iBiquity HD Incentives

[Matthew Osborne]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:03:04 "Peter Q. George" wrote,
in response to the extraordinarily high costs involved
in converting existing FM stations to IBOC technology:

> I
> personally think that the smaller stations (like the
> colleges and local stations) will opt for FMExtra,
> the
> digital subcarrier system which uses the same
> sidebands as analog SCA (57-92 kHz) and can provide
> 2
> full-quality stereo streams.  Nice thing about
> FMExtra, there are NO extra license fees (unlike
> Ibiquity which charges mucho dinero for each stream
> an
> IBOC station activates).  The FMExtra coverage is
> more
> robust than IBOC as well.  It carries much
> faithfully
> than IBOC.
> 

The only problem I see with this is actually the same
problem that currently exists with IBOC, programming
issues aside - the availability of receivers that can
receive these FMExtra signals.  Unless FMExtra gets a
serious push from an broadcast organization or group
of broadcast organizations, nobody is going to
manufacture any of these receivers for under, say
$500-$1000, which is well out of the price range of
the average consumer.  And if nobody can actually
receive and listen to these signals, what good are
they? (see: AM Stereo)  Plus, isn't there some FCC
regulation that prohibits the manufacture of receivers
that can tune a frequency's main channel plus its SCA
frequencies, or has that since been repealed?

                               Matt Osborne
                               Schenectady, NY


 
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