HD Radio is the Quadraphonic Stereo of the 2010’s

Published at 13:40 on 4 February 2012

After having listened to HD broadcasts regularly for about a month, that’s the inevitable conclusion. It’s there, stations have spent a lot of money on enabling themselves to broadcast it, but consumers have almost universally not adopted it and even broadcasters don’t take it very seriously anymore. Ergo, it’s going to die in the not-too-distant future.

Exhibit A: Knowing that the chips which decode HD into audio are proprietary, I wondered just how pricy they might be. After a bunch of Google searching (the magic keywords have slipped my memory and I can’t furnish a link at the moment, sorry), I found out that the fee is around $50 per chip. The receiver I purchased from an Amazon storefront was made several years ago, came to me new in its packaging, and cost me $40. In other words, HD receivers are not selling and are being liquidated at below cost.

Exhibit B: KING-FM‘s HD signal went off the air for a few days in the wake of last month’s ice storm. There was never any announcement to this fact on the air, or for that matter on KING-FM’s web site. By contrast, if they lost their analog stereo subcarrier, I find it inconceivable that there would not be both regular on-the-air announcements and a mention on their web site about it.

Moreover, I listen somewhat regularly to “the Evergreen Channel,” the program that airs on KING-FM’s HD2 digital subcarrier. Whenever they solicit listener contributions, they instruct you to “click the donate button on your player.” Never is any mention made of what listeners on HD radio should do; there is a presumption here that those of us who listen on HD are such a small minority that we’re not worth worrying about.

Exhibit C: For the past month or more, the HD subcarrier has been absent from the KUOW2 transmitter on 91.7 kHz, as evidenced by the following message on their web site:

KUOW2 HD SERVICES OFF AIR

We apologize for the break in our KUOW2 HD services. Our engineers are working to fix the problem.

Hey, at least they rated HD worth a mention on their web site; that’s more than one can say for KING-FM. But, to reiterate, it’s been this way for at least a month (i.e. ever since I’ve been trying to receive an HD signal from that transmitter). Obviously, it’s not a very high priority item for their engineers. Again, I find it inconceivable that they would take such a long time to restore the analog stereo subcarrier to their transmitter.

I would not be surprised, in fact, if KUOW decides to simply forget about HD on their second transmitter and if in a few months all mention of HD one day simply vanishes without explanation from the web page for that transmitter. That’s probably what’s going to happen to the vast majority of HD broadcasts in the coming five years or so: they will continue until something breaks in the station’s HD hardware, at which point it will be pronounced by management as not worth spending the money to fix and the service will be silently discontinued.

To reiterate, this will not be a surprise when it happens.

First, consider the cost: I would not have paid several hundred dollars for such a receiver. The only reason I purchased one is that I have a crappy slow Internet connection and cannot reliably stream audio. It was worth a one-time expense of $40 to have unlimited access to the BBC. At several hundred dollars per receiver, I would have just paid for better Internet service. That would cost a more, sure, but I’d then be able to stream audio from more than just the BBC, as well as watch videos on demand.

Second, consider the reliability: HD is still considerably more temperamental than analog FM, which is temperamental enough on an inside antenna: one is continually having issues with multipath interference and loss of signal strength causing loss of the stereo subcarrier. But at least with analog FM, one still gets an audible signal when that happens. With HD Radio, the signal suddenly and with no warning whatsoever vanishes completely. At least at home it’s possible to erect a good external antenna on the roof. In a car, you’re simply stuck with a small whip, and you will hit weak-signal areas as you drive around. It’s no wonder automakers have avoided adding HD Radio to the receivers they install in vehicles.

Finally, consider the improvement in sound quality: It’s very modest. Frequency modulation was designed to offer better sound quality than amplitude modulation, and it succeeds admirably in this regard; the difference in audio quality between an AM signal and an FM one is profound. In contrast, it’s difficult for me to discern any such difference between analog FM and HD Radio.

So I fully expect my $40 investment to become an interesting conversation piece about a mostly forgotten era in radio broadcasting in the decades to come.

Bad Web Design Example of the Day

Published at 12:08 on 3 February 2012

Just what is that fourth character, anyhow? A lower-case letter O that’s been stretched and distorted to the size of an upper-case one? An upper-case letter O? The numeral zero?

There’s no way to tell, of course, save to take a wild guess. A guess where you have 67% odds of guessing wrong (yes, it’s case-sensitive, so “O” is not recognized as “o”). And if you guess wrong, guess what? That’s right: you get presented with brand new CAPTCHA! Which, given the number of characters in it, odds say will probably contain at least one “C”, “c”, “O”, “o”, “P”, “p”, “V”, “v”, “W”, “w”, “X”, “x”, “Z”, “z”, or “0” character.

Charming. Simply charming.

So Much for That

Published at 13:02 on 29 January 2012

I had what I thought was a better-than-average job prospect, but at this stage it’s obvious it is not going to materialize, since the appointed time for a response has passed with no word whatsoever from the employer.

Maybe it’s just as well, because it would have required relocating at short notice to a different part of the metro area. It wasn’t a particularly bad part of it, but still: if I must relocate at short notice, I’d rather it be to someplace in Cascadia that does not have one of the key glaring downsides that each of the major metropolitan areas here have. In other words, I’d rather get something a little extra for the pain and bother of moving.

If it wasn’t for those downsides (Portland: allergen levels and general poor air quality, Seattle: poorly-planned growth that has a significant negative impact on quality of life, Vancouver, BC: onerous immigration hassles), I wouldn’t necessarily have an objection to living in a larger city. It’s just that each of the three “major city” options in the Pacific Northwest happen to have a serious downside to them.

What’s the Deal with Wireless Keyboards and Mice, Anyhow?

Published at 21:43 on 28 January 2012

Really, what’s the point?

It’s not as if having a cable on my keyboard limits its usefulness in any way. Maybe the cable on my mouse does — a little. Most of the time, though, I’m completely unaware of it, too. It’s only a thin cable, not a ship’s anchor chain or anything.

Meanwhile, having a wired connection to the CPU means both keyboard and mouse have electric power whenever my computer does. Wireless devices must perforce depend on batteries. Batteries that can (and do) go dead. Batteries which Murphy’s Law states will go dead at the most inconvenient times imaginable. Such as late at night when you’re out of batteries an important project is due next morning. Plus the cable keeps the mouse conveniently tethered to my computer, so I can’t inadvertently take it elsewhere and lose it.

So to sum up: for keyboards and mice, Bluetooth offers little or no real advantage while imposing a very real disadvantage. I suppose there’s the odd specialized application where wires are a very real disadvantage, to the point where it’s worth putting up with the disadvantages of wireless technology for such devices. But that does nothing to explain how common wireless keyboards and mice are; it seemed that wireless mice outnumbered wired ones at Fry’s.

Which begs the question: why do so many people purchase and use such obviously inferior products? The only answer I can come up with is one of technology for technology’s sake: simply because we can use wireless keyboards and mice, many people apparently think that we should.

Though I must confess this rush to embrace a new technology for mice still strikes me as extremely odd, given how long those horrible trackball mice (perpetually getting dirty and needing cleaning) lingered on the market in the face of far superior optical mouse technology. Even the old-fashioned optical mice that required a special mouse pad still beat trackball mice (which tracked so poorly that virtually everyone bought a pad for them, anyhow) hands down. And even after the pad-free optical mice appeared on the scene, it still took nearly a decade for trackball mice to finally end up in the dustbin of history where they belong.

99% of Keyboards Suck

Published at 20:50 on 28 January 2012

Really, it’s amazing how crappy computer keyboards generally are. I was just at Fry’s getting the capacitor I’m going to try replacing, and had a chance to try out their keyboard selection.

The dominant “rubber dome” technology provides absolutely horrible tactile feedback: the electrical action takes place after the main mechanical action that one feels. Therefore, the only recourse if you want to type quickly is to bang on the keyboard like crazy, to ensure each key stroke hits home and causes a character to be entered. This causes fingers to get much more tired than they need to, because one is exerting on average far more force than one needs.

The only keyboard technologies that provided proper tactile feedback were ones made using IBM’s “buckling spring” technology (which I think is the best), and some mechanical keyswitches (which can get pretty darn good, too). Every subsequent technology has had no advantages for the user whatsoever: the only advantages newer keyboard technologies have has been for the manufacturer’s drive to cut costs.

What astounds me is not that the cheapest keyboards feel like crap (one would expect that, you’re getting pure “dollar engineering”), but how many keyboards with $100-and-up price tags (even ones advertised as “ergonomic”) also felt like complete crap when I tried them. Making a fancy curving layout so one’s hands can be held at a natural angle but using a technology that forces (at the cost of failing to enter the random character) users to use unnecessary force is like having a restaurant that serves a turd as dessert, but frosts it elegantly in icing and serves it on a sterling plate.

The only keyboards that weren’t absolute crap were two models by Razer geared towards the gamer crowd. While spendy, they were still less expensive than many of the crappy ones.

Oh, Crap

Published at 12:57 on 28 January 2012

My expensive Unicomp keyboard has been acting up as of recently. For a few hours this afternoon I thought I had fixed it simply by reseating a loose connector inside the keyboard itself. Now it’s acting up again.

I’m going to try replacing the one electrolytic capacitor in the thing, even though it looks OK, just on the off chance it is infested with capacitor plague. But at this stage I’m decidedly pessimistic about its prognosis. Everything else on the thing is a surface-mount component, and the most likely culprit is the single proprietary IC on the logic board.

Meaning that it’s probably replacement time.

Update: Yup, definitely replacement time. Just tried replacing the capacitor, and the quirky behavior remains.

One Last Parting Shot at Tankless Water Heaters

Published at 10:35 on 26 January 2012

The up to 34% greater efficiency cited for them is a bogus number if you live in a cool climate where the energy you consume heating a home is significantly more than that spent cooling it.

Most of the heat energy wasted by a tankless heater literally goes down the drain. In contrast, most of the energy “wasted” by a tanked heater escapes to the environment around the tank. Since the heater is almost always in an interior space, this means that during the heating season, that energy is not, in fact, “wasted” at all — every therm of natural gas a tanked heater ends up spending on heating its surrounding environment is a therm of natural gas the furnace does not have to consume toward that same end.

If you live someplace like Texas where energy consumed on cooling dominates, then it’s the other way ’round, of course. But for those of us that live in cool climates (I live in a place where the vast majority of residences do not even have air conditioning), the efficiency gains of tankless heaters (which we have already established are mostly bogus even without this latest insight) are perforce inflated.

How Wasteful are Tankless Heaters?

Published at 12:49 on 23 January 2012

Let’s do a little math.

First, Wikipedia states that a navy shower can use “as little as” 3 gallons of water, while leaving the water running can use “as much as” 60 gallons. So, in the best case (this is important), a Navy shower uses 1/20th the water as leaving the water running.

Second, according to the US Green Building Council, a tankless heater can heat water as much as 34 percent (again, another best case) more efficiently than a conventional tanked one.

Now, let’s give tankless heaters the benefit of the doubt here: We’ll compare the two best cases, and then weight the comparison in favor of tankless heaters by ignoring how much more water one sends down the drain while adjusting the temperature.

In other words, we will assume that we’re heating 20 times the water, but doing it 34% more efficiently:

20 ÷ 1.34 = 14.9253

That’s right, a tankless heater is nearly fifteen times more wasteful than an old-fashioned tank-style heater if you’re already used to taking a navy shower (as I am; in fact, I prefer it). I’ll repeat that: fifteen times. Not fifteen percent more wasteful, fifteen times. An order of magnitude.

If you’re not already taking navy showers, you can therefore save far more energy just by changing your usage habits than you can by changing your water heater (and I’m not even including the energy cost of manufacturing and transporting the new water heater in this).

For other uses, the wastage isn’t so great. For rinsing off a few dishes, I figure I’m maybe using three times the water. Even then, it doesn’t look so good for a tankless heater:

3 ÷ 1.34 = 2.2388

Wow, just slightly over twice as wasteful. I’m so… impressed.

Given the choice, I’ll stick with with an old-fashioned tank, thank you very much.