Analogue to Digital Switchover

Custardpi

As many of you will know, next year analogue tv services will cease broadcasting in this country & the UK, meaning that everyone will have to get some sort of digital receiving equipment in order to watch. Will the same thing happen soon with radio, i.e. will stations abandon FM/LW broadcasting & be receivable only by dab radio receivers & online?

chinwag

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/fm-set-to-stay-as-radio-execs-consider-digitals-future-2263311.html

http://www.rte.ie/digitalradio/faq.html

Donahg

Custardpi wrote: »

As many of you will know, next year analogue tv services will cease broadcasting in this country & the UK, meaning that everyone will have to get some sort of digital receiving equipment in order to watch. Will the same thing happen soon with radio, i.e. will stations abandon FM/LW broadcasting & be receivable only by dab radio receivers & online?

No,
Im sure in 20+ years all watching tv and listening to the radio will be via the internet but Dab has never and will never take off in the country,
Not sure what will happen to Lw that might get switched off in the next 5-10 years if the bbc switch off 198.

Trick of the Tail

I don't agree that DAB won't take off, it would start taking off tomorrow if the BAI decided to licence mux operators.

Any medium that introduces more listener choice will take off.

Internet radio will never replace terrestrial transmission until mobile reception becomes practical.

However, IF the BAI don't licence DAB+ soon, then mobile content delivered via the internet will become much more accessible to the public, the public will use it to get the diverse programming they want, that programming will be coming largely from outside Ireland, and the BAI will lose control of radio broadcasting anyway.

A.

chinwag

I purchased DAB radios in the past few years thinking it was the right direction to take but I am now back to using FM most of the time. I found DAB exciting at first but soon afterwards the independent stations abandoned DAB (too expensive I was told by one station). That left me with RTE stations only using DAB so if I wanted to tune in to an independent station it meant switching back to FM. Quality on DAB is not as superior as I was led to believe, think it can be more prone to interference and other reception problems (many people in UK not happy at all with DAB). If all the stations used it again I would use the DAB as it does have its higher tech advantages and problems should be sorted. I read somewhere that a newer form of DAB might be on the way which would make DAB Mk 1 obsolete?? Has anyone else found DAB a little bit disappointing in Ireland?

Trick of the Tail

DAB is disappointing in Ireland, because there isn't enough of it - which is the regulator's fault.

As for quality, well standard DAB has to use over 128k really to give decent quality, and this limits the number of stations that can be carried on one multiplex.

I drive around the south-east listening to DAB all the time, the stations that are on high bitrates sound great.

DAB+ is the 'new' format you mention - it uses AAC+ coding rather than MPEG1 Layer 2. Much better quality at lower bitrates.

The multiplex operated by Total Broadcast in the south east gives a good opportunity to evaluate the differences in quality and robustness on channels at different bitrates and DAB or DAB+.

A.

Custardpi

Some interesting replies there, will have to see how things pan out. I got a present of a dab radio a few years ago, back when RTE were making a big deal of it, I remember being unimpressed with the sound quality so quickly went back to normal radio. Might try & check out the higher quality version mentioned above.

chinwag

Interesting reply alinton you seem to know your stuff, still deciphering some of it!
As a matter of interest, would a first generation DAB radio be capable of picking up the DAB+ signal as well as DAB?

Trick of the Tail

Probably not. Early DAB radios were not upgradeable.

I can only speak for Pure radios (no experience with others) but newer ones can, particularly if they have a USB connector.

In general, most modern DAB radios will do DAB+, particularly those that do WiFi radio too.

A.