FM now stands for 'fleeting mortality' in Norway

Re: $28m a year?

Receivers are capable of DAB and DAB+, radio stations will probably fully switch to DAB+ this year. The bandwidth given to each station is higher than the UK's swampy efforts. Government also hands out free* car conversion kits.

* well yes, financed from taxes.

Re: $28m a year?

Speaking as someone who used to work in the broadcasting industry and specifically DAB - Norway are nuts. I don't know how audiences are measured in Norway but if they're done as they are in this country some stations will suffer seriously. There's a reason that our (misguided*) DAB switchover is only happening when we've got most people on digital listening. *I say misguided because the target is digital listening not DAB listening and some of what's classed as digital listening by RAJAR might not actually be like Mobile Phones. On top of that there always was when I was working in the industry questions about RAJAR. No one will come out and say this when they're in the industry because no one can afford to shake the confidence the advertisers have in the data. If you're going to lose 60% of your audience virtually overnight then that's not going to go down well with the advertisers and I doubt the projected savings will cover that. Some of those listeners won't come back as they discover alternatives and it takes far more effort/cost to get a listener back than it does to keep them. Also need to factor in more stations equals less listeners per station and the same advertising money split more ways. Plus when running a station why would you want something that allows people to easily find and switch stations? The only thing you can do on DAB that you can't do on FM is have more stations (depending on the bit rate used) everything else can be done by RDS/EON etc.

Still....Best of luck to them.

A shame I didn't know this when working at Orland Air Base, would have been a slight bonus.

Do other variants of DAB perform better than the UK one?

In terms of sound quality, they do. The UK forged ahead with DAB, making a switch to DAB+ rather harder than it should have been. You know how crap MP3s can sound? DAB is restricted to MP2 *only*.

I doubt that will make any difference to the dropout rate, though.

Vic.

Re: It's not the first country

Well Wikipedia says this in the link you have provided:

"Today, as elsewhere in the developed world, most Australian broadcasting is on FM - although AM talk stations are still very popular."

It came back.

Re: It's not the first country

My FM set begs to differ.

Re: DAB+

Hey, great idea - let's follow the TV model and obsolete our radios every few years as well. Did you have a date in mind for sunsetting that old school DAB+?

Re: DAB+ @DrXym

I totally agree that DAB was rolled out in the UK too early, but it's always difficult difficult to change things once they're generally (if you can say this about DAB) adopted.

Switching to DAB+ will be disruptive and expensive for those people who have already forked out for kit, and will be disruptive because they will have to reduce the available channels for DAB while they transition to DAB+ (they're not going to allocate any more spectrum during the roll-out).

Even if they offer a subsidy on new kit, I'm a skinflint, and don't want to re-buy, even at a discount, replacements for the 5 DAB radios I already have.

Mind you, I don't listen to it much at the moment, because for the coverage for my current commute (the time I use DAB most) is very patchy.

But I think DAB is dying in the UK. Some of the channels I used to listen to have left DAB as a platform, because (I understand) the cost of operating a DAB station is of the order of a million pounds per year, whereas transmitting over the Internet is much lower, and if you can get DAB somewhere, you're probably also able to get reasonable mobile data service. This shifts the cost of a broadcast service from the provider to the listener. I object to this (did I say I was a skinflint).

I think that by the time they are prepared to suggest a switch to DAB+, there will be no appetite for any over-the-air digital broadcast radio service any more.

But I do believe that there is still a place for analogue radio. It's still the best coverage, the best in terms of battery consumption for mobile devices, and the most widely adopted. I also think that it has a place in civil defence, because in the case of some national emergency, the digital infrastructure will be one of the first things to be affected. Operating an FM (or even AM) service is within the reach of a reasonably competent tinkerer in electronics using readily scavenged components, whereas digital broadcasting requires much more sophisticated knowledge and infrastructure.

Re: DAB+

I think there are two major problems with DAB (possibly DAB+ too but I cant be arsed to check):

Changing channel. I only listen to one channel but when the kids come and change channel it seems to take forever - a good couple of seconds so its easy to miss a lot of a program trying to find the bastard. The display knows what's coming but the decoder is still trying to work out what the fuck to do with the KW its consuming.

Reception. Coverage is unbelievably shit down our way - Devon with lots of hills and valleys and while they may work for a tv aerial and booster its absolutely no good for an indoor reception in new houses - let alone cob walled buggers like mine.

Should they ever drop fm here I shall probably see if I can make raspberryPi zeros into internet radio reception devices to put into all my current FM devices - at least I wont have to redecorate the house to suit the 'well it looked good on a duke box in 1950' designs cluttering up the shops.

Re: Ker-ching!

I'm thinking about when I'm snowed-in in the middle of nowhere waiting for the snow ploughs to get through with a battery-powered radio. Which would I prefer - FM that'll last a week on one set of batteries ... or DAB that'll last a few hours?

I don't know about you but in those circumstances I would want a VHF transceiver and a big stack of AA batteries.