is that bidirectional systems will ultimately replace unidirectional systems, whether they be done through GSM data or the in-vehicle telematics systems, such as OnStar (which uses Verizon as the carrier).

- Jonathan
Click to expand...
I had a little trouble with bad reception at first with the Tom Tom (bad weather seems to screw up reception, rain etc.) but the traffic works really well, I've missed a lot of traffic jams on the Ma Pike on the way in and out of Boston
 
Once you start it, it's almost impossible to stop it. Toyota could be in that boat.
Sirius wastes a crapload of bandwidth on their 'backseat video' for Chrysler's minivans that nobody uses, but they can't orphan it for the few thousands that have it for the 22 million that could use that bandwidth to get rid of the crappy audio quality of Sirius with their overloaded bloated channel selections eating up bandwidth.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom