Help buying a DABS/FM radio?

spectre

I'd like to get a new radio for the kitchen and am considering getting one of these DAB/FM jobs. I live in Dublin city centre so should be no trouble getting signal.

Any recommendations would be appreciated. I'm willing to spend up to 100 quid.

Bluefrog

Can't recommend anything on the DAB/FM side of things but if you have broadband you should also consider looking at internet radios - best gadget I bought last year. I have the Logik IR100 and I am very pleased with it though it doesn't have an FM receiver. I believe there are other models that do.

watty

DAB is dying in UK.
DAB rollout cancelled here.

More choice and better quality on FM!

Internet Radio is OK for "hard to get stuff" or BBC 4 VHF-FM feed etc. It's poor quality compared with FM, DAB or Satellite. I uses my Laptop, Archos 605WiFi and my Nokia E65 phone as WiFi Radio. (headphones or internal speaker and sometimes kitchen HiFi which connects to PC with Satellite Card and DVD/CD player)

Satellite from 28.2 (Sky/Astra/Eurobird/Freesat) has about 70 free radio stations, and with motor you get about 2000+ Radio. You can use a €50 video sender to feed the sat box to a kitchen iPod/MP3 player dock that has FM Radio and an AUX in (or use the generic MP3 player jack input).

Unless you are a VERY serious radio Listener one of the cheap Kitchen "under shelf" Clock Radios will do.

In any case DAB is a huge waste of money.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=125569

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055479872

Outdoor Coverage Map:
http://www.digitalradio.ie/images/DAB@3Rock20kW+(CC+Woodcock+SpurHill)5kW.jpg
(Indoors is worse)

spectre

Thanks for taking the time to post. Very informative - I think I'll just stick to standard FM.

Bluefrog

watty wrote: »

Internet Radio is OK for "hard to get stuff" or BBC 4 VHF-FM feed etc. It's poor quality compared with FM, DAB or Satellite.

I guess by quality you are talking about sound quality rather than programming quality or quality of choice for which, IMHO the Internet can't be beaten.

While it is true that many internet stations stream at relatively low bitrates, many providers (especially ones providing music services) are streaming at 128kbs now which is standard mp3 quality and even some at 192 and 320kbs which are CD quality and above. For talk radio, I don't find that the lower bitrates impact on listening pleasure.

For a kitchen scenario I find the sound quality from my IR100 surprisingly good - full and clear - I guess its wooden casing really helps there, and I quite frequently use it to stream from my music library on my PC. Admittedly it's not the cutting edge of sound reproduction but in my kitchen I don't really need that.

It also handles podcasts and 'on demand' programming really well and without the need to move laptops around, boot them up, navigate to audio applications etc.