If you think your radio can only play music or talk, think again. The new technology, HD Radio, brings with it the ability to send you text messages of all kinds. In fact, the text messages can be as simple as the name of a song and the artist or as complicated as a traffic alert, a weather report or an important news updates. Ultimately, it will be up to each HD Radio station to decide what it wants to do with text messaging. Some may elect to charge for a service such as traffic alerts. Other may decide to stay with the name of the song playing and the artist. Still other stations may elect to give away the traffic alerts or weather updates but with short text commercials to offset the cost of the free texting. As one example of texting, Amy Gilroy recently reported in TWICE (This Week in Consumer Electronics) that by the end of the year, Clear Channel will be delivering Real-time traffic information over HD Radio. According to Clear Channel, the new HD radio service will launch in 48 markets this year with about 100 stations broadcasting HD traffic information. The company will eventually roll out this service to all its HD stations. The greater bandwidth in the HD radio signal is expected to enable enhanced services including weather forecast updates and point of interest (POI) updates. Clear Channel says a significant number of suppliers are already offering real time traffic information, including Audiovox, TomTom, Garmin and Cobra HD Radios are now more expensive than conventional radios. One reasons for this is because they have to be designed to display the text messages and because some of the digital components are more expensive than the analog parts found in conventional radios.. However, as manufacturers such as Sony ramp up production, the cost of these radios is expected to become much more competitive -- with prices of $100 or less. |
