A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.
What if, instead, we eventually phase out AM radio broadcasts and reclaim the frequency for other purposes?
AM Radio has an extremely important role in emergency broadcasting, because you can cover a whole continent using just 3-4 broadcasting stations, and it is so easy to demodulate, that you can build completely analog recievers that need no power source (they use the carrier wave as a power source). This also means that AM receivers are very cheap, so in a lot of developing countries the only broadcasts most people can afford, and will reach them are AM.
I think we should keep AM radio around, at least for emergencies.
Also, unfortunately, when HF bandwidth gets freed up, it mostly ends up going to companies that use it for high frequency trading, and not to things where it would benefit the public, like ham radio, or digital broadcasts.
As someone who has minute knowledge of how radio works, what could those frequencies be reclaimed for?
I also don’t have much knowledge here, but I don’t think much.
I guess the wavelength differences on HF and below would be too large for something of larger bandwidth. And anyway, the AM broadcast bands aren’t that large anyway. Plus there would still be too much RFI from foreign broadcasts.
My idea is, it could perhaps be upgraded to DRM. But this is used very rarely since it requires DRM-compatible receivers.
But personally, I don’t think this would be a better idea than AM. Having to get new receivers for over-compressed digital audio? Nah.
Second, probably not the best idea, some of those could be license-free bands. E.g. for LoRa. Imagine Meshtastic on HF.
No.
Enough analog broadcast spectrum has been destroyed for almost nothing.
I still can hardly believe they wiped out broadcast tv signals for . . . What did they do it for again?
Additional channels. Higher definition content. Widescreen support.
Wiped out what? I can still get OTA TV with an antenna.
A digital antenna?
No, the exact same antenna I was using for Analog TV.
You may be near a station that still broadcasts analog but I thought the clock ran out on that.
Analog TV is no longer broadcast. It’s digital only.
I am receiving HDTV over the air with the same antenna I used to receive analog TV.
No new antenna is needed
Ah okay, but the TV is doing the conversion then. That’s what was confusing.
Yes; the TV is receiving the HD signal.
That’s why they gave out vouchers for the converter boxes before the switch over happened.
Yeah let’s keep flooding old noise into the airwaves rather than update just so you don’t have to acknowledge you’re getting older and the world is changing.
Go use a 14.4 baud modem if you like obsolete communication protocols so much.
fr fr no cap fam
My understanding is that the EU – higher density, more languages (so more radio stations that nearby people can’t use), more-congested radio spectrum – has done this, forced a switch to digital car radios, and has generally placed more weight on ways to acquire more usable bandwidth.
The US, without the same level of pressure for the frequency spectrum, has placed a higher priority on not breaking compatibility, keeping existing devices continuing to function.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting