A few weeks back we reported that iBiquity Digital, the originators of the US digital audio standard, In-Band On Channel (IBOC) digital radio technology, had signed a deal with NDS to allow its VideoGuard technology to protect radio transmissions for the iBiquity implementation of IBOC, universally known as HD radio (hybrid digital). But we were a little unsure just why anybody would want a protected, encrypted radio channel in a service that is free to air, so we arranged to speak with iBiquity.
VP of Advanced Services for iBiquity Digital, Joe D’angelo, told us, ‘Well I can give you one example straight away, the radio reading services for the blind. This allows for the reading out of copyrighted periodicals and this will be moving to HD radio soon. Each of those periodicals wants to be sure that a digital version won’t be pirated and suddenly appear on the internet.
‘Another example are the major US automakers. They would like to be able to identify specific cars and issue things like recall notices or other customer attention messages, over HD radio, directly to the cars that are affected.
‘But also some broadcasters are considering their own services which will require higher quality content to compete with other DRM protected services,’ he added.
By this D’angelo almost certainly means the competition that is that satellite radio services, which offer paid radio services across the US, as well as future offerings whereby radio will go out to cellular handsets and mobile TV devices. ‘HD radio will find itself competing with XM and Sirius, and cellular and MediaFLO, and certain systems will be better for certain types of content. We think we have the best way to re-use existing bandwidth and so we have a cost and geographic advantage over many of these new competitors.’
What D’Angelo means by this is that HD radio allows a digital signal to sit in the same spectrum as an existing analog system. Extra spectrum is harvested by more clearly defining the edge of the radio signal, using special filters. Previously analog radio signals tended to bleed off at the edges displaying unwanted sidebands, and with these filtered out it is possible to get multiple signals into a radio channel. When the analog system for radio is switched off once the switch to digital radio is complete, then up to 3 digital radio channels can be delivered into a single radio channel, leaving 50 kbps for data, which may lead to all kinds of data services in the future, D’Angelo believes.
And to do all of this means adding a $30,000 digital exciter to the existing analog radio set up. ‘Most radio stations also use this as an opportunity to do an overall station renewal and tend to spend around $100,000 on the upgrade,’ said D’Angelo. But still this is a very different cost profile compared with Europe, where the approach is to put a multiplex of many radio stations into a single piece of 1.5 GHz DAB spectrum, none of which is really available in the US (DAB uses L Band and Band III VHF and in the US one is used for military test-flight telemetry and the other for yet more TV channels.
But so far in the US there has been some resistance to shifting all radio into the HD radio digital channel and even more resistance from the public to buying digital devices which pick up the digital signal. If the US audience doesn’t voluntarily switch to digital, then the 13,000 radio stations will all be left having to support both signals.
‘There are 13,000 US radio stations, but the top 3,000 make 80% of the revenue, and already 1,700 stations have swapped or committed to swap to digital,’ said D’Angelo.
So does this mean that NDS is going to be the protection for all of US radio? ‘NDS has only made a deal with us at iBiquity. Radio stations are at liberty to choose other IBOC suppliers but where they choose us, from July onwards, we will add NDS protection for all our customers.
‘Our five licensed chip makers, Texas Instruments, ST Micro, NXP, Samsung and Siport, are all making their chips with NDS security requirements in mind, such as using a secret serial number in the chip for increased security, and some 47 CE brands now use those chips,’ said D’Angelo.
The NDS involvement is likely to mean a counter offensive by US radio against satellite radio, which will involve paid subscription services, and new approaches like pay-per-listen options for live concerts and events.
This week Samsung Electro Mechanics announced its plans to
introduce a new chipset for use in portable and home HD Radio receivers. Samsung said the chipset will be available before the end of the 2007 with production anticipated for the first quarter of 2008.
Samsung said the chip is low-power and will be capable of supporting all
current and planned HD Radio technology features and said that the HD Radio market was just on the verge of takeoff.