On 19 Aug 2003 14:21:25 GMT, "R J Carpenter"
wrote:


"Jake Brodsky" wrote in message
...

The beauty of digital broadcasting is that it works
better overall in a wider variety of conditions and the radio doesn't
have to be outrageously large, heavy, expensive, or high maintenance.

Weird claims.

No. Market forces will make this happen.

Digital broadcasting does not affect the size, weight, or maintenance of a
radio. It may increase the price. The digital signal is certainly is more
fragile than AM. Analog AM smoothly fades into the interference and noise -
digital quits.

Initially a digital radio will cost more. I don't disagree with that.
Digital signals may or may not be more fragile than AM.

They can certainly ride much closer to the noise floor than an AM
signal can. They don't suffer from background skip causing the
carrier to flutter. They don't put crap out of the speaker when
selective fading hits --they squelch instead. Most people would see
those features as acceptable tradeoffs.

In fact digital may increase the weight of a battery-powered radio because
of the current drain of the digital processing chips - at least in early
versions.

In early versions, you'd be right. Have you looked at the size and
performance of PCS phones lately? No, they don't sound as good as
analog cellular phones. But they're close enough that nobody cares
about the difference.

The size of a radio is determined largely by how good you want it to sound.

....And the program's desirability will directly determine if anyone
will bother turning this thing on in the first place. If you want a
CD of your brother in law's band, you're not going to hear it on the
radio anyway.

The bottom line: just because a certain degree of performance is
possible doesn't mean it is desirable by the general public. Dare I
say it: Mediocrity rules. If it didn't, do you think Bill Gates
would be a multi-billionare?



Jake Brodsky

"Never mind the Turing Test, what about the Turing Graduates?"