Harris Broadcast, one of the original partners of the Tomorrow Radio project, reiterated its support of multichannel digital radio.
Manufacturers are speaking up on this topic in the wake of the announcement by the FCC clarifying its policy to allow broadcasters to seek experimental authorization to split their digital signals.
Once approved by the commission in its final IBOC authorization, Harris predicts commercial broadcasting groups will adopt multichannel broadcasting to create new business models.
Harris has delivered Tomorrow Radio systems to stations, including importers that multiplex HD audio and data services into one bitstream at the studio. The company expects to have exporters available in April. The multiplexing the main channel audio with feeds from the importer en route to the STL.
Harris says its established Dexstar HD Radio platform supports Tomorrow Radio applications with the addition of an importer, and its new Flexstar platform, featuring the HDI-100 importer and HDE-100 exporter, enables supplementary services such as secondary audio channels and data streams providing news, weather, traffic and other information to the listener's receiver.
The Harris line of NeuStar products, which the company says remove artifacts from compressed audio signals, improves the quality and efficiency of several audio streams within a multiplexed HD Radio transmission, says the company.