Digital Radio
Well, it looks like the switchover to digital radio may be delayed (it is planned for 2015) due to the slow uptake of DAB systems.
A report by the BBC showed that 24% of listeners used digital radio (DAB, online or via Sky etc) compared with 76% of listeners still using analogue. The BBC said that they may delay the big switchoff of AM and FM to 'encourge people on the advantages of digital radio' or in other words, force people over!
I've never used DAB but i know some people on this forum have and the majority seem to hate it so i can't compare but i myself prefer FM and AM signals which are of okay quality in this area.
So, FM and AM radio is safe (for the moment!).
A report by the BBC showed that 24% of listeners used digital radio (DAB, online or via Sky etc) compared with 76% of listeners still using analogue. The BBC said that they may delay the big switchoff of AM and FM to 'encourge people on the advantages of digital radio' or in other words, force people over!
I've never used DAB but i know some people on this forum have and the majority seem to hate it so i can't compare but i myself prefer FM and AM signals which are of okay quality in this area.
So, FM and AM radio is safe (for the moment!).
Post edited by zx1 on
The trouble with tribbles is.......
Comments
I think you could be right.
Internet radio is fine on a mobile phone if only a couple of people do it, but if everyone does it no cellular system would be able to cope.
There are other problems, too - current mobile internet technologies are totally inadequate for streaming data - I've tried to listen to internet radio in my car and even though we have really good 3G coverage here, on a 15 minute drive the stream drops out at least three or four times. High speed digital is incredibly hard to get right when one of the radios is actually moving - I know one of the people who worked on designing the GSM system when he worked for Nokia, and a fast moving target is an enormous challenge even for something as low bandwith as GSM, let alone 3G (this is why DAB sucks in cars, probably).
You can tolerate a bit of interference in an analogue transmission. A bit of hiss or flutter in an FM receiver is quite tolerable and you can continue listening. The trouble with digital is it either works or it doesn't - there's no graceful degradation like there is with an AM or FM signal - with digital you either get perfection or the sound of boiling mud.
I think this rush to digital radio is foolhardy. AM radio in particular must never be turned off, turn off AM radio and you have *NO* way of making broadcasts if there is a major disaster. Low frequency AM radio goes much further than line of sight and can be received with a receiver that is actually powered by nothing more than the radio signal itself. Digital radio is power hungry and will never be better than line of sight (well, with enough bandwidth for voice).
(Did you know: One way our nuclear submarine crews verified that Britain hadn't been destroyed in a nuclear war was to tune into 192 long wave - BBC Radio 4. R4 has just a single transmitter at Droitwich for the LW signal, and the signal travels an enormous distance).
Never work, until some boffins come out with some sort of system gubbins to do the wotsits with whatchamaflips.
Still waiting for hover boots though.
Internet radio is working in cars at the moment, but not for everyone. Some get perfect signals wherever they want to go in their day to day car journeys, whilst some find it drops. If it was improved, it would be perfect, but not as it is.
They never said they would turn off FM completely though. They were planning to leave space for community radio and small commercial stations. That is something I'm all for, more community stations and more space for pirates!
Yes indeed the Droitwich transmitter is really powerful, I remember picking up R4 completely clear in the Dolomites (Northern Italy).
I'm sure you know Winston that the 198KHz signal is radiated at 500kW from Droitwich which I think does make it the most powerful radio transmitter in the UK , it also forms a single frequency network with 50kW transmitters in Burghead and Westerglen, Scotland.
I went past the Droitwich site the other day, but I remember a story of someone who had a kettle in a shed very near the site, and they could hear perfect radio 4 from the kettle. The signal was that powerful, pretty much anything with metallic parts could pick it up. Also people could hear it in their heads through dental fillings etc.. So indeed it is quite a powerful one. Wouldn't want to live too close to the transmitter!
But you canna' break the laws of physics!
There are good reasons why high bandwidth digital to a moving target is really hard to get right, and even harder when both ends are by necessity transceivers. Now there are ways of multicasting using IP, but if the mobile networks were going to enable this we'd be hearing about it now for a planned full rollout in about 10-15 years time (because it'll take this long to get all the base stations upgraded). At the moment, basic 3G coverage in the UK is terrible and at the earliest it'll have to be in whatever comes after 3G (which isn't even in the planning stages yet). So you're in for a very long wait. If they get rid of the national stations off FM then you've either got the boiling mud of DAB or nothing at all during the gap (and just watch the mobile operators block the addresses of internet radio stations if it gets popular).
4G :p
;)
Well if the peak oil doomsayers are right, semaphore flags :-)
With digital radio I can recieve all the BBC stations perfectly including local ones. I have now got a digital radio in all rooms of my flat (even the bathroom!). I long since ditched all my old radios (I bought loads in the past in the vein hope that every new one would pick up a signal) For me it's the difference between listening to the radio and not. Simple as that.
Wish there were more channels available on mine in my area though.
Oh, don't think I *dislike* digital radio, I listen to it almost all the time, just *not* via DAB. Digital radio is fine for a fixed radio that doesn't move and has guaranteed great reception, such as my satellite receiver (I never use my satellite dish for TV, it's used almost exclusively for radio).
For fixed radios, satellite, Freeview (does it have radio on it?) and the internet are great. Any radio where reception might not be perfect, you've got DAB boiling mud. Any radio that must be portable is hardly a "micropower device", I think the best DAB portable radios at the moment drain batteries around 8 times faster than an FM receiver.
Aye, but not as many stations as on Sky, but both have more than I can listen to on my DAB radio, IIRC.
One of my Pure One radios has the optional rechargeable battery pack, and that seems to last for ages on a single charge.
Wish DAB radio prices came down to "disposable" level though - want one for the bathroom, where it will inevitably fall into the water one day.
A classic example of why DAB is crap for people on the move... Battery life is down to the chipset, and I presume more power is also used in weak signal areas. What's even worse is when you don't get a good signal, the signal makes horrid popping sounds.
I always listen to my analogue radio, coz I can't be bothered buying batteries. Even rechargables are damn expensive, so unless DAB radio provides better battery life, I shall not be joining the DAB revolution. In fact, I'll probably continue using analogue until the switch over.
In a digital radio there's a ruddy computer inside it... You have to receive the actual analogue radio signal so there'll be amplifiers there, then that'll go into some kind of digital signal processor I'd guess, and then the digital signal needs decompressing and turning into audio. Then you probably want some more amplification and then the speakers. Oh and you need a display driver, a display of some sort (usually LCD), and buttons and stuff :)
all those chips eat electricity, especially the DSP and the decompression
I can't believe that the studio would be 1 street away yet the signal from the transmitter didn't reach it. That is to say, if you couldn't pick it up then they wouldn't be able to either as the transmitter is on a hill somewhere, not in the studio, unless it's a community or RSL station. That just wouldn't happen, as the studio would have to be in the TSA of the transmitter. What was the reception like in cars outside your flat?
Well, here are some tips for people having trouble picking up radio stations that they should be picking up with ease.
1) Use an aerial. It might seem obvious, but hi-fi systems don't come with them attached, though they often come with a piece of wire that you have to plug into the socket at the back of the hi-fi and then pin to the wall behind the system. What would be better in a lot of cases is to have an outdoor dipole aerial on the roof or high up on the side of the house. Failing that, find one of those wire dipoles (Maplin will have them) and use that pinned to the ceiling with it stretched out and the length pointing towards the transmitter of the station you want to hear. Get the aerial as high as you can, and take the radio upstairs if possible when using an indoor aerial.
2) Don't put the computer on AT ALL (don't even leave the laptop power supply plugged in) if it is within a few meters of the radio. A lot of computers will interfere with FM radio.
3) Don't live in buildings with Faraday cage like structures if you are using an indoor aerial.
4) Don't live in a valley or at the bottom of a hill. The Isle of Wight is a good place to experience why. The local station there is on 2 frequencies because of the hills and that island is tiny.
5) Try the station in a car outside your building. Car radios are usually much better than a portable radio, but still not quite as good as a well set-up home system. They should always give you a good idea of what it's possible to receive in a building at roughly the same location.
Indirectly related and not terribly off-topic ...
The US switched TV transmissions from analogue to digital over-the-air last year.
I loathe it ... it's disgusting ... and why is that? Well, before the switchover you could get a bad signal, watch the TV and live with it ... snowy picture, crummy sound but you could at least watch it and survive.
Now it's either you have the channel or you get garbledygook pixelboxes and no sound.
That, as the former President of Petoria once so infamously said, grinds my gears.
We have a distribution box in the loft which divides up the signals from the aerial into all the major rooms in the house. To make this devider work it must be supplied with 12v, thankfully this can be supplied from the a PSU connected anywhere in the house via the coaxial wall sockets which are in each room. It believe its called a mast head amplifier. Despite this fancy rigging, we can only seem to get a set top box to work in the lougne.
Yesterday the PSU failed yesterday and our digital reception was no more. So I bypassed the distributor and when straight to from the aerial to the TV in the lounge. I seem to have lost a few channels, Dave is one and Virgin are two of particular note. All I seem to get now is BBC1-4, BBC News, ITV 1-3, Ch4, Ch4+1, E4 and Gay Rabbit!!??!!. Its funny as when all signals are lost it seems Gay Rabbit??!! will always managed to get though. What makes that channel so important it has to have the strongest signal?
Up in the north west we were the first to get the analogue signal turned off and go to digital. So i bought a cheap freeview box to make sure it all worked fine. I get more channels than before but not tons, no music channels. But bizarrely i get 'gay rabbit' ! How come that has such a strong signal yet i cant get some of the 'standard' channels like ITV3 or 4 etc ?
Its a convenient way for gay people to chat online, they can text in a message at a 'cheap' ?1.50 per message and then see it displayed. I've met many friends on this channel and my facebook friends have now doubled
Gaylord!!!...... :p
Ohh um right I never knew you were gay? Or am I miss-reading somthing here.:-?
I've moved the aerial around, done numerous scans but same thing. I'm sick of digital i want to go back to analogue!