Latin America. Little by little the HD Radio format, developed 15 years ago, has been expanding throughout the north of the American continent. Canada, the United States and Mexico add more than 2,200 stations that today have this technology in operation.
TVyVideo+Radio spoke with Claudio Martínez, vice president of business development of DTS, the company in charge of developing the HD radio format, who told details of how the adoption of this technology is progressing in the rest of the continent and what some of its benefits are.
He stressed that "HD radio allows the listener to have a better radio experience, with higher sound quality and receive new content, since the broadcaster can broadcast, under the same frequency, new channels and complementary information through the digital receiver, such as weather information, traffic, among many other options."
Vehicle manufacturers in Mexico, the United States and Canada have helped the expansion of HD radio. Of the 36 vehicle brands that are marketed in the United States, all have at least one model that comes from the factory with HD radio, in total there are 210 models. In the case of Mexico, there are 15 brands that already include this technology in 50 different vehicle models.
"In the United States today there are more than 29 million receivers with HD radio. In Mexico, HD radio began to be implemented in 2011 and today 31% of the population can access this service. In the rest of Latin America, Panama and the Dominican Republic have already adopted it and there is interest from other countries in this technology," he said.
One of the confusions generated by HD radio is that ordinary people think that those who do not change their receiver for a digital one will not be able to listen to radio again. Claudio Martínez was emphatic in affirming that this is not the case, since HD radio uses the same spectrum as analog radio and that is why those who do not change the receiver will be able to continue listening to their stations.
Finally, he pointed out that HD radio and IP technology are complementary services, so they will coexist in a hybrid world. And for that DTS has developed a technology that responds to that need.
