It is nothing more than an attempt by the industry to try to keep up with satellite radio. I have not personally experienced HD radio, but the sound quality is supposed to be very, very good, offer a full readout of the name/artist info, and also allow subchannels. My local NPR station talked about it during their last fundraiser, and from what they describe; the analog signal will remain, but there are (in their case) 3 sub-channels that a digital receiver can tune to. One will be 24/7 classical music,one will be an NPR news feed, and the other will be play a mix of the two as the old analog station does. Or something like that. The point being that they can increase the content without needing new stations.
Personally I'm not too excited about it. I enjoy NPR, so that would be nice, but I'm usually not that critical of the sound quality when listening to 'A Prarie Home Companion', or 'Car Talk', or 'Marketplace', nor do I need to know who the artist is. As far as commercial FM goes, I'm not sure I care to hear commercials and annoying DJ's in hi-def sound, since that seems to be all the local FM stations broadcast anyway.
Disclaimer: I really love my satellite radio. I've had XM for about 4 years now. I listen to XM for 8-9 hours a day at my job, very frequently on road trips and sometimes Sirius (piped in via DishNetwork) around the house at night. I can't imagine functioning without it. Just as cable/satellite TV is worth the price over 'rabbit-ears', satellite radio is
totally worth it over FM/AM.
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Anybody know much about this 'HD Radio' thing I keep hearing advertised on our local FM radio stations ... something about 'channels between the stations'?
