{"id":457,"date":"2017-06-19T17:19:05","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T22:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k2dls.net\/blog\/?p=457"},"modified":"2017-06-19T18:15:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T23:15:46","slug":"decode-hd-radio-on-rtl-sdr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/2017\/06\/19\/decode-hd-radio-on-rtl-sdr\/","title":{"rendered":"Decode HD Radio on RTL-SDR!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During my 2017 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.k2dls.net\/blog\/2017\/03\/03\/rtl-sdr-on-the-cheap-swl-fest-links\/\">SWL Fest presentation<\/a>, I mentioned that there is no way to decode either <a href=\"https:\/\/hdradio.com\/\">HD Radio<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atsc.org\/standard\/a53-atsc-digital-television-standard\/\">ATSC HD Television<\/a> using software designed for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realtek.com.tw\/products\/productsView.aspx?Langid=1&#038;PFid=35&#038;Level=4&#038;Conn=3&#038;ProdID=257\">RTL2832U dongles<\/a>.  The explanation I provided is that both protocols are covered by patents and that the holders have not been forthcoming on providing necessary details to the open source community.<\/p>\n<p>A cybersecurity researcher, <a href=\"http:\/\/theori.io\/research\/nrsc-5-c\">Theori<\/a>, has cracked the codec used by the NRSC-5-C standard for US based terrestrial digital radio.  I am now listening to HD Radio via an RTL SDR dongle.  It takes a decent signal, so I&#8217;m not getting too many stations using an inside whip antenna, but there are enough to experiment with.  It also takes a better dongle with good frequency stability.  An older dongle without the TCXO was not up to the task, even on an i7 based system.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery is summarized on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rtl-sdr.com\/decoding-and-listening-to-hd-radio-nrsc-5-with-an-rtl-sdr\/\">RTL SDR Blog<\/a>.  You&#8217;ll need some familiarity with building packages under Linux to <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/theori-io\/nrsc5\">grab the source from github<\/a> and to compile it on your system.  So far, I&#8217;ve compiled under Debian x86_64, Fedora x86_64, and Raspbian!  Next, I want to get it running under Cygwin so that I can use it on the Windows 10 computer in the radio room.<\/p>\n<p>It is a blast to be able to decode the alternate program streams.  Audio quality is better than Sirius XM.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks Theori!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During my 2017 SWL Fest presentation, I mentioned that there is no way to decode either HD Radio or ATSC HD Television using software designed for the RTL2832U dongles. The explanation I provided is that both protocols are covered by patents and that the holders have not been forthcoming on providing necessary details to the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/2017\/06\/19\/decode-hd-radio-on-rtl-sdr\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Decode HD Radio on RTL-SDR!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,6],"tags":[57,58,60,31,59],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infosec","category-radio","category-technology","tag-hd-radio","tag-nrsc-5-c","tag-rafael-micro-r820t","tag-rtl-sdr","tag-rtl2832u"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}