A complaint to Ibiquity

I have literally never found a situation where I could receive the primary channel (HD1) digitally, but couldn't get the HD2 channel, if it was present. The HD 2 channel is NOT "weaker". Some stations don't have HD2 channels, and at some they're off part of the time as they are "tweaked" to get them "ready for primetime".

Early TV viewers were greeted with a test pattern for much of the day. Sucks, doesn't it? (Sigh). Welcome to early adopterville!

I agree Mike. The second channel is imbedded in the digital stream, not a separate carrier. As I understand it, the carrier above center frequency is a carbon copy of the carrier below it, it's basically used for redundancy. I'd look at one service an advantage, it means they might be broadcasting 96 Kb/s rather than 48Kb for each of the two channels.

I wish someone here in the Bay Area was transnitting 96 Kb so I could listen to it.

Bob Smith

Another problem is broadcasters ignoring their HD2 channels. I have noted stations here in Atlanta that allow their HD2 signals to go silent for hours or days at a time. The "carrier" is still there, displayed by my tuner, but no sound. If a radio station goes to "dead air" the situation is treated as a crisis. The station engineer will be rousted from slumber in the middle of the night. He'd better get the signal back on the air within the hour unless the tower has fallen. But if the HD2 signal goes flat, nobody associated with the station is monitoring it. If I try to call the station nobody even answers the phone. There's nothing but a robot computer running the station, and if the computer hangs there's nobody there to reboot it.

I can admit to that. The computer that pretty much IS our HD 2 station had a coronary on a Saturday afternoon. It's not located where the main operator can get to it. And there aren't enough listeners to make it a priority, so it sat silent until Monday morning at 8:30 when the program director got to the station to re-start it.

There were no e-mail or phoned in complaints. To mgt, it appears I'm the only one who noticed.

Same used to happen with digital television. Chief engineer that I know purposely turned off the DTV transmitter on a Tuesday just to see how long it would take someone to complain. I called him on Thursday just to see why it had been off so long. Mine was the first call.

Doc

Doc, the reason ABC radio didn't get my e-mail complaint is because the listed e-mail address was full and all messages bounced. Not only do they not monitor their station, they don't even read their e-mail. As in your situation, the problem resolved at 8:30 on Monday morning. Same thing with 105.7HD2 this weekend; back on the air today. They call themselves "Viva!" A better name would be "Despierta!".

Picspop..

That's SAD. We're not allowed to ignore the e-mail forms.

I do wish we could at least monitor and control the HD-2 stream from the control room. In the old days when I first started, we used to have a big red light to tell us when the FM (then automated) went off the air.

Do you honestly think Ibiquity is monitoring all thousand HD Radio staitons 24 hours a day and is responsible for making sure stations use their equipment properly?

Why don't you contact the station and tell them what the problem is so they can fix it? I've emailed every single HD Radio station in my area whenever they've screwed up and with only one exception every staiton has responded quickly and cheerfully, glad to hear that someone out there is actually listening to their digital station.

You may have to fish around on their web site to find an email address and that email may get forwarded to an engineer but I've had 100% success in getting responses from the stations I've emailed.

I've gotta' go with Scowl. It isn't Ibiquity's job to make sure stations are using their equipment properly, or even that their HD2 stream is working at all. That's the PD's job. Talk to him/her. If it happens a second time, talk to his or her BOSS. That often gets their (programming's) attention!

I agree with those who observe that HD multicast streams are embedded within the digital signals and do not depend upon reception conditions. If you get HD, you get HD1, HD2, HD3 and so on.

For reasons stated previously, radio stations do not consider HD a priority because so few receivers are in use. But how do they expect to "grow" the HD market if they don't provide reliable signals?

Denver is supposed to have 12 HD2 signals, but if you scan the dial, it's VERY rare to hear all of them working at the same time. Sometimes a station's entire digital signal goes away for days or weeks at a time. One of the stations (KOSI, owned by Entercom) transmits its HD2 at a dramatically higher audio level than the standard. They use the technology only to demonstrate their technical incompetence.

I second the motion that HD listeners should complain relentlessly to the stations. Otherwise, they will continue to believe that HD is just a kooky, new technology embraced only by a few audio geeks.

And if HD promises "near-CD quality", why demolish its fidelity with analogue-like processing? Many of the stations here sound at least as ugly on HD as they do on standard FM.

The broadcasting groups that purport to embrace HD claim they are investing(through the HD Alliance) hundreds of millions of dollars in air-time to promote the new technology. The "suits" had better get their local program directors and engineers on board.

That's my complaint about MOST websites. No e-mail, no phone number, often there's not even an indication of the city where they are physically located.
And, it seems like no one ever reads the "contact" forms, either .

OK, I guess I'll have to talk you through this....

Go to http://www.wtop.com/?nid=56&sid=597520 At the bottom of the page there is a comment form. In the "To:" menu, select "WTOP Programming Comments". Enter your complaint. This will send an email to someone who will most likely forward it to the Chief Engineer.

I've sent email to stations' sales department, programming department and news department. Once they see a bunch of technical words, they've always forwarded the email to the C.E.

I just scanned the FM band in Denver and found that of the 12 HD2 stations that are listed by Ibiquity on their web site, 10 are transmitting an HD2 signal right now. KQMT and KRFX were the two that had no HD2 signal. The two HD2's that I listen to the most, KXKL and KALC, are always on the air when I turn my Accurian on. I did not notice any disparity in audio levels between KOSI HD and HD2, but that doesn't mean it hasn't now been fixed or that my ears are are too old to tell any difference.

I think a lot of this is just growing pains coupled with the fact that there are only a few listeners, so fixing problems (or even noticing them sometimes) is not going to happen as quickly as we'd like it to. Couple that with the fact that since I don't listen to KQMT and KRFX, I wouldn't know if there was a problem had I not looked for one as I did today, so we have a multiplier effect of a few listeners out of a total of a few listeners. If a station knows about a problem and doesn't fix it, well, that's a different animal.

We have 3 digital Spanish language TV stations on the air locally. KTFD has problems which result in nothing but a black screen - no picture, no sound. Been this way for months. KDEN's picture is so bad, it looks like they are rebroadcasting reception of their analog signal. It also is in B & W in the middle of the screen, with orange/red hues on the sides. Been this way for months. KDEV's PSIP is so screwed up either no one can receive it at all, or it has a picture that freezes without ever having any sound. Been this way since they upped their power with full licensing. Digital TV has been around for a lot longer than the 1 year or so of IBOC radio and multiple situations such as those described above still abound. As a side note, none of these TV stations have a web site or even a listing in the phone book, so they apparently don't care to receive information about their reception problems. From this aspect, I'm rather pleased that I can receive 10 out of 12 HD2 signals.

Finally, while this isn't quite on point for this thread, I also receive for HD signals from stations in Ft. Collins/Greeley (KUVO, KUNC, KSME, KUAD, and KPAW), approximately 75-90 miles away from me, depending on where their transmitters are located. I also receive KQLF in HD from Cheyenne, easily 100 miles away. And some new HD stations are on the air that are not listed on Ibiquity's web site, such as KSME and KQLF (above) and Jack FM. So I think progress is being made.

I have worked with several radio stations, and honestly, up until now they have not had equipment they could reliably test their signals on. Most of them were using a modified Kenwood car stereo to test signal.

We have distributed nearly 10K HD Radio Tuners to radio stations across America and more to come. And every one that I have talked to are happy to get it so they can fix their signals. The engineeres want to change it, but the chicken and the egg problem exists not only from stations to consumers, but manufacturers to stations, stations to engineers . . .

Someone will need to show them the chicken is here. . .now give us the egg. Call your stations. . . let them know. If the signal goes down, call the station! If the sound is horrible, let them know. They are, in most cases willing to fix it. As we progress we will see dramatic leaps and bounds, but it is also because most stations don't know how many people have bought radios in their area as well.

Even if their signal is up and working, send them an e-mail to let them know you know. That may even help motivate more improvement. Well, until they start advertizing on them. . . but that is a different argument.

As for iBiquity. . . I work with them all the time and I have to say, they are all intelligent hard working people that have been working to pioneer a new technology that will revolutionise radio only to encounter a situation where retailers won't want to carry HD Radios because they can't sell subscriptions, or becasue they don't know enough about it or consumer interest and want to see how it launches. . .Then a bunch of stations that are adopting that don't want to invest until they KNOW people are listening, and consumers that, even if they wanted to buy have to search for someone selling the units, or that don't know enough about the binefits because retailers are not helping educate them on the new technolgy, and the radio stations aren't providing the content and service they are advertising as a binefit. They have a lot of work do to, and it will be hard work, but HD Radio is here and likely here to stay.

I think you're way off base, dead of night. Following your logic, if my car doesn't run right, I should contact the heirs to Henry Ford, if my airline seat wasn't comfortable or the flight was late, I should contact the heirs to the Wright Brothers, and if my hamburger doesn't seem perfect, I should contact the rancher who raised the cow? While Ibiquity may have invented and installed the equipment for HD radio stations, they have no business telling radio stations what to do or not to do.

Of course Ibiquity should make sure the equipment works properly when manufactured, and the engineer who installs it should make sure it works properly in your station. But if a jock is in the bathroom and the cd on the air ends, who's responsible for the dead air? Harris? Continental? Nautel? (All transmitter manufacturers). OF COURSE NOT! The dude with his pants down!

Ibiquity is responsible that HD performs TECHNICALLY as it's supposed to. If your local station suddenly goes dead because the guy on duty isn't doing his job, that's no more Ibiquity's responsibility than it would be the surgical supplier's responsibility if the surgeon sewed you up with one of his instruments inside you! I know in America these days, assigning blame is a part of daily life. But for the love of God, could we pleas, just for once, assign it to the party/parties who are ACTUALLY responsible?

Imagine you're a shoe manufacturer. A guy wearing your shoes trips over the cat, and falls down the stairs. You are notified that he's suing YOU. After all..it's your fault, HE WAS WEARING YOUR SHOES TO WALK WHEN THE ACCIDENT OCCURED! Perfect analogy, actually. The guy at the radio station is using Ibiquity equipment to broadcast when the station falls dead due to HIS incompetence. Should the listener REALLY hold Ibiquity accountable, or...here's an idea. How about the guy RESPONSIBLE!!!!????

Last night I noticed that WYAY (Eagle 106.7) wasn't broadcasting in HD. I tried to send them an e-mail, but it bounced (mailbox full). This morning I called during office hours to report the outage. The receptionist tried to contact an engineer to relay the question, but was unable to find one. This is the same radio group (ABC) that lost its HD2 modulation last weekend on another station. If the lady who runs their switchboard can't get an engineer to answer a page at 9:30 on a Wednesday morning, should ABC be allowed to sit on licenses for half a dozen broadcast frequencies in a major market? They may delude themselves into believing that nobody cares if listener feedback falls on deaf ears.

The nice lady at WYAY finally got through to an engineer. He noticed that "the computer" had quit working. He was unaware of it until my inquiry was relayed to him. Evidently, it's more than just a simple reboot, since HD is still off the air. I also told them that their mailboxes are full. She'll have to check on that.

That's the problem with consolidation of stations. These groups own a large enough junk of the local media market that they feel no responsibility to the public they supposedly serve. No need to respond. WE are just annoyances. Hopefully a Democratic president in '08 will bring new blood, and attitudes, to the FCC (and yes I realize consolidation happened under Bill Clinton. BOTH parties are to blame. But when something isn't working in our system, and one party is in power...well realistically there's only one other choice. And it ain't Ralph Nader! (Hopefully it ain't Hillary either!)

In the future I would recommend bypassing the engineer, and ask to speak to either the General Manager or Program Director. Go to the person who can make things happen, and is motivated to do so (their motivation...making people like us stop calling to complain!)

I got a classic email from the C.E. of a station when I told them that one of their HD2 stations was cutting off the end of songs.

"You're right. I noticed this problem when I was driving home from work last night."

Yep, the C.E. has to go out to his car radio to see if the digital station is working.

My experiences with the Entercom engineers have been excellent. Yes, they keep misprogramming their encoder to emulate FM and have screwed up some other things, but whenever I've emailed them (many times) I've gotten very quick responses and very honest admissions that they're new to HD Radio, they haven't gotten a lot of training and don't quite know what they're doing yet.

I have no experiences with the Clear Channel stations because their HD stations have had no problems from the day I got my HD Radio.

No CBS/Infinity stations have gone HD here yet so no comments on them.

No offense but in many types of medium this happens all the time..."Sure you updated the website?" "yeah"..."did you update AND upLOAD it?" "Um...."

I wouldn't know anything about that because all the code I write works perfectly before it ships and never never ever has any bugs.