The Recent News page at the Northwest Broadcasters site alerts us to the fact that, starting Monday, CKNW will be promoting itself on-air as being available via the HD 2 signal on sister station Rock 101 CFMI. NW’s evening host Drex will be featured on the 30-second spots, along with engineer Rob Brown. There will also be a video with Drex on the CKNW website on how to tune your HD receiver, along with a link to the MyHDRadio website.
NW has been testing the signal for at least the last month, and since Industry Canada found it to be problem-free, they have granted approval for the service to be permanent.
So if you have a spare $100 lying around, you just could be part of Canada’s latest radio experiment. There are a number of HD signals available back East in the Toronto-Hamilton market, and several HD signals in Seattle as well.
I’m not sure this service is a winner in the long term. It may simply be too late for ‘NW, and it may be too late for HD (which of course has nothing to do with high-def) in general in Canada. The only saving grace may be the radios in newer cars that will show the HD channel, if you are on Rock 101.
Here’s the CKNW promo link (on their site) with a coverage map.
Note the promo uses the term “high definition”. There is no “definition” for “high definition” when it comes to this. Instead, HD is simply a branding term, and a clever one at that, by the owner of the format.
http://www.cknw.com/hd/
CKNW on HD what a joke. So maybe a handful of listeners get reduced static.,
To me it is even worth 50 nbucks never mind a thousand or more for the audio
system upgrade to get it. If music stations used it I might buy an after market tuner.
Love HD2 music streams from US on internet. NW should concentrate on producing
programming worth listening to. They only reason I have any knowledge of them is because
my elderly father leaves the radio on in the home office. No doubt the I ve fallen and cant get up to change the channel syndrome.