Well, now, the lawyers have gotten involved....

[Savage]

Just before Ford sold Jaguar to Tata Motors of India, they yanked HD Radio as an option.  I saw the service bulletin.  Jag had the same experience BMW owners complained about on their service blogs: the familiar problems with mode-hopping, weak reception, HD subs dropping out to silence, and stations with time-sync discrepancies.

Ford-Jag wisely concluded that buyers who plunked down 70 or 80 grand for a new car expected all of the features to work acceptably....especially an accessory as mundane as the radio, a device which has been successfully installed in vehicles for 80 years.  They concluded that overall, looking at the system, HD's problems weren't feasibly fixable any time in the forseeable future, so they quietly either retrofitted analog-only radios or somehow got an OEM retrofit to lock out the HD feature.

For some reason the decision was reversed when Tata took over.  Probably somebody wrote a check or there was some other kind of lobbying.  Whatever took place, I'd bet it's a decision Jaguar now wishes they had not made.  Defending a class-action lawsuit can cost millions.

[BRNout]

Jag had the same experience BMW owners complained about on their service blogs: the familiar problems with mode-hopping, weak reception, HD subs dropping out to silence, and stations with time-sync discrepancies.

I experience all of the above each time I power up my Insignia portable.  Unless I happen to listen to a station that lacks the signal strength to enter HD mode.  Those sound fine. 

Good to know that my $35 investment is no less capable than an $800 option on a Jag! 

[mmnassour]

Well, I think it's pretty fair to assume that 99.9999% of the people buying Jaaaags and such cars don't know...and don't care...what HD radio is.  All they know is that the radio on their $80k car keeps cutting out and that the dealer can't fix it.    Dealers then scream, yes SCREAM, at the manufacturer and the fix is issued.  That fix is to disable the HD option on the radio (at the customer's option) and refund any monies paid for the feature.

The emperor has no clothes.

[Savage]

Yep...that's about it.  Once a class-action suit is commenced and you're a defendant - you're stuck.  You don't get to say "okay, okay - we're sorry - we won't install any more HD Radios and we'll give everyone their money back.  Just leave us alone, okay?"  You're in it for the duration as an unwilling participant.  And class-actions typically drag on for years and years, costing anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions just in legal costs.

Big corporations like those who own car companies watch the legal landscape carefully.  If there's anything vaguely resembling a tiny cloud on the horizon, the advice they get is - steer clear.  With a plethora of well-documented, highly publicized engineering issues on both the transmitting and receiving ends for HD, it's very hard to see any car company deciding to commit to HD now that a consumer class-action over poor performance is looming.  And we haven't even discussed the long-term ill will to the marque's reputation.  Consumers tend to react like this: "Yeah, I spent 65 grand on that freakin' BMW and the dealer couldn't even get the radio to work right.  Next time I'm getting a Cadillac."  People don't know about HD's technical woes.  They just want their expensive vehicles to perform flawlessly.

No HD in cars = no future for HD.  Not that there was much of one anyway.  (Past tense here was intentional.)

[Cal Stymes]

Goosy gosh I would love to be a fly on the wall at Keefe Bartels!

I can just hear BMW and Jaguar now -

"Struuu beeee!  Yoo got sum splainin' to do!"

[Savage]

It's just so monumentally stupid for anyone who thinks about HD Radio for about five seconds.  Hair and Cal are so right.  How could the outcome be anything other than this disaster?

Despite labored - and relatively isolated - defenses of HD along the lines of "I've heard of all the problems, but MY HD Radio seems to work okay" (like the ones often read here) it's well beyond dispute that the system has serious robustness and reliability problems, with little or no real-world benefit.

OF COURSE high-end users aren't going to put up with all the buggy flaws and annoying misfunctions.  The most discerning consumers are going to be those who happen to include audio packages in the Jags, Beamers, and Mercedes-Benzes running from $3000 to $8000.

What did HD Radio's perpetrators expect?

Wait, wait - don't tell me.  The iBiquity-Alliance nuts just thought they could lie their way past all the issues, just like they've been doing for seven years?  Maybe they believed if the industry just runs a billion dollars more worth of insultingly stupid on-air promos, the buyers of multithousand dollar audio systems in prestige cars will put up with unstable, annoying reception?  Maybe every new BMW-HD should have a nice laminated copy of the NRSC mask in the glove box to reassure annoyed new-owners they've got "the latest and greatest?"

All of the above?

[TSL2]

"high-end users aren't going to put up with all the buggy flaws and annoying misfunctions.  The most discerning consumers are going to be those who happen to include audio packages in the Jags, Beamers, and Mercedes-Benzes running from $3000 to $8000."


High end users are really not that different from I guess regular low end users. driving along in your car while enjoying your favorite song is great. But when the song you love is dropping out for seconds it's really annoying to anyone. Listening to analog and HD trying to sync is annoying. 

Losing audio in the middle of Rush or Glenn Beck is annoying. Radio as we know it works 99.9.% of the time with zero flaws. Say what you want about audio procession or static, it mostly works and can be enjoyed. Can HD be mostly enjoyed? Mostly if you don't mind periods of silence.

Isn't silence a mortal sin? When listeners hear it, they hit scan and say good bye.. that won't be good for ratings. 

[local oscillator]

All of which gets me back to this point -- HD is such an obvious technical disaster that you have to ask yourself why on earth the FCC would so easily approve such a scheme if it weren't intentionally trying to destroy radio broadcasting in favor of its chosen medium -- the internet.  I'm not into conspiracy theories, but the FCC clearly doesn't give a damn.  Thirty years ago, iBiquity and its allies would have been laughed right off M Street.  Now, AM and FM signals that are 3 channels wide (and can interfere with 5) are not a problem. 

[mmnassour]

High end users are really not that different from I guess regular low end users. driving along in your car while enjoying your favorite song is great. But when the song you love is dropping out for seconds it's really annoying to anyone. Listening to analog and HD trying to sync is annoying.

Try and look at it this way....

We're not talking about a $200 radio that can be returned to Fry's.  We're talking about a $3000 sound system in an $80K motor vehicle.  When that sound system doesn't work, I can assure you that Dr. X or Attorney Y doesn't know/care that it's only the HD section that is giving him/her problems.  They don't know it HAS an HD section.  All they know is that they spent mid four figures for a high dollar radio, it doesn't work, and the dealer can't fix it.

In their mind, the radio is a piece of crap (right) the dealer is a piece of crap because they can't fix it (wrong) and once again, something on their Jaaaaag is broke.

Answer...disable the HD and the radio sounds great.

Given the intensity with which these automobiles are marketed, the manufacturers (finally) defend their reputations for quality fiercely.  Ford, for example, threw millions down the Jaguar rathole in an effort to make the cars run and not rust.  If HD radio makes Jaguar look like crap, then HD radio is gone.  Period.  My guess is that if this hits a court, HD will disappear from new high end cars within 12 months, there's just simply too much money at stake to allow it to sully a manufacturer's name.

Remember....back in the 50s, Chrysler tried to install turntables in its cars.  We all know how well that worked out.

[mmnassour]

All of which gets me back to this point -- HD is such an obvious technical disaster that you have to ask yourself why on earth the FCC would so easily approve such a scheme if it weren't intentionally trying to destroy radio broadcasting in favor of its chosen medium -- the internet.  I'm not into conspiracy theories, but the FCC clearly doesn't give a damn.  Thirty years ago, iBiquity and its allies would have been laughed right off M Street.  Now, AM and FM signals that are 3 channels wide (and can interfere with 5) are not a problem. 

Thirty years ago we had an FCC concerned with regulations and technical specifications (pre-Reagan).  That administration...and those that followed...gutted the FCC and put in place a rubber-stamp mentality.  The FCC isn't trying to destroy radio broadcasting, it's just no longer competent to stop the mega-companies that now own it from making bad, short-sighted decisions now that station owners no longer have to operate in the public interest.