DAB in Ireland: RTE multiplex closed

Hotblack Desiato

@rogue-entity Yes we need free-to-air access to radio, which is a great reason to never switch off FM. It covers the country to the extent that RTE feel able to get away with closing both MW and LW services, it's there and it's paid for. DAB is just reinventing the wheel to provide space for additional increasingly niche services which aren't likely to be commercially viable anyway and have to compete with streaming services nowadays too.

letovo3275

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120498520#Comment_120498520

This is it exactly. DAB isn't needed because the FM coverage is very good even well into the north where RTE don't even have transmitters. DAB is an old technology that never got much interest and has now become obsolete because other technology has come alone. might as well be campaigning for dvb-h so people can watch tv on their phone at this rate.

there's no need for medium wave or LW since Saorview is not the alternative or backup whichever way you look at it.

Would be crazy to waste money on DAB at this stage. no one wants it. they want "smart" speakers or to use their phone, even if that's not what I'd personally want but its what the market shows.

https://theconversation.com/dab-radio-was-the-future-until-live-streaming-and-podcasts-arrived-95250

http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-final-countdown-future-of-dab-radio.html

If DAB had been a success in the early 1990s then maybe it'd all be a different story now and phones would have DAB chips in them, but even still I dunno. It's the thing about niche stations versus the popular ones, and it looks like Internet radio is filling that gap well.

There's also crazy posts on these forums people calculating crazy bitrates required for Internet radio based on audience figures but these posters need to go and read how content distribution networks work because they're not running these things on 1990s web radio technology anymore.

I wonder if there's market for a Saorview approved phone! 🤣

TAFKAlawhec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120498883#Comment_120498883

The link you posted is now almost five years old, and while it brings up certainly valid critiques in some areas which can still be valid today, like the fragmentation of digital radio broadcast platforms internationally (a problem with competing national regulators and/or not something that has been strange to broadcast platforms over the last century), time has moved on since then and it is quite clear that in large parts of Europe that many broadcasters both large & small have at least decided that being available on a local/regional/national DAB platform is worth seeking an audience for, especially with what is essentially DAB v2 in DAB+ - it appears that respective regulators & law makers have learned from the British DAB experience in that choice is a driver in getting people to adopt digital terrestrial radio. When they originally adopted it, they (along with the BBC at first) felt at first that beyond-FM audio quality close to that of CD would be the key driver but that proved not to be the case (along with the expense and general availability of receiver at the time), it didn't help that at the time analogue TV broadcasting in VHF Band III was still widely in use and there was limited capacity for DAB transmissions in this band. Nowadays with most European countries keeping their DTT frequencies in UHF spectrum, there's now much more capacity to add DAB+ ensembles and so the same regulators are seeking to try their best to combine both choice & quality within more reasonable costs for all involved, which from adopting the HE-AAC codec instead of MP2 is now much more achievable to more operators.

Time will tell how this rebooted DAB platform in the likes of Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy etc. will either progress or fail, but in the meantime it's hard to deny that there is some enthusiasm to try and make it work. 10 years ago, DAB receivers in cars was almost non-existent, nowadays nearly every new car sold in the EEA zone now has it, with actual transmissions that offer more than FM in most places, with coverage improved and still being extended.

In the meantime, it is probably wise in its current circumstances for RTÉ, the Irish government & prospective commercial broadcasters in the country to keep their powder dry to wait and see how things develop in continental Europe before starting to commit to any potential relaunch of DAB(+) in Ireland - but they'd still be wise to have at least some low-level plans in place to have filed away somewhere should further discussion come in the future if they see DAB+ developing well in the countries I mentioned in the last paragraph. And if they do, I hope they have actual plans in place to not make it a less-than-half-arsed attempt that they did the first time.

Also, I'm well aware of the use of CDNs used for streaming distribution, but the last time I checked for these to be effective they need to be done at a scale that puts them into its best use with providers that either have the resources and/or deep enough pockets to use them at their best. Even allowing for this, unicasting is still quite an inefficient way for serving "one-to-many" and even with the best CDNs in the world, it doesn't escape the fact that unicasting on a scale comparable to broadcasting to the masses for anything beyond very small-scale producers is still quite costly - in the UK at least the major radio broadcasters have worked out that it is still the case that per listener, streaming still costs the broadcaster more compared to either DAB or FM (only MW/WL was nowadays working out more costly in most cases) - and that every listener that is streaming your station costs you more, whereas broadcast has fixed costs in this regard. For very small, niche stations remaining internet-only is perhaps the best way since other platforms can be hard to cost-justify, even in the UK where some such stations applied for comminuty FM licences and even when using 25W TXs from their studio locations, the cost of broadcasting terrestrially was too much for them to sustain (in some cases, a local small-scale DAB multiplex is or may soon be available in their location - I don't know wherever that could be more cost effective for them). But for the bigger players, terrestrial broadcasting is still the king.

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120498883#Comment_120498883

I'm the one who posted those "crazy figures" you refer to. I know how a CDN works but it doesn't solve the problem, it just passes it to someone else. The same amount of bandwidth is still needed, you're just passing it on to Cloudflare or Akamai or whoever else.

letovo3275

but that's the whole point, cloudflare etc works with the larger ISPs with the most subscribers so that there are only individual streams to close to the network endpoint where the subscriber is. so its a different kettle of fish to what you calculated.

http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2021/12/dab-radio-consumer-demand-clouds-on.html

there's loads of people you see driving about in expensive new cars that obviously have bluetooth in them but they're listening to music on airpods because they presumably can't understand their car radio. it doesn't fill me with optimism for anything which isnt 'phone based'.

have you looked at the TV forums on boards.ie, they full of people asking things like why does their TV need an aerial?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120499850#Comment_120499850

They remind me of the dab fans who seem to think that RTE could have rolled out dab to ever single part of the country for the price of a second hand car

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501324#Comment_120501324

doubt anyone actually thinks that.

lgs 4

The whole problem in Ireland is no commercial transmission network operator. Wants to come to Ireland and spend millions on the transmission network. Especially on A DAB transmission network. It takes two to three transmitters to cover the same catchment area of one FM transmitter depending on the terrain. Like any business, the costs are passed on to the customer. The country is too small for a commercial transmission network operator. In UK Freeview and the DAB, networks are owned and run by Arqiva, Everyone TV for Television, and National DAB for DAB Radio. With the large pool of Television channels and Radio stations, the cost is significantly lower . Then it would be for Television channels and Radio stations here in Ireland.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120503702#Comment_120503702

actually the problem is that even if any operator did want to operate, they cannot under any circumstances operate such a mux legally in ireland on a full time basis, there is no legal framework or full time licenses available and they will not be given.

so whether any big or small operator is or isn't interested is both irrelevant and unknown because they can do absolutely nothing, they will not be given any licenses no matter what so no point in them trying.

comparing tv to radio in terms of costs and viability is not workable, as tv, even just to run a playout of imported programming is quite expensive, whereas radio can be done reasonably cheap in comparison.

virgin media i believe employs 200 staff to operate what is it, 3 4 channels of ITV programming as an example.

as well as that ireland operates the most expensive model of doing radio possible, so costs are hugely inflated, so we can't really compare it to the costs of operations on a newer platform because we don't know for sure what they will be.

rogue-entity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120498520#Comment_120498520

I agree on not switching off FM, it's not by coincidence that the station that I'm usually always tuned to is RTE Radio 1. I disagree with your point on DAB, the entire raison d'etre for DAB is to provide an accessible platform for disenfranchised stations. Stations here shouldn't be given a monopoly on broadcasting, shouldn't be protected from competition but equally shouldn't be hamstring with anachronistic requirements (why should a youth station be forced to provide 20% news and current affairs content? It's a music station! ). Streaming services exist by necessity, as do pirate FM broadcasters.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120498883#Comment_120498883

A large majority of web radio (the vast majority even) is still using the Shoutcast protocol, and if you're streaming at 128kbit MP3, that's 128kbit/sec per listener and you cannot scale that with a conventional CDN. Even if you stream with HLS instead (which you can cache, and so a CDN will help), you still have to pay the CDN so now you're paying twice and that creates a new problem that an FM or DAB broadcaster doesn't have.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120499528#Comment_120499528

An issue I'll always have, and this goes for DAB too, is that a broadcaster should not be beholden to a third party company for transmission, especially a foreign company outside of local jurisdiction where you're entirely subject to their whims.

The other one is the substantially higher cost to reach the same potential audience; how many folk could receive a signal transmitted from Three Rock?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120503702#Comment_120503702

If I recall from the discussions here, the requirement that anyone bidding to run the proposed commercial multiplex must contract with RTE NL/2rn killed that idea dead because no agreement on cost could be reached. Since then, there's been no option or proposal to allow even a low power DTT multiplex, nevermind DAB.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501324#Comment_120501324

A single multiplex would cost about 3,000€ just for the equipment, excluding notch filter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120504762#Comment_120504762

How much to have dab available in every single household in Ireland equal to FM? From Goleen To Tory island

Andy From Sligo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120504085#Comment_120504085

Ah, so if they cannot do it legally then maybe a Pirate DAB service then? 😉

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120505523#Comment_120505523

freedab tried it across areas of the country, all be it's coverage was limited.

enormous amounts were spent on carrying out raids of parts of its network, while there is a housing and health crisis.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120497885#Comment_120497885

An outage like that is likely to take a lot of the niche stations off DAB networks too; due to using IP delivery to the multiplexing site...

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120506075#Comment_120506075

Comreg raids are not enormously expensive and their funding isn't available to spend on anything else. The "why are we spending on X when there's Y" thing is a terrible fallacy to fall in to believing has any validity.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120504762#Comment_120504762

The cost of doing a hobbyist grade mux using software/PC multiplexing might be about 3k, but no commercial operator would consider doing that. And I don't think you'll even get a tunnel insert grade/power transmitter for 3k anyway

rogue-entity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120506103#Comment_120506103

If you're talking pure hobbiest, 400€ for the exciter, run the software encoder/multiplexer on a single-board computer, and an appropriate antenna. The whole thing would run off the ciggy socket in your car but I couldn't say anyone should do that, just that it has been done.

Moving towards the commercial end, while a large commercial operator, even one just running a mini-mux, might want something like this for 20k it's been shown that degree of cost is unnecessary (and frustratingly, that particular range of DAB+ transmitters won't accept ETI streams over Ethernet).

I have seen 50W DAB transmitters available for 2,200€ but I've neither used them nor could vouch for them; I partly suspect they're based on the EasyDAB board with power amplification and filtering installed in a 1U chassis but that money would get you a professional SDR board and you could build something workable without paying over the odds - if - your aim (like mine) was towards democratising and making something normally too expensive available to community/niche broadcasters.

As for software multiplexing, I don't accept the notion that a commercial operator wouldn't consider it; both the test DAB service in the South East, the two minimuxes hosted by RTE and the long-gone 'Eirdab' mux all used software encoders and modulators. In fact the Eirdab modulator used an Ettus Research SDR and some off-the-shelf hardware fed into a professional power amplifier with the appropriate filtering.

Andy From Sligo

when briefly (before they got raided presumably) was transmitting in Sligo a couple of years back how did they do it then? - i was so surprised , went out in my car one day and done a search for DAB stations not expecting to get anything ....... and this showed up!!

So its not like it hasnt been done / tried ......

Tax The Farmers

RTE logic at its finest.

LW252: Why is anyone still using that aul thing sure its all DIGITAL now ?

Actual digital service: Closes it down.

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120814780#Comment_120814780

It is perfect logic.

Lw252 - no one listening, close it down

DAB - no one listening, close it down.

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120814780#Comment_120814780

I’ve heard several stations say “on digital” during their top of the hour announcements when they really mean streaming. It’s silly.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120814800#Comment_120814800

Various stations put it in to their imaging reads during the original DAB trial, which carried the Dublin ILRs, Newstalk, TodayFM and Radio Kerry on Mux2 - and have left it there during every reimaging since.

Tax The Farmers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120814800#Comment_120814800

One of my biggest pet hates is misuse of the term "digital" by technologically illiterate gobshites.

Example: "Sales of CD's continue to fall as more consumers turn to digital music"

Former Former Former

RTE stations are on Saorview, satellite, cable and streaming.

Isn't "digital" pretty accurate?

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120815273#Comment_120815273

RTE maybe but I've heard it on some of the independents too and they only have streaming as an alternative to FM. Sunshine 106.8 announce "online, on digital and 106.8 in Dublin". Yes, streaming is digital but "online" covers that too.

Gerry Wicklow

Do you need a digital HD aerial for these services? 🤣

^^^^^ Sarcasm in case you didn't spot it.

Andy From Sligo

i know you can configure your mobile phone not to do it (with a bit of faffing about and going into menus) , but when you are feeding your mobile phone through the car stereo by wifi, not only do you need a pretty good 4G / 5G signal all along your trip (or the wifi radio stream stops and you have to keep re starting it) but also you get all kinds of dings and dongs coming through the cars speakers when you get any messages or notifications interrupting your music listening .

However , listen to the digital stations through DAB/DAB+ (Most car radios in the last 10 years are equipped with inbuilt DAB/DAB+ radios built into the FM radio systems of the car) and its much better/easier - no phone battery to deplete, no problem loosing a 4G/5G signal, no data being used up - just easily set up favorites on your DAB radio in the car and go and easily switch between DAB stations using the large touchscreen of the car radio or the steering wheel switches. Lot less faffing about.

Widescreen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120394268#Comment_120394268

Also, it's amazing how we were hoodwinked in Ireland to believe FM is the best option, just so they could pause DAB broadcasting to contribute to paying Tubridy's back hander payments.

DAB is fantastic, I and I'm sure many others bought a radio specially for it! Newer cars have it on their radios! I haven't listened to one of those RTE digital stations since DAB went down. Bakhurst should look at getting it up and running again and encourage the other main players to join, I wouldn't have a problem paying the old tv licence then. All you want is a bit of value for your buck.

galtee boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120879553#Comment_120879553

The only way you'll ever see DAB in Ireland, is if the EU enforce an FM switch off, like they did with analogue TV.

formac25

There doesn't seem to be any point to DAB other than for people in cars. Even then it doesn't seem to offer anything that FM doesn't. If you're at home you have the Internet and TV, and if you're out and about on foot or on the bus you have your mobile phone which has an FM radio, although lets face it most people will use the Internet on it anyway.

It seems crazy to build a DAB network just so that people in cars can use that instead of, for some reason, the existing FM network.