On 12/24/2010 9:58 AM, James Duncan wrote:

This company's mediocre products gave HD Radio yet another black eye.
Whether or not HD Radio is a useful service, the Radiosophy company
evidently sold crappy overpriced products and has justifiably gone out of
business.

Unfortunately, you can add extra features to both low end and high end
products. Perhaps iBiquity should be more selective in who it grants
licenses to, but the reality is that this is the first HD Radio receiver
that really sucks. It should not give HD Radio a black eye any more than
a crappy CD or DVD player, or an FM radio without HD would give those
technologies a black eye. Dolby licenses their technologies to companies
that make both good and bad equipment, and that doesn't give a black eye
to Dolby. In the case of both Dolby and iBiquity the royalty fees to
receiver manufacturers are so small that it has a very minor effect on
the retail price of the product.

The bottom line is that broadcasters love the IBOC concept for digital
radio in general, and HD Radio in specific. It's a win-win-win-win
scenario for broadcasters, transmitter manufacturers, receiver
manufacturers, and consumers. The fact that around 2000 radio stations
have added HD and there has not been a single instance of interference
being proven says a lot about how well the technology works. Luxury auto
makers don't add new technologies to their vehicles unless they are
robust, and most luxury cars now offer HD Radio. It's slowly filtering
down to lower cost vehicles, as is often the case with new technologies
that appear first on higher end vehicles.

In 2011, hopefully we'll see more radio stations increasing their power
levels for HD Radio, and perhaps some of the smaller radio stations will
decide to move forward with HD Radio.