RTÉ to cease radio transmission on DAB network

NeuralNetwork · 06-03-2021 3:48am

frozenfrozen wrote: »

is there anything shared between saorview and DAB? I never looked into it and just assumed they were related because I get the same radio channels on saorview as DAB in the car

No they’re unrelated technologies and separate networks. RTE just bundle the same stations onto it.

DVB-T used for terrestrial television isn’t suitable for small, portable devices and often needs an external antenna on the roof. There was some interest in DVB-H which was designed with the idea of steaming tv channels to mobile devices, but it never went beyond a few experiments. I think Nokia may have produced handsets for it for some trial services in the early 2000s.

O2 Ireland trialled it in 2007 and didn’t pursue it.

donspeekinglesh · 06-03-2021 11:14am

Andy454 wrote: »

RTE GOLD and Pulse will die if they are cut from DAB, they will go the way of BBC Three.....

BBC Three seems to be doing okay: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/mar/02/bbc-three-to-return-as-broadcast-channel-next-year

KReid · 06-03-2021 1:33pm

frozenfrozen wrote: »

90% of our used cars come (came) from the uk. New car sales isn't the full picture

You'll probably need to back that stat up. I could find the below stats about imported cars but not as percentage of used cars sold, probably hard to determine how many are even DAB enabled. Even so, my overall point was that they are still a minority of DAB enabled cars, even if you factored in another 100k, there's 2.5m to 3m cars registered in Ireland.

Even if we had 250k cars with DAB enabled, we can't assume all listen to radio, then you consider how many actually listen to DAB considering it's limited service, the choice on FM in most areas is far better. And then... Yous step out of the car and you have no DAB access. It's over to FM or more likely a digital stream.

https://www.vrt.ie/faq/car-import-statistics/

frozenfrozen · 06-03-2021 1:53pm

KReid wrote: »

You'll probably need to back that stat up. I could find the below stats about imported cars but not as percentage of used cars sold, probably hard to determine how many are even DAB enabled. Even so, my overall point was that they are still a minority of DAB enabled cars, even if you factored in another 100k, there's 2.5m to 3m cars registered in Ireland.

Even if we had 250k cars with DAB enabled, we can't assume all listen to radio, then you consider how many actually listen to DAB considering it's limited service, the choice on FM in most areas is far better. And then... Yous step out of the car and you have no DAB access. It's over to FM or more likely a digital stream.

https://www.vrt.ie/faq/car-import-statistics/

I think it's about 90k used cars came from the UK per year. Agree with the rest of what you're saying big chicken and egg stuff going on where nobody in Ireland seeked it out

Brian CivilEng · 06-03-2021 2:47pm

Actually just realising now how much I used DAB. Clock radio and kitchen radio, so probably about 5 hours a day at the moment. You don't know what you got til it's gone.

brandonviewer · 07-03-2021 12:38pm

Brian CivilEng wrote: »

Actually just realising now how much I used DAB. Clock radio and kitchen radio, so probably about 5 hours a day at the moment. You don't know what you got til it's gone.

Anyone seen a good deal on the Amazon echo dot with alarm? I use a DAB radio as an alarm at the moment and thinking of replacing with this but they seem to be about €80 odd which is way over my price point

jrmb · 07-03-2021 4:02pm

brandonviewer wrote: »

Anyone seen a good deal on the Amazon echo dot with alarm? I use a DAB radio as an alarm at the moment and thinking of replacing with this but they seem to be about €80 odd which is way over my price point

The Lenovo/Google alarm clock is quite good, but you might already have a few Amazon products.

kazoo106 · 07-03-2021 9:33pm

I see RTE have already removed the 64k DAB+ 2FM and 48k DAB+ Radio 1 from the MUX

plodder · 08-03-2021 11:39am

jrmb wrote: »

The Lenovo/Google alarm clock is quite good, but you might already have a few Amazon products.

The google home mini is a great little speaker and I see it going for 42 euro in one place. It doesn't display the time but you can use it as an alarm clock. The trouble with free services like Tunein of course is they can change anything/pull the plug at any time and finding the magic words to locate channels can be a challenge at times.

08-03-2021 12:44pm

Does it stream radio stations from the internet or just from your phone?

plodder · 08-03-2021 1:25pm

zorro2566 wrote: »

Does it stream radio stations from the internet or just from your phone?

Smart speakers stream from the internet via wifi. They are independent of your phone, though you usually set them up with a phone.

JDxtra · 08-03-2021 1:58pm

I heard an advert on RTE Radio 1 this morning regarding the DAB closedown. I was thinking, the vast majority of people will have no clue what on earth they are talking about.

They should have run breakout adverts on the DAB stations only... "this service will cease on X date" etc.

Cube98 · 08-03-2021 2:07pm

JDxtra wrote: »

I heard an advert on RTE Radio 1 this morning regarding the DAB closedown. I was thinking, the vast majority of people will have no clue what on earth they are talking about.

They should have run breakout adverts on the DAB stations only... "this service will cease on X date" etc.

Like during the switch to saorview, those Tommy and Pj ads made some people with sky think that they had to buy a saorview box

end of the road · 08-03-2021 2:18pm

Cube98 wrote: »

Like during the switch to saorview, those Tommy and Pj ads made some people with sky think that they had to buy a saorview box

i would be surprised if that was any more then a very tiny amount of people, if that did indeed happen.

Cube98 · 08-03-2021 2:20pm

Brian CivilEng wrote: »

Actually just realising now how much I used DAB. Clock radio and kitchen radio, so probably about 5 hours a day at the moment. You don't know what you got til it's gone.

People in about 22 counties never had dab in the first place. Dab sets have been widely sold all over the country since the mid 00s but people in places like Galway and Westport have bought dab radios in their local Argos only to discover when they brought them home that not only do they not pick up the BBC (as many expected for some reason) but there was no dab service whatsoever available in their region.

plodder · 08-03-2021 3:26pm

Cube98 wrote: »

People in about 22 counties never had dab in the first place. Dab sets have been widely sold all over the country since the mid 00s but people in places like Galway and Westport have bought dab radios in their local Argos only to discover when they brought them home that not only do they not pick up the BBC (as many expected for some reason) but there was no dab service whatsoever available in their region.

They're still selling them. Though I would be surprised if any didn't have an FM tuner builtin.

Tork · 08-03-2021 3:53pm

plodder wrote: »

The google home mini is a great little speaker and I see it going for 42 euro in one place. It doesn't display the time but you can use it as an alarm clock. The trouble with free services like Tunein of course is they can change anything/pull the plug at any time and finding the magic words to locate channels can be a challenge at times.

I've tried the Google and Amazon speakers. For me, the Google system is far more user friendly. Even if you aren't sure what the "magic words" for a radio station or podcast are, you can just pick up your phone and start the casting without any fuss. Google's mistake is that they didn't come up with a snappy activating word like "Alexa".

I agree though re. the apps losing stations.

Hurrache · 08-03-2021 4:56pm

There's no need for 'magic words', you just say "Alexa, play [radio station name]".

Tork · 08-03-2021 5:07pm

Hurrache wrote: »

There's no need for 'magic words', you just say "Alexa, play [radio station name]".

Alexa can get confused with certain stations. Newstalk is one.

plodder · 08-03-2021 5:11pm

Hurrache wrote: »

There's no need for 'magic words', you just say "Alexa, play [radio station name]".

Don't know about Alexa, but google home gets confused easily. If you say "play newstalk" it won't find it, but "play newstalk fm" it will .. for now.

And as the thread below shows 2 FM was easy to find up to a few months ago, and then disappeared. Someone pointed out recently you can find it with:

"play Dublin RTE 2 FM" - not exactly intuitive.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/thread/77472561?hl=en

These are global systems, and there could easily be any number of other Newstalks around the world, but they need to come up with some better way of discriminating regions.

frozenfrozen · 08-03-2021 5:17pm

won't be long before jingles say the alexa appropriate name instead of 99.99 FM old style jingles

08-03-2021 5:20pm

I think this is a stupid idea from RTÉ. I only use DAB in my car I do not use internet stations while driving nor will I start.

radioguru02 · 08-03-2021 6:24pm

JDxtra wrote: »

I heard an advert on RTE Radio 1 this morning regarding the DAB closedown. I was thinking, the vast majority of people will have no clue what on earth they are talking about.

They should have run breakout adverts on the DAB stations only... "this service will cease on X date" etc.

Don’t suppose you recorded it?

Hurrache · 08-03-2021 9:13pm

"Newstalk Radio" and "RTE Radio One/two etc" gets them. It's just knowing what it knows the station as.

I often get Tay FM instead of Today FM, I left Tay on one day and I was all the better for it!

plodder · 08-03-2021 11:09pm

2FM hasn't been called 'Radio 2' since 1988.

Hurrache · 09-03-2021 10:03am

I meant RTE Two FM.

plodder · 09-03-2021 10:25am

Hurrache wrote: »

I meant RTE Two FM.

Maybe you are talking about Alexa, but regarding Google Home:

'RTE Two FM' doesn't work. 'RTE Radio Two' doesn't work. '2FM' doesn't work. 'Newstalk radio' doesn't work. 'Dublin RTE Two FM' and 'Newstalk FM' does work. So sure, you just have to know what it knows it as, but it's not obvious, is subject to change, and is ridiculous.

Widescreen · 09-03-2021 10:33am

Pity about DAB going down the tubes here.

Auto Tuning is a great feature of DAB and in that respect was a real forward step.

Probably never promoted properly here I guess so was never going to be successful. Pity

Keep on manual tuning I suppose!

Hurrache · 09-03-2021 10:41am

plodder wrote: »

Maybe you are talking about Alexa, but regarding Google Home:

I was, as someone said Google is more friendly than Alexa and I was just showing how easy it is on Alexa, whereas you're showing the opposite, Google seems to be a bit of a pain.

yrreg0850 · 09-03-2021 10:41am

plodder wrote: »

Don't know about Alexa, but google home gets confused easily. If you say "play newstalk" it won't find it, but "play newstalk fm" it will .. for now.

And as the thread below shows 2 FM was easy to find up to a few months ago, and then disappeared. Someone pointed out recently you can find it with:

"play Dublin RTE 2 FM" - not exactly intuitive.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/thread/77472561?hl=en

These are global systems, and there could easily be any number of other Newstalks around the world, but they need to come up with some better way of discriminating regions.

Using Alexa
If you are signed up to "Tune in Radio"
By asking Alexa to play say "XXX from tune in" it always works.

RTÉ to cease radio transmission on DAB network

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