Quote:
Originally Posted by Banter
... MD had very advance features on this ... Very slick! AM/FM/HD for around thousand bucks ... Wonder why they did not pursue this product!
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I think that HD has no future in the marketplace, at least in the US, and MD and McIntosh's disinterest in HD is just a reflection of that. Yes, HD does work reliably in some locations, but that's not saying much. It's especially unreliable in the car - where radio listening is most common - as it audibly switches between the analog and digital signals.
And although iBiquity called its product "HD," it also acknowledged that it didn't stand for "high definition" because, after all, it isn't high definition, but low bitrate digital. The company set expectations for its product that it just couldn't meet, and that's never a good way to launch a product.
This lack of interest in HD is also reflected in HD programming, which mostly consists of automated retreads of other common FM programming. To be fair, this is a bit of a "chicken-and-egg" issue: Is consumer interest in HD low because of limited programming choices, or are the limited programming choices the result of low consumer interest? The result is the same either way.
I had high hopes when IBOC digital first debuted in the US. But the implementation was botched from the get-go, and now there's no catching up.
One report shows that fewer than 15 percent of all US FM stations have adopted HD radio, so even much of the broadcast industry itself has forsaken this hobbled technology.