Digital PowerRadio’s chief inventor, George Washington University Professor Dr. Brana Vojcic will soon brief iBiquity Digital engineers in Columbia, Md. about his HD Radio receiver chip technology.
I had reported last week representatives of both companies met with NAB EVP/CTO Kevin Gage at the NAB Show; subsequently there was another meeting without him that included iBiquity President/CEO Bob Struble, its General Counsel Al Shuldiner, plus DPR’s Vojcic, its Managing Member and former FCC Chairman Mark Fowler and his business partner Bruce Lederman and Beasley Broadcast EVP/CFO Caroline Beasley. The broadcaster is an investor in DPR.
Sources close to the situation tell me all sides agreed to tone down the public rhetoric; indeed, I heard the word “statesmanship” used.
“We’re trying to address this in a factual way,” said another, which is good because a few engineers at the show said to me something along the lines of: “They need to get to the bottom of this.”
The gist is DPR claims its technology, parts of which were developed for the cellular phone industry, will make an HD Radio receiver more sensitive and extend the coverage of the digital signal. IBiquity has said publicly it doesn’t believe this is so.
DPR has wanted iBiquity to turn over its proprietary source code to a chip developer for testing purposes; something iBiquity is loathe to do.
One source described the upcoming meeting, which will likely happen in May, as a “good first step.”
IBiquity declined to comment on this report.
