HDRadio is the brand name and trademark for Ibiquity’s digital over the air radio that won FCC approval as the official (patented and proprietary) delivery method for AM and FM digital radio in 2002. It permits CD quality AM and 4 channels of FM on a single frequency.<\/p>\n
After 13 years and hundreds of millions of dollars in promotion, 2\/3 of new cars still do not come with HD capable radios, few consumers know what it is, even fewer want it, and the handful of original programming channels (like WDRV Deep Tracks in Chicago) have given up. Harris Radio, which made the HD capable radio transmitters went out of business.<\/p>\n
Digital radio would be a good thing, but this was the wrong approach. Digital phones (ISDN) was a great idea in the 1990s, but it died for many of the same reasons. <\/p>\n
Ibiquity is partly owned by iheart media (formerly Clear Channel) who quickly adopted the technology in 2004 but gave up quickly trying to create interesting content – why program something nobody can hear? and why would consumers want something to pay for a new radio with no content?<\/p>\n
So Ibiquity is being sold to a company whose business is milking dollars from patents. It’s a reasonable guess this is the end of any further development of the technology. SiriusXM won the digital radio war. Howard Stern gave away free radios to build critical mass for Sirius. Game Over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HDRadio is the brand name and trademark for Ibiquity’s digital over the air radio that won FCC approval as the official (patented and proprietary) delivery method for AM and FM digital radio in 2002. It permits CD quality AM and … Continue reading