[IRCA] Critical flaw in HD sub-channels?

["Dan Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@xxxxxxx>]

Someone on another list to which I subscribe commented on his experience
with an HD car radio that he had just purchased as a replacement for a car
radio that had died. He was asking about the lack of sensitivity on FM in
the digital mode. I gather that, on the main HD channel, the mode flipped to
analog in areas where the analog signal was still quite strong, so that if
he considered the reception range to extend to where the analog signal was
no longer listenable, the sensitivity was about what he expected. Although
he wasn't especially happy about the mode flipping back and forth, he had no
complaints about the radio's overall sensitivity on the main HD channels.

BUT on the HD subchannels (mostly, if not entirely, HD-2), the flip was, of
course, to just silence. In other words, the HD subchannels had very limited
range--such limited range that their viability in a car would seem to be
very much in question. When I read his posting, my immediate reaction was
"Of course; why didn't everybody foresee this fatal flaw?"

Most radio listening, I'm told, is done in cars. If the HD subchannels are
usable only in areas of very high signal strength, hardly anybody will
listen to them in cars, which means that Rich's scenario about a glut of
spot inventory depressing ad rates nationwide will never come to pass. It
would seem that availabilities on signals that hardly anybody finds
listenable are not availabilities at all. Moroever, if the HD Dominion is
pinning its hopes on the availability of signals that are largely
unlistenable, isn't the Dominion pinning its hopes in the wrong place?

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@xxxxxxx
eFax 707-215-6367




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