What Is HD Radio?

Video Transcript

"Rokosz, your digital lifestyle expert here and we're talking about HD radio. Well first let's break down what HD radio is. The HD in HD radio actually does not stand for high definition like most people think. It's actually for hybrid digital radio. Now they've let the misconception go on because HD is cool, right? Well this happens in a lot of things and this is a good little note for you to take into consideration when you're buying things like television, camcorders or other electronic devices that are touting themselves as HD. They may simply have a hard drive system in there and be standard definition. Well back to the HD radio. You might consider it to be high definition because well the quality has jumped way up. Basically when you go to an HD radio you're moving from analog to digital. Again, from CDs to LPs, that kind of difference. Your pops, your wheezes, your static is all going to be eliminated. A great market for this is if you enjoy AM radio signals. AM radio or amplitude modulation is always been something that's been a monoral signal or just one channel and FM or frequency modulation, the stereophonic broadcasting sounds a lot crisper. AM has always been relegated for talk radio stations because you don't need the stereophonic and you don't need the high fidelity that comes along with FM or frequency modulation broadcasts. So what HD radio brings to the table is a couple of things. First of all, again, it's like going from LPs to CDs, digital quality, OK? But also there's another band that can come down, a band of information. That's why you can look down at a modern HD radio and you have see who's playing, what the radio station is, what's coming up next, what they just played and because it does broadcast on the same band as FM, meaning that if you're on 100.7, well you can be on 100% 100.7 analog FM or frequency modulation and also have a digital band go along with it and within that digital band you could be listening to 100.7 on your FM dial and get four other radio stations along with it, OK? Now you may not have the DJs with that or they may introduce it, but again in that same genre you're favorite radio station could put out up to four other channels completely different all with the same kind of quality and content. So if you're thinking about upgrading to digital radio, again not satellite radio, keep that in mind, when you do digital radio, you'll have the ability to get a lot of free stations that you didn't even know existed, like me, Rokosz your digital lifestyle expert. We'll stream you later."