[opendtv] Terrestrial digital radio goes mobile
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 16:12:21 -0500
Happy New Year everyone!
"But not everyone is ready to predict that terrestrial digital radio can
compete effectively in the U.S. market against satellite digital radio."
The question instead should be, is it capable of competing against
analog-only terrestrial radio? I don't think satellite radio has the
same overwhelming hold on the US buying public that pay-TV has, so I
think that comparing HD Radio with just satellite radio is incorrect and
incomplete. The correct question is whether it can become the sort of
ubiquitous appliance that AM/FM radios are. That is most in the hands of
the radio stations and how well they use their new tool. Some, over in
this market, are doing a great job. Also, the perfromance and cost of
the radios. I really miss HD radio in the car, now.
"'HD Radio does not have commercial-free content or breadth of coverage
like satellite radio,' said Frank Dickson, chief research officer at
MultiMedia Intelligence. 'You also have to separate the satellite radio
companies from the transmission medium.'"
And one has to disabuse oneself of the notion that satellite radio will
continue to be commercial free, or that HD Radio necessarily isn't. As
of now, there are commercial-free subchannels on HD Radio, although long
term, I would predict that won't last (as it won't in satellite radio).
"The satellite radio players say that they are content aggregators
first, distributors second. 'This means they will license to Internet,
mobile or any other distribution [medium],' Dickson said."
Exactly the same applies to each HD Radio station or station group.
Bert
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Terrestrial digital radio goes mobile
Junko Yoshida
(12/31/2007 1:49 PM EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205205995
New York - The U.S. digital radio market is far from settled. The merger
of rival satellite services Sirius and XM is still pending, iPod and MP3
players are proliferating, and Internet radio is fast becoming a viable
option. Now iBiquity, a developer of free-over-the-air terrestrial
digital radio broadcast systems, is pushing HD Radio.
IBiquity is neither content owner nor broadcaster; rather, its
technology lets radio stations simulcast compressed digital audio and
traditional analog audio without shifting to new frequency bands. As of
today, according to iBiquity, 1,500 HD Radio stations are on the air,
with 700 offering new FM multicast channels exclusively to HD Radio
listeners, subscription-free.
IBiquity hopes to gain exposure for the concept at the Consumer
Electronics Show, which opens Jan. 7 in Las Vegas. The company and its
partners will demonstrate new HD Radio features at CES, including an
"iTunes tagging" offering that it says will make it easier to purchase
music, while unveiling chips and reference designs developed to let HD
Radio go mobile in portable devices as well as car radio.
Among the new IC offerings is Samsung's HD Radio chip set, consisting of
an RF-IF peripheral processor and a baseband processor and billed as the
first low-power solution for portable HD Radio. Not to be outdone,
fabless chip company SiPort (Santa Clara, Calif.) will demonstrate a
single-chip HD Radio solution at CES that integrates the RF, baseband,
memory, ADC and PLL. SiPort's chip, now in production-silicon form, will
show up in commercial portable products by the third quarter, Sid
Agrawal, SiPort's CEO, told EE Times.
IBiquity, which has been a CES regular for the past several years,
believes the HD Radio infrastructure is finally in place to propel
terrestrial digital radio's market penetration. A year ago, there were
only 20 unique HD Radio products on the market, most notably a JVC car
radio that sold for about $199. "Today, we have more than 60 unique HD
Radio receivers, whose prices start as low as $99 and [scale] upward to
$199," said Robert Struble, president and CEO of iBiquity. The company
claims that HD Radio coverage reaches 80 percent of the population.
For their part, digital satellite radio services have been growing their
subscription base: Sirius reported 7.7 million subscribers as of
September, and XM touts nearly 8.6 million subscribers. But the
satellite services continue to rack up financial losses, largely as a
result of expensive deals to sign up high-end talent (such as Oprah
Winfrey, Bob Dylan and Major League Baseball on XM, and Howard Stern and
the National Football League games on Sirius).
Despite its latecomer status, HD Radio has potential, thanks to its
free-over-the-air broadcast business model. HD technology enables
multicast channels of programming, broadcast over a single FM frequency,
which increases listener choice. The format has already garnered
commitments from radio stations that produce or own content.
But not everyone is ready to predict that terrestrial digital radio can
compete effectively in the U.S. market against satellite digital radio.
"HD Radio does not have commercial-free content or breadth of coverage
like satellite radio," said Frank Dickson, chief research officer at
MultiMedia Intelligence. "You also have to separate the satellite radio
companies from the transmission medium."
The satellite radio players say that they are content aggregators first,
distributors second. "This means they will license to Internet, mobile
or any other distribution [medium]," Dickson said. "They already do
Internet radio as part of the satellite subscription package. Content is
king, so he who controls Howard Stern and Opera Winfrey has a
multinetwork opportunity."
Indeed, iBiquity acknowledges it is neither content owner nor
broadcaster. "We offer a patent portfolio, know-how and brand to chip
vendors, receiver manufacturers, transmitter companies and
broadcasters," explained Gene Parella, vice president of engineering at
the company.
That means the HD Radio concept is reliant on the available content
offered by broadcasters-as well as on cost-effective receivers and
innovative services and applications-for success among consumers.
One new service that iBiquity is banking on is iTunes tagging, which the
company states "makes listening, discovery and purchase of music
easier." As a song is played on the air, the radio station broadcasts a
metadata transmission of the iTunes store ID for the selection. A
special iTunes tag button on the HD radio receiver lets users flag the
song for subsequent preview and purchase on iTunes. At CES, Alpine
Electronics, Polk Audio, JVC and others will demonstrate products with
the tagging feature.
Like XM and Sirus, which bank on new car sales as the biggest generators
of new subscriptions, iBiquity considers the in-car radio an essential
market for HD Radio. But if iBiquity hopes to succeed, it needs to pay
attention as well to the retail radio market. That's where portable
designs enabled by chips from Samsung and SiPort come into play.
According to iBiquity's Parella, Samsung's HD Radio baseband processor,
based on Tensilica's programmable core, integrates the baseband, memory,
SDRAM and flash in a system-in-package measuring 9 x 9 mm. Including the
companion RF chip, the chip set's total power consumption is 150 mW.
Samsung developed the chip set based on iBiquity's design. Ibiquity
intends to roll further reference designs that will let OEMs build
tabletop radios and MP3 players capable of tuning and demodulating both
HD Radio and its analog forebears.
Other IC vendors, such as Texas Instruments and NXP, have licensed
iBiquity's technology and built chips based on a netlist from that
company.
But SiPort designed its HD Radio chip on its own, claiming the first
chip for the platform that is focused solely on nonautomotive
applications.
SiPort's single-die solution is tailored for low-power, high-performance
portables. Sunder Velamuri, vice president of marketing at SiPort, said
power dissipation of the mixed-signal device is expected to be "around
100 mW in typical configurations." He added that the chip, essentially
"a software radio," can tune and demodulate not only analog AM/FM and HD
Radio but also DAB and DMB-T, making it ready for the global market.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is fabricating the device.
The startup is betting the first application for its chip will be
portable GSP devices, given HD Radio's ability to datacast real-time
traffic information from local radio stations in far more detailed and
comprehensive fashion than is currently available via the analog FM
band.
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