Monday, September 15, 2008

- HD Radio breathes life into local radio stations

A lot of us fans of old JP radio shows are fairly used to the sound of tinny, wishy-washy distortion, which can come as quite a shock to those of us from the, ahem, younger generations, who are used to all things digital. High Definition is a real buzzword at the moment and not without good reason. Just as you'll be finding with your TVs round about now, a lot of stations are gradually making the switch over to the HD format. The same is also true for radio, eventually we'll all need to get ourselves a HD radio receiver. Imagine how good those Peel shows would have sounded had we been able to tune in via HD for all those years?


What does all this mean, I hear you ask. Basically, local radio stations will be available to us as ever they have been; the American market seems to be gearing up ahead of schedule if the info I found on the HD radio website is anything to go by.

So, what is the point? Well, I've never had a problem with low quality radio frequencies, but eventually you've got to accept that times are changing, and maybe even for the better. HD radios look like they're going to have some pretty cool functions. Unlike our old mucker JP whoı went to such pains to give us as much info as possible about artists, my experience of hearing new songs on the radio, expecially here in Turkey, usually involves never finding out who the artist is until months later, if ever. HD radios could solve this nightmare with iPod Tagging, which basically means you'll be able to stick your ipod in the radio and tag the songs you like, thus being able to find out who's singing. I'm starting to feel very old all of a sudden! Times they are a certainly changing if this funky Polk iSonic ES2 is anything to go by.


2 comments:

Tom Tushla said...

I wouldn't yet rush out to buy an HD Radio. The whole technology may be failing. RadioShack has just about given up on its two house brand HDs and they're also hard - if not impossible - to find at BestBuy. The technology offers some nice benefits but has been poorly promote. Many listeners don't even know what HD Radio is and the broadcasters have done a sorry job of building consumer demand.

Doug Hanna
www.hd-radio-home.com

entrailicus said...

And there I was getting all flustered. Thanks

Who was John Peel?


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