View Full Version : A New Rebate
Jim1348
10-18-06, 10:23 PM
http://www.hdradio.com/i/hdradio_rebate_certificate.pdf
ChrisW6ATV
10-19-06, 01:11 AM
Yep... Combined with "Wolf" and "Google Checkout", I could not resist trying HD Radio for very little money.
Moderators, please edit/delete this if I should not be mentioning online sales.
SayNoToIBOC
10-19-06, 01:22 PM
Funny, that the Receptor HD on Amazon has been holding steady for a while at $300 - iBiquity was playing with the price for a while ($230 - $300), but is now offering mail-in rebates. What are they thinking - lowering the price on Amazon to bait customers made no difference in its sales rankings, and with mail-in rebates being more of a pain and not guarenteed, this will make very little difference to the general public that is already apathetic towards HD Radio. Car manufacturers are only interested in the Satellite Radio, for which they get a bonus for every receiver installed, which iBiquity isn't offering. The HD Radio commercials on radio are tiring and silly. The Big HD Radio Rollout has been a complete joke and failure ! HD Radio/IBUZZ/IBOC will go the way of AM Stereo of the 1980's.
Boston Acoustics manufacturers the Recepter radio, not Ibiquity.
HD Radio has already missed the road AM Stereo went down. Were there ever advertisements for AM Stereo on the radio? Were there ever a thousand AM stations broadcasting in stereo? Those things probably would have saved the format and AM Stereo would be standard on all receivers now.
SayNoToIBOC
10-19-06, 05:37 PM
iBiquity is processing the rebates, and gets a percentage of HD Radio sales, so they help to set the ridiculous prices of HD radios. HD Radio has already stalled because no one cares about it and there are no portable HD radios in the forseeable future, and car manufacturers are not interested in HD radio either. A new Internet portable radio just came out, including the Stiletto - Satellite Radio, Wireless Internet, iRadio, Internet Radio, cell phone streaming including Internet Radio will all kill HD Radio. HD Radio just causes adjacent-channel interference and has only 60% coverage of analog. How Many consumers are going to buy table-top HD radios and have to mount dipole antennas, just to get local, lousy AM/FM terrestrial radio ! :)
ChrisW6ATV
10-19-06, 08:51 PM
AM stereo is essentially a failure (in the USA) primarily because the FCC did not mandate a particular standard, so we had the nightmare or four separate systems to deal with.
Having said that, though, how do comments about HD Radio's viability have any relevance to the rebate announcement? (Isn't anyone who is likely to read this topic already interested in HD Radio??) Another forum member had a great response to a person who just joined a discussion with off-topic, negative comments:
"Do you also want to come to my daughter's birthday party and pee on her cake?"
SayNoToIBOC
10-20-06, 09:55 AM
[QUOTE=ChrisW6ATV]AM stereo is essentially a failure (in the USA) primarily because the FCC did not mandate a particular standard, so we had the nightmare or four separate systems to deal with.
Having said that, though, how do comments about HD Radio's viability have any relevance to the rebate announcement? (Isn't anyone who is likely to read this topic already interested in HD Radio??) Another forum member had a great response to a person who just joined a discussion with off-topic, negative comments:
"Do you also want to come to my daughter's birthday party and pee on her cake?"[/QUOTE] :)
Over on the radio-info's HD Board, there have been many visitiors just curious about HD Radio, so they get to hear both sides of the argument. The FCC did not consider any other technologies, such as DRM, but just approved IBOC without appropriate testing - this "HD Radio Cartel", either sweet-talked, or payed off the FCC. None-the-less, HD Radio/IBOC will fail, because of the publics' and car manufacturers' apathy towards this flawed technology. And, such inappropriate comments ! :)
Come on, SayNo. All those posts on the radio-info.com's board have been yours. They have exactly the same frantic "lunatic on the street corner" tone and haven't changed anyone's minds about anything.
A new Internet portable radio just came out, including the Stiletto - Satellite Radio, Wireless Internet, iRadio, Internet Radio, cell phone streaming including Internet Radio will all kill HD Radio.
Who would want to waste their cell phone batteries listening to poor-quality audio from unreliable dial-up speed Internet services? My cell phone cost more than my Recepter and I can barely hear the person talking to me!
From http://moto.mrcampaign.com:
Register below for periodic updates on iRadio from Motorola. You'll also be among the first to know when iRadio from Motorola is available for sale in the U.S. market.
Yep, looks like that iRadio is in position to stomp HD Radio real soon now.
SayNoToIBOC
10-22-06, 09:41 AM
[QUOTE=scowl]Come on, SayNo. All those posts on the radio-info.com's board have been yours. They have exactly the same frantic "lunatic on the street corner" tone and haven't changed anyone's minds about anything.
Who would want to waste their cell phone batteries listening to poor-quality audio from unreliable dial-up speed Internet services? My cell phone cost more than my Recepter and I can barely hear the person talking to me!
From http://moto.mrcampaign.com:
Yep, looks like that iRadio is in position to stomp HD Radio real soon now.[/QUOTE]
:)
That's right , all those posts on radio-info have been mine - check out the the posts by 700WLW, now ! Prove that the posts haven't changed anyones' minds ? Who uses dial-up anymore - 55% of households now use broadband and that allows the use of WiFi radios that get thousands of world-wide stations, not just lousy reception of local terrestrial radio. When I post, I just listen to AOL Radio, which includes HD Radio and Satellite Radio stations - no need to buy expensive HD radios ! Yes, just like HD Radio, digital is poorer quality than analog - remember analog cell phones of past ? And, Internet Streaming is in the Mbs, not the 48 Kbs of HD Radio side-channels ! Bridge Ratings have Internet Radio and Satellite Radio killing HD Radio. Cingular and Sprint now have the 3G Wireless Internet that allows reception almost everywhere, and wait until WiMax fully kicks in ! Detroit has no interest in HD Radio and there are no portable HD Radios in the forseeable future ! Good luck finding consumers who will be willing to mount external dipole antennas for HD radios - my analog AM/FM PLL radio just needs the internal ferrite-bar antenna and I can get nighttime AM up to 1000 miles ! :p
The burden of proof is on you 700WLW. Find us a testimonial about how someone read your posts on radio-info.com and decided that HD Radio didn't sound good any more. You can read right in this forum about how people have bought HD Radios and are happy with them. People have ears and know how to use them and that's what they'll use to make their decisions.
Hey, I have broadband, both cable and DSL. Please steer me to these thousands of great free multi-Mbps radio stations that all sound better than HD Radio. Give me URL's right now and I'll tell you what I think. Hmmm, that wouldn't work in the car, would it?
Strange how you talk about "lousy reception of local terrestrial radio" and then say "digital is poorer than analog". Could you please post a paragraph without a contradiction in it? You think you're persuading people with this liquid logic?
Satellite Radio is a subscription service. 3G Wireless Internet is a subscription service only available in a couple dozen large cities and it will cost more per year than an HD Radio. I've yet to find a cell phone that produces good quality audio. If there is one, I have a feeling it's going to cost about as much as my HD Radio. I'm not going to wait to pay for really expensive WiMax service whenever it arrives just to listen to the radio when I have great local HD Radio stations broadcasting at me for free. How do you like paying your ISP to hear stations I listen to for free? You sure want us to buy subscription services.
HD car radios are available now. They do not use dipole antennas. Detroit no longer makes a majority of cars sold in the U.S. My HD Radio receives the same analog AM stations your little radio does but also receives AM HD stations with no static or hiss. I don't see what you have to brag about.
SayNoToIBOC
10-22-06, 01:58 PM
Moderator: deleted post
This forum is for HD radio enthusiasts
markrubin
10-23-06, 06:06 AM
Moderator
AVS is a technical forum set up to discuss technical issues: in this forum the technical issues of HD Radio
Please limit your posts to technical issues: if you want to discuss politics, use the links to the other forums: don't do it here
Could someone still direct me to the broadband Internet radio services SayNo was hinting at? If they actually exist they would be an interesting comparison to HD Radio.
When I was looking for a replacement for my old Treo over the summer, I didn't find many 3G cell phones that had decent audio. The Nokia 6680 sounded pretty good but it was about $300 and it sounded like using it as a radio would run down the battery down pretty quickly. I've listened to services like Cingular MobiRadio (http://www.3gtoday.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN4538wPJmMUbxBub6keiijjCBXw98nNT9b31A_QLckMjyh0VFQGx6kN4/delta/base64xml/L3dJdyEvUUd3QndNQSEvNElVRS82XzNfRk4!?serviceId=20189) and XM's Radio Mobile (http://www.3gtoday.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN4538wPJmMUbxBub6keiijjCBXw98nNT9b31A_QLckMjyh0VFQGx6kN4/delta/base64xml/L3dJdyEvUUd3QndNQSEvNElVRS82XzNfRk4!?serviceId=24808) in cell phone stores and they didn't have particularly high quality audio, at least with the phone I was looking at, only had a handful of generic channels and they were both additional services you had to pay for every month.
Carnivore
10-23-06, 04:51 PM
There have been some fine sounding radio stations on the Internet for years. Some of the better sounding ones today stream ~128k. Sirius Internet Radio and Radio Paradise fall into that category, I believe. I can't think of any that stream in the Mbs though, and I don't think the existing infrastructure is ready for that kind of load yet anyway. Maybe in the future. As for WiFi radios, there have been a couple of standalone models released to date. Philips made one of them but I believe it is now discontinued. Another early product is the Acoustic Energy Internet WiFi Radio, which you can see at ccrane (http://www.ccrane.com/radios/internet-radios/acoustic-energy-wi-fi-internet-radio.aspx#). This is still a real niche item but might provide some clue about what we can expect to see as Internet broadcasting evolves.
It will be very interesting to see how the cell phone technology unfolds. There's no doubt we'll see data rates fast enough to deliver audio quality competitive with satellite and HD radio. Watch for a convergence of phone, radio and iPod type functions all in one device, not to mention other functionality not related to music. You'll listen through stereo headphones or through your car radio via an FM modulator, with song info and/or even video on your phone display. This is budding technology at this point, but it doesn't take much imagination to see how quickly it's evolving. Today, music fans have to carry both a phone and an iPod. Tomorrow...probably just a phone that does all that and a lot more. Talk about ubiquitous...everybody carries a cell phone now and they upgrade their phones every two years if not sooner. Watch out!
With all these technologies battling for market share, which ones will win? Well, I don't think people are going to choose just one or the other, they'll probably take advantage of them all, going back and forth between them on the basis of content. FM isn't going to disappear anytime soon because everyone has it and it's already completely portable and ubiquitous. I think HD radio has a good chance because it's free, and that counts for a lot here in America. As for subscription services, I think the majority of users will pick just one -- satellite, phone or Internet -- unless the subscription price becomes so low it's negligible to enough users. As an example, for an extra $2 per month on top of your $80 cell phone bill, users might add the cell radio service even if they already pay for satellite radio. At $7+ per month though, I think they'd end up picking one or the other. On the other hand I've always thought that satellite radio would eventually drop the subscription fees and become advertiser-supported, and I still believe we may ultimately see it become a free service with paid premium channels. But we'll have to see how it all shakes out. One thing you can count on is that today's broadcasters will have their fingers in all of those pies. It won't be a question of whether the HD broadcaster beats the WiMax broadcaster, it will be a question of how the existing broadcast companies align themselves with the new spectrum holders and develop all these media platforms simultaneously. I think we'll ultimately see most of them succeed and co-exist.
All the 128 Kbps Internet stations I've found are still sending old MP3 like they have been for years, probably because that codec requires the least amount of licensing. They sound OK but is there anything using better codecs now or at least a higher bitrate? The CCrane WiFi radio mentions 192K bitrates and WMA codecs but I haven't been able to find stations using them yet.
The funny thing about carrying an MP3 player and a cell phone -- my Treo causes some godawful noise in my MP3 player whenever it's transmitting. I figure a "converged" device wouldn't have this problem.
I think that a Wifi/Cell phone radio would be the greatest thing since sliced bread!!! Especally if cell phone providers allowed you to tune into any internet radio station on the internet. ...Add Netcast (podcast) capability to a phone like this, and you could have one killer app!!! In addition to standard style radio, cell phones could easily to customized radio services (like Last.FM and Pandora)!
The iPod could also add phone capability one day, or they could add Wifi and WiMax support, so that the iPod could tune internet radio and Netcasts just about anywhere.
If the cost was alright, I'd definitely invest in some sort of device that would tun in internet radio on the road... if it didn't cost too much.
I'd still be concerned about wearing down my cell phone batteries. I really need my phone to stay alive for at least 16 hours a day and I don't think it will last that long if it's continuously sending and receiving hours of data off the Internet. I can listen to the radio for six hours a day sometimes.
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