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There's traditional AM and FM radio, there's XM and Sirius satellite radio, and there are various cable and satellite dish "radio" music services. And finally, there's HD Radio.

Having invested over 10 years in development, and one year after gaining initial approval from the FCC, iBiquity Digital and several of its industry partners, including Texas Instruments, Philips, Kenwood, JVC, Onkyo, and Panasonic, plan to introduce HD Radio technology to the consumer market during the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 7.

As sole developer and licenser of HD Radio—also known as "In-Band, On-Channel" (IBOC) digital broadcasting—iBiquity hopes to transform today's analog radio to digital, while also adding new wireless data services. The company's investors include 15 of the nation's largest radio broadcasters, including ABC, Clear Channel, and Viacom. iBiquity says that over 100 markets have been licensed for HD Radio so far.

According to the advance press release for HD Radio's launch, "HD Radio AM and FM broadcast technology represents the industry's biggest leap forward since the introduction of FM more than 50 years ago and will usher in radio's digital era with unsurpassed sound quality—FM delivering CD-level performance and AM matching today's FM stereo—plus new features, such as integrated wireless data that displays information as text or rich media directly on the faceplate of the radio."

iBiquity says that its new radio technology paves the way for the introduction of a number of new services designed to transform the radio broadcasting industry for the digital era. These services include interactive features supporting the on-demand delivery of audio and data programming, automated store-and-recall capabilities that bring television's TiVo-like functionality to radio, and NPR's "Tomorrow Radio" project, a "Supplemental Audio Programming" (SAP) service that the company says will allow network affiliates to simultaneously broadcast two separate programs on the same channel.

Unlike HDTV, which requires that broadcasters move to new spectrum space, HD Radio technology is designed to integrate with the existing broadcasting spectrum and infrastructure, according to iBiquity. Broadcasters who license HD Radio must add new digital transmission equipment, while consumers wanting to receive the digital signal must purchase HD Radio receivers for home and/or car.

While some early generation IBOC receivers have been available since 2001, the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will see HD Radio receiver prototypes from Alpine, Delphi, Fujitsu/Eclipse, Harman/Kardon, JVC, Kenwood, Onkyo, Panasonic, Sanyo, and Visteon, some of which are scheduled for rollout in 2004. The first HD Radio stand-alone tuner, the Kenwood KTC-HR100, should hit store shelves in markets covered by HD Radio–converted stations in January.

As part of its launch strategy, iBiquity has distributed copies of a CD to the press with comparisons between traditional analog AM and FM broadcasts and HD Radio signals. While not a real-world test of how good HD Radio will actually sound (the analog FM portion of the test disc represents the worst that FM has to offer), the samples suggest that the system might have real potential if broadcasters back off from their tendency to over-compress analog radio signals.