Re: [PLUG] AM bye bye

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 10:54 PM Keith C. Perry via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> Dropping AM is one thing.  Dropping FM or FM-HD (which is pretty good in terms of quality) is something else.  Personally, I'm for having choice.

Sure, I'm all for choice.

That said, at some point if popularity drops enough that other
potential users of the band will push to have it reallocated, as was
done with a lot of TV spectrum.  Those VHF frequencies have a lot of
potential uses, and digital modes are a lot more bandwidth-efficient
than analog FM.

>  AM and FM receivers are not expensive or complicated to make.  That tends to make them more durable from a service delivery point of view so removing any traditional radio functions doesn't make sense to me.

Well, again popularity is a factor here.  An 8086 is way simpler in
design than a modern CPU, and yet you'd find a modern CPU way easier
to procure in bulk.  Those Qualcomm LTE modems probably would require
a specialized PhD to completely understand, but WAY more of those get
churned out every year than analog AM/FM tuners.

> For what its worth, broadcast TV seems to be dying quicker and we see that mess that has created with everyone wanting you pay for their "plus" network for the 1 or 2 shows you care about.  We should not want to do anything remotely similar to that in radio.

Yeah, the content wars are definitely frustrating.  I think we've
mostly avoided that in music because of the standalone and
short-duration nature of music.  If you're driving in the car for any
length you're going to end up listening to dozens of 3-5min audio
tracks.  You'll want variety, and you're not going to want to mess
with the UI between each song.  With TV if you sit down you are going
to watch one program for 20-120min.  Also, if you watch episode 3 of a
show, you're pretty likely to also want to watch episodes 4-10 of the
same show later.  Even if a piece of music is part of an album it is
pretty rare to actually listen to all the tracks of an album that way.

The result of that is that a music service that only offers a limited
selection isn't very useful, even if it happens to include some songs
you really like.  People aren't going to sign up for a music service
because of some exclusive content deal - they want a ton of stuff to
just shuffle through, not the one service that can get them this one
artist they like.  They don't want 5 different services so that they
have to switch apps while driving either, while that sort of thing
isn't a big deal when watching TV.

In short, I don't think this kind of fragmentation is as likely to
impact the stuff you use a radio for.

The EMCOM stuff is reasonable though.  However, I'd argue that a NOAA
radio is probably more useful for that.  Granted, that is just a
different type of broadcast FM but with the alert systems and so on it
is more fit for that purpose.

-- 
Rich
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