Sony has confirmed that it will enter the HD Radio market this year, kicking off with an in-car device and a tabletop radio set.
Consumers electronic companies have been slow to see the potential in HD radio, given that the technology is only used in the US, and many leading radio stations have yet to begin using it.
Two weeks ago Faultline carried a detailed interview with innovator iBiquity Digital which designed the new HD technology and which has the leading market share in In-Band On Channel (IBOC) digital radios in the US.
VP of Advanced Services for iBiquity Digital, Joe D’angelo, that HD Radio would eventually compete with satellite radio services, as well as with content carried on cellular networks and mobile TV systems like MediaFLO,
He also said that of the 3,000 US radio stations that make 80% of the US radio revenue, already 1,700 stations have swapped or committed to swap to digital delivery, most of them with iBiquity’s technology.
The standard was designed to make it as cheap as possible for each radio station and they just need to add $30,000 digital exciter to the existing analog radio set up. This then makes better use of the existing spectrum and allows both an analog signal and a HD digital signal side by side.
There are five licensed chip makers, Texas Instruments, ST Micro, NXP, Samsung and Siport, and 47 CE brands now using those chips, D’Angelo told us. So now we know that the most influential CE player, Sony, is one of them.
“Sony is one of the first leading consumer electronics companies to offer quality HD Radio-enabled devices,” said Steve Haber, Sony’s senior vice president of marketing for the Digital Imaging and Audio Division. “We’re adding it to a long list of technologies that support digital music trends.”
The new Sony desktop is called the XDR-S3HD and has a back-lit blue LCD display and offers stereo and simulated surround sound and will be available in July for around $200.
The car version model XT-100HD feeds rich information, including artist names and song titles, to the car stereo’s display and it can also display radio station names and genre and cost around $100.