Germans and Swiss snub DAB

Have I missed something?

This might have been mentioned before, but why is so much money being pumped into digital radio via DAB?

We already have millions and millions of devices (phones, pcs) that can listen to digital radio via the internet. And these devices can pick up stations from anywhere on the globe (unlike DAB). It can't be long until we have cars that are 'net enabled too so we can listen to digital radio on the move.

So why not just let FM/AM keep going until 'net coverage is ubiquotous?

Have I missed something (not a rhetorical question, looking for an honest answer)?

I should say that I have two (reciva) internet radios in my house and they are absolutely fantastic devices. I can't think of anything that DAB can do that they can't.

(untitled)

Seems to me to be another change for the sake of it, again. I guess it boosts someone's CV somewhere. First we have to have digital TV whether we like it or not. Now digital radio. And then we find the global market, nor even the European one, isn't at one with all this anyway.

IMO if there is an advantage to switching, folk will do so for themselves when options are offered them. If they don't, then they ought not have it imposed. And especially not have to fund the costs too. If politicians want to change something for the fun of it then they should cover the costs from their own bank accounts.

@David S

Care to let the rest of us know which particular radio you bought, so we can steer well clear...

My first DAB set was the Philips DA1000, which is about the size of a deck of cards (hmm, wonder what that is in London Buses...). My second was a Pure One, which does feel as if there's quite a bit of empty space inside the casing, but is still conveniently sized for carrying one-handed from room to room or out into the garden. My third is integrated into the Panasonic micro-system (who's model number hasn't so much escaped me as was never captured in the first place) sat in the kitchen, which doesn't appear to be any more bulky than it would be if it'd been designed around an analogue radio receiver instead. All three sets will start spitting out audio within a second or two of pressing the power button, so whilst they are slower to start up than an analogue set, I wouldn't say any of them are slow.

Granted, all three do suffer from the hideous warbling/whistling/wibbling of a partially dropped signal if their aerials aren't pointing in the right direction (though this only really affects the DA1000 with its use of the earphone lead as an aerial, and in particular if you use the wrong earphones. The lead length seems to be the critical factor here, the only two sets of earphones I've found that work at all well have noticeably longer leads - by 10cm or so - than is usual), but I'm happy to trade off the more ear-friendly degradation you get with low signal strength on AM/FM transmissions against the superior range of channels available on digital, and the absence (so far at least) of my listening pleasure being interrupted by interference from pirate stations/cab companies/overhead power lines etc.

I quite agree that digital radio, as currently implemented in the UK, isn't as good as it could - and arguably SHOULD - be. I just don't think it's nearly as bad as it's made out to be by so many of its detractors.

@Lutin & Richard S

Whilst I too think the idea of accessing streamed broadcasts on the move is the right way to go, I fear it'd become just another revenue stream for whichever provider you use for your mobile net access. My average commute is 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week, so assuming a 128kbps stream I'd be chewing through at least 1.7GB a month, which is a fairly substantial amount compared to the typical fair usage limits on current "unlimited" mobile net packages - to receive that much data on a regular basis through my present mobile operator would cost me £12.77/month... no thanks. I might consider an annual subscription of, say, 50 quid for unlimited access to streaming radio, but I certainly wouldn't want to fork out 153 quid a year for access that was still hobbled by a fair use transfer limit.

Why DAB when we have streams?

There is no need for a DAB radio, simple visit the internet radio station of your choice and 'listen live'.,,,, I've no intention to pay £65 for a DAB radio when my pc will do the job just fine.

My favorite: http://www.planetrock.com/

commercial pressures and DAB reserve badwidth

there are to my knowledge only 7 frequencies (ensembles - 11B - 11C - 11D - 12A - 12B - 12C - 12D) used for DAB in the UK right now, and they are transmitted at low power because of potential interference with old TV sets. - so the signal quality should be improving with time.

There are 31 unused frequencies, or 180 new stations available.

However, the costs of running a station, just what you are charged for the airtime, electricity, distribution costs etc. mean that it is not economic for commercial radio.

Technically though, DAB+ with its new codec, and the many additional services it can support, is a very good standard, it operates flawlessly at 10dB signal-to-noise (7.5dB in theory).

It also allows each frequency to be used for countrywide coverage, rather than the 4 or 5 frequencies necessary for one station to achieve national FM coverage. Its very spectrum-efficient, and for that reason is still the best candidate for eventual German adoption.

the problem is that commercial radio is supported by adverts, and these are "crap" - even in Richard Branson's own words - they're intrusive, moronic, repetitive, loud, irrelevant and boring. Well, for the most part anyway.

In a world where high-quality internet radio is available, with no adverts, or foreign adverts, commercial radio (as it is today) will fail, it has been out-competed.

This should not be seen as a failure of the DAB means-of-supply, but of the content provider's business model. - and this is the real message from Germany, commercial radio as a business cannot afford investment right now.

The american answer is to provide an advert-free premium service, though this is in big trouble, and may not see the year out. DAB can support encrypted channels, but these will compete with "free" in the home, and soon, "almost free" in the car.

I don't have an answer, maybe we wait for commercial radio to die, and then use the bandwidth to freely broadcast the top 50 internet stations.

Maybe commercial radio can re-invent itself as something more people can stand listening to?

In case you are interrested in the history of digital radio here

There's a great video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpypIcu_byg

Paid Politico's

Do you ever wonder how much the politicians are getting shoved into their back pockets to force stuff on us that nobody really wants? If the radios cannot run for at least a week (not even expecting a month) on one 9 volt battery then the technology is inferior by a magnitude for every day less it can operate.

What I get tired of is having technology changes forced onto us so that a company can make more money on selling us features and functionality that we don't care about and doesn't necessarily work as well as the previous.

It has its uses...

Anonymous Coward: "First we have to have digital TV whether we like it or not. Now digital radio."

Digital television, at least here in the States, was pushed (in part) as a means to fix the adjacent UHF channel issue. Historically, you couldn't have two analog stations close to each other on the UHF band because they would clobber each other. This was due to limits with "SuperHET" tuners and just the general characteristics of AM television transmissions. That's why in North America, UHF channels were often 6 channels apart from each other. Therefore, by switching to DTV, radio licensing authorities were able to consolidate UHF channels, allowing them to sell bandwidth in the upper UHF television band (ch52-69/700-800MHz) for big money. Governments get cash, commercial interests get a new product to sell, and we get new bandwidth for our wireless gadgets.

Meanwhile, digital radio really isn't being pushed by government officials. This is strange because it could be used as a way to radically expand radio channel capacity. Your average wideband FM radio station in the VHF Band II (88-108MHz) uses a 200KHz channel slot. By switching to a digital radio standard that uses 50KHz channel slots, you could get 4x as many stations.

You could also use it as an opportunity to expand the range of radio stations. Here in North America, most of the TV stations dumped the VHF Band I (ch2-6/54-88MHz) for DTV transmissions because of atmosphere reflections and other issues. Imagine having 1,000 radio stations by combing both Band I and II together. Even if your metro area only used a quarter of them to keep adjacent channel interference down, that would be a huge gain over what we have today.

I think one reason why digital radio has sucked up till now is because many have been MPEG-2 layer-2 based. Unless you have a very wide channel, it doesn't leave enough room for both audio and high amounts of error correction. Since the channels were too narrow, you had crappy sound.

Now that we have a newer generation of standards, including HDRadio, DAB+ (Digital Audio Broadcasting Plus), DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) and DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), all of which use MPEG-4 HE-AAC (or a proprietary variant of HE-AAC for HDRadio), broadcasters are able to include enough error correction so that a light breeze doesn't cause the signal to fall over.

Problem is, there are too many standards. And there are too many bands for audio. Too many interests with too much money at stake. Every country wants to do it a different way. So, expect that multiband radios will become a fixture in our future if you plan on any sort of international travel, or if you live near a border.

Radio choice in the UK? I don't think so.

I've just had a channel update to my PC's TV+radio guide. Another ten formerly local or regional commercial stations have just been rebranded as Heart FM of one flavour or another, making a total of 33 formerly independent stations now broadcasting Heart programmes. Scotland, north east England and southern Wales haven't been conquered yet but they can't be far off.

Yet more evidence that the broadcasters aren't interested in local content, they don't care about the "choice" that DAB could offer, they just want maximum ad revenue for minimum broadcast cost. They've got shareholders, what else should we expect? The "loving awareness" era was a long time ago, whatever "The Boat That Rocked" may have tried to have you believe.

Actually, we are entitled to expect Ofcon to enforce the original licences (with their regional content requirements) or shut the stations down but Ofcom as usual let the industry get away with whatever it wants.

A con

DAB is one of the worst cons pulled on an unsuspecting British public. We were promised super-dooper, near-CD quality. Great things were on the cards. What do we get? More and more stations shoe-horned in at ever-decreasing bit-rates and one (BBC7) in MONO, for goodness sake! Don't anyone dare tell me it doesn't matter. There are numerous re-runs (plays, etc.) that were originally broadcast in stereo and can be heard in their full glory on BBC7 from satellite. There was also talk of user-adjustable compression. That died a death and most stations butcher the sound before it enters the transmission chain with hideous amounts of audio processing and compression - just like good old FM. I protested to the Radio Authority (as was at the time) about it but got absolutely nowhere - the same result on previous occasions when I complained about the original Jazz FM station blatantly changing their format. Now it's Ofcom and they seem to have inherited the same set of useless teeth.