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RTÉ to cease radio transmission on DAB network

GerardKeating

RTÉ to cease radio transmission on DAB network.

Given they are the only broadcaster on DAB, is there any future for DAB in Ireland now, or is that a play to get the Government to "do something"..

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NeuralNetwork

Jessex wrote: »

Closing obsolete dab is the best decision RTE has ever made but that's not to say that radio on the internet is the answer. DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) is on the way giving all DAB benefits at low cost as DRM+ in VHF /FM band. See Cambridge Associates sub $10 low cost/energy module due 3rd quarter 2021

To be honest, you'd just walk into exactly the same issues no matter which technology is used for over-the-air digital radio here, i.e. that there was a serious lack of commercial interest in it and lack of scale to roll it out. RTE shouldering the whole thing makes no sense and was always going to end in shutdown if there was nobody else coming on board.

The Irish radio station groups and big stations all ignored the platform entirely and it just went away.

DRM+ may be somewhat superior technology but you'd end up with a mess of incompatibility with existing radios, people trying to use DAB radios to receive it and all of that.

I think either we did a DAB+ rollout and made it work, or we didn't and it looks like we didn't.

We had similar issues with getting commercial interest in DVB-T. There was a hope of getting some commercial services on that to compete with cable. Boxer TV and some other groups looked at it and didn't proceed. It could have easily been a replacement for MMDS, which in reality at the end was just an encrypted DVB-T network on 2,500 to 2,686 MHz. The MMDS receivers were in reality DVB-T (or C in some areas) service anyway, as the antennae just downconverted it to normal broadcast frequencies / cable frequencies.

However, the market changed and there was no interest. Satellite, cable and increasingly IPTV dominate.

There were surveys out during the week showing 40% of Irish people no longer watch all that much broadcast television, opting for IPTV streams only.

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/regulatorsays40pc-of-us-are-watching-less-traditional-tv-as-netflix-grabs-more-viewers-40256243.html

Broadcasting is changing rapidly at the moment and I think we need to be a little cautious that we don't end up stuck with technology paradigms driving decisions when the reality is that we just need to get programming to consumers, whatever way they want to consume it.

alzer100

I am asking this question because as someone who has never owned a DAB radio whether stand-alone or as part of a car audio system. Was there a significant difference in sound quality when listening to RTE's digital services via DAB say when listening in a car as compared to streaming to a car audio system from a smartphone via bluetooth?
I am aware that bluetooth has limited bandwidth and most systems default to the SBC streaming standard as opposed to aptx and LDAC.
Was there much much of a difference in sound quality.? I am aware that the quality of the whole audio system will be an important factor.

Mickey Mike

In my ears, Digital is better than Analogue, I can't answer the complected question but radio on my Saorview box with audio leads (red and white) plugged into the bank of my HiFi gives me excellent quality sound, far better than fm.

NeuralNetwork

Mickey Mike wrote: »

In my ears, Digital is better than Analogue, I can't answer the complected question but radio on my Saorview box with audio leads (red and white) plugged into the bank of my HiFi gives me excellent quality sound, far better than fm.

DAB and DVB-T (Saorview) are unrelated.

You’d get better audio quality on Saorview DVB-T than on basic DAB. It uses MPEG-4. I’m not sure which audio layers are implemented on radio on Saorview, but they would be very good quality streams and there’s far less concern about bandwidth.

Glaceon

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

DAB and DVB-T (Saorview) are unrelated.

You’d get better audio quality on Saorview DVB-T than on basic DAB. It uses MPEG-4. I’m not sure which audio layers are implemented on radio on Saorview, but they would be very good quality streams and there’s far less concern about bandwidth.

Audio on Saorview is still MPEG-1 Layer II so the same as DAB.

NeuralNetwork

Glaceon wrote: »

Audio on Saorview is still MPEG-1 Layer II so the same as DAB.

The spec actually supports:

The IRD shall support mono, stereo (including joint stereo) and multi-channel (up to 5.1) audio decoding for:
MPEG-1 Layer II (ISO/IEC 11172-3) Musicam, up to 2.0 stereo MPEG-4 HE AAC version 1 (ISO/IEC 14496-3) and
AC 3 & Enhanced AC3 (“Dolby Digital / Plus”) (ETSI TS 102 366).

alzer100

Was it possible that RTE and in this case for example RTE Gold's internet stream of MP3 96kbits/s was being carried by the DAB MPEG-1 Layer II audio format?

yrreg0850

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

RTE shouldering the whole thing makes no sense and was always going to end in shutdown if there was nobody else coming on board.
.

The same mistake was made with the DAB infrastructure as was made previously with the telecomms network.
Teleom Eireann/Eircom etc. controlling the infrastructure could charge other telecomm operators ie .their competition what they liked for access to their network.
Likewise with DAB RTE could charge competition what they liked for access to their network.
In both cases an independent authority should have had control of the infrastructure.

fryup

all you people talking about sound quality,

i remember as a kid bopping to the tunes on Radio Luxembourg via a distorted MW signal, simpler times

Declan A Walsh

fryup wrote: »

all you people talking about sound quality,

i remember as a kid bopping to the tunes on Radio Luxembourg via a distorted MW signal, simpler times

On a small portable radio transistor!

Mickey Mike

Glaceon wrote: »

Audio on Saorview is still MPEG-1 Layer II so the same as DAB.

So DAB is good as well if that's the case.

Mickey Mike

fryup wrote: »

all you people talking about sound quality,

i remember as a kid bopping to the tunes on Radio Luxembourg via a distorted MW signal, simpler times

Yes because we were none of the wiser until FM came along, when RTE rolled out the new FM transmitters in 1984/5, it was an exciting time when it came to sound quality.

Glaceon

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

The spec actually supports:

The IRD shall support mono, stereo (including joint stereo) and multi-channel (up to 5.1) audio decoding for:
MPEG-1 Layer II (ISO/IEC 11172-3) Musicam, up to 2.0 stereo MPEG-4 HE AAC version 1 (ISO/IEC 14496-3) and
AC 3 & Enhanced AC3 (“Dolby Digital / Plus”) (ETSI TS 102 366).

The spec does include HE-AAC but it has never been used. Not even in tests.

jimbo2007

Mickey Mike wrote: »

Yes because we were none of the wiser until FM came along, when RTE rolled out the new FM transmitters in 1984/5, it was an exciting time when it came to sound quality.

Did it really take until 2974 yo start in VHF in Ireland? What did RTE start with? Just 1 transmitter?

BBC started on FM on 1 May 1955. Stereo started in 1965 in London and 1971 in Northern England.

Was FM in Ireland mono only to begin with?

Declan A Walsh

jimbo2007 wrote: »

Did it really take until 2974 yo start in VHF in Ireland? What did RTE start with? Just 1 transmitter?

BBC started on FM on 1 May 1955. Stereo started in 1965 in London and 1971 in Northern England.

Was FM in Ireland mono only to begin with?

It's kind of odd because RTE Radio 1 and 2FM (or RTE Radio 2 as it was then) had FM options for a long time before 1984. It used to be referred to as VHF.

larchill

Switch off is a disaster. I can change Radio 1 to analogue & it will pick up FM. Once I change to another station & come back to Radio 1, its back looking for DAB again. RTE have no clue, they can't even shut down a network properly.

Charles Babbage

It did occur to me that a RTÉ Gold type service on DAB+ might be commercial runner with ads, as it would reach the class of person who buys a new car and has a certain disposable income.

Mickey Mike

jimbo2007 wrote: »

Did it really take until 2974 yo start in VHF in Ireland? What did RTE start with? Just 1 transmitter?

BBC started on FM on 1 May 1955. Stereo started in 1965 in London and 1971 in Northern England.

Was FM in Ireland mono only to begin with?

It ran (I think) lower power txs prior to 1984 before RTE started upgrading to high power transmitters there after.

TheBMG

Mickey Mike wrote: »

It ran (I think) lower power txs prior to 1984 before RTE started upgrading to high power transmitters there after.

RTE were on FM from 1966. There was only one RTE radio channel at the time though.

Hamsterchops

Dublin early 1980s...

Can't give you details of dates or technical detail re FM signal output, but I can tell you for sure that the quality of the FM Stereo signal from Radio Nova was second to none in Dublin - early 80s...

Don't know what kind of (pirate) transmitter they had at Nova back then, but it blew RTE out of the water when it came to signal strength & sound quality.

Getting back to the present day and DAB, I think what's killed off the format here in the Republic is the fact that no other stations other than RTE were broadcasting on DAB. If a handful of the top independent Irish stations had been given a trial period of a couple of years (like RTE) then it might have taken off. Auto search on DAB is not going to float many people's boats when all you get is RTE RTE, RTE, RTE, followed by another RTE station.

A DAB trial should have been rolled out with government financial aid & approval across the FM network for all to trial, from RTE to Newstalk, to Today FM, FM 104, Sunshine Radio, 4FM etc, only then would the public have bought into the new format IMO.

fryup

Mickey Mike wrote: »

Yes because we were none of the wiser until FM came along, when RTE rolled out the new FM transmitters in 1984/5, it was an exciting time when it came to sound quality.

yes and we still continued to listen in MW

(well in my household)

Brian CivilEng

When DAB started in Dublin back in 2007 (I think) all the commercial stations were there. It was the recession in 2008 that killed it. RTÉ kept it going thinking the demand would return, but by the time the recession was over Internet radio had taken over.

If it wasn't for the timing of the 2008 recession we'd probably have viable DAB and commercial DTT networks right now.

Ger Roe

fryup wrote: »

yes and we still continued to listen in MW (well in my household)

Content is king.... in the early 80's people were still listening to AM radio, because the content they demanded wasn't available from RTE, even if the RTE content was already available in better audio quality on FM - or VHF as it was then known

That changed almost overnight when Chris Cary started testing on 88fm with high power and Optimod audio processing, but crucially also with slick 'clutter free' presentation. He brought West Coast American radio techniques to Dublin and so launched FM in the minds of the public driven through sheer listener demand. A feat that sadly would now cost millions in awareness advertising campaigns to bring DAB to the same audience awareness level.

It is hard for anyone who didn't experience it, to know how much of a game changer those early FM tests were - a few weeks of non stop music and professional jingles playing out and the whole city was talking about it and tuning in, without any promotion, except word of mouth driven by public interest - the original French ident jingle certainly helped fire the imagination - no one knew what this incredible sound was.

I would hate to be launching an FM station these days with the amount of non traditional source alternatives available. In the old days, people tuned across the band to find radio stations, these days they need to be pointed towards them by expensive advertising campaigns or apps.

The invention of the pre-set tuner button was the start of restricted audience selection and various technical innovations since then have compounded the issue for traditional broadcast radio stations - people generally now only tune into what they already are familiar with, or what content controlling platforms suggest for them.

When first launched here, DAB had an already limited window of opportunity to establish itself while the tide was still turning, but it didn't get the industry or audience support required and so it has now run aground.

Infoanon

Hamsterchops wrote: »

Dublin early 1980s...

Can't give you details of dates or technical detail re FM signal output, but I can tell you for sure that the quality of the FM Stereo signal from Radio Nova was second to none in Dublin - early 80s...

Don't know what kind of (pirate) transmitter they had at Nova back then, but it blew RTE out of the water when it came to signal strength & sound quality.
.

RTE was 40 watts from Montrose with no audio processing.

Nova 1000 watts from Herbert Street and Optimod processing - one of the first stations in Europe btw.

Nova quickly moved to 5000 watts from the Dublin mountains peaking later at a little under 24,000 watts.

RTE started using 3 Rock and optimods in '84....

Think black and white TV Vs UHD and you get some idea of how far ahead Nova was.

Before Nova there was nothing on FM - now FM is king.

DAB could never have that impact - BUT with the right selection of services, as proven by the success of RTE Gold ,it could have gained momentum. Technology has evolved however and the opportunity for DAB has been missed / lost

NeuralNetwork

The main reason is we didn’t launch early enough and that was compounded by market size. BBC and U.K. DAB services go back to 1995, more than a decade earlier than the Irish services and launched at a time when MP3 players, never mind steaming services, were new tech. If DAB had been around in the late 90s and early 00s it would have been an exciting new service offering something different. These days it’s just an old tech associated with big clunky retro radios, in a time when more and more of us don’t even use radio sets.

You can easily imagine a DAB radio being a big deal in the early days, but I think at this stage it’s the kind of thing you might have bought your grandad for Xmas. It’s far from bleeding edge technology.

The original BBC DAB engineering trials took place in 1990.

It reminds me of the case study of a consortium driven by Telecom Eireann and France Telecom and two banks that tried to launch Minitel, a French interactive view data system in late 80s Ireland.

Like DAB in Britain, it had been hugely successful in its launch market, France, but they’d lunched it almost a decade earlier and into a much, much larger market and also thrown huge weight into pushing it through subsidies from a large state enterprise.

It never gained much traction here, landing in 1988-1990, partially because of the size of the market at that stage, which was very challenging, but also within a couple of years of launch, it was with the early days of the Web and was far less flexible, limited to a narrow range of services and lacked international scope. It was also very obsolete technology but then, so it basically failed here, much like DAB has and for very similar reasons.

I think the lesson needs to be learned: don’t get blinded by technology that has been a successful a long time ago or in markets where it’s been driven without commercial reality. If you launch late and without those conditions, you’re doomed to failure. It doesn’t matter how good it was 15 years ago somewhere else.

The market conditions for DAB in Ireland in 2021 are totally incomparable to the U.K. in 2001.

DAB just launched far, far too late here. It may have been an opportunity missed, but we’re 20 years too late to find out!

jimbo2007

Interesting thank you. The only home I ever heard RTE on VHF was when on holiday in Aberystwyth. I found RTE Radio 1 as Nd 2 but the next station sling GM3 was often silent. Radio na Gadltavhta was only on a few hours a day but I am surprised they were able to leave a dead carrier on without the transmitter switching off.

I heard the station on air one Saturday morning not able to understand it but I heard the occasional buzzer. So I knew it was a quiz but would otherwise have nit had a clue what it was.

I also heard Irish FM radio near Swansea in 2000. But in Wirral it is almost impossible yo hear.

On a new TECSUIN 380 portable I managed to find into Today FM on 100.9 albeit weak and not always received.

Ger Roe

jimbo2007 wrote: »

Interesting thank you. The only home I ever heard RTE on VHF was when on holiday in Aberystwyth. I found RTE Radio 1 as Nd 2 but the next station sling GM3 was often silent. Radio na Gadltavhta was only on a few hours a day but I am surprised they were able to leave a dead carrier on without the transmitter switching off.

I heard the station on air one Saturday morning not able to understand it but I heard the occasional buzzer. So I knew it was a quiz but would otherwise have nit had a clue what it was.

I also heard Irish FM radio near Swansea in 2000. But in Wirral it is almost impossible yo hear.

On a new TECSUIN 380 portable I managed to find into Today FM on 100.9 albeit weak and not always received.

Here in deepest darkest north east Wicklow, I listen to far more reliable webstreams as FM is too weak for normal kitchen radio use. As I type I am listening to the monthly Radio Caroline North weekend broadcast (it's Caroline's 57th birthday this weekend) - proves my own previous point .... there are alternatives available, not only to DAB, but to FM also and people will tune/stream to the content that they want.

While terrestrial broadcasting is still king in Ireland, it will not always be that way and this opens up an even larger debate .... why do we need regulation of our state approved radio services when we can actually listen to anything from anywhere at any time? Will the rollout of the national broadband plan result in a parallel decline in local radio listenership when many more people finally have reliable alternative sources?

Maybe for a different thread, but the demise of DAB has interesting aspects that should be further considered, particularly by current FM operators.

Mickey Mike

TheBMG wrote: »

RTE were on FM from 1966. There was only one RTE radio channel at the time though.

Wow never knew, in 1966 was it national FM or just Dublin based, Radaio Eireann on 567kHz and VHF.

Mickey Mike

Today FM have a far better signal than RTE especially on the lower power transmitters, hope RTE will increase the power at some point when they turn off Long Wave 252 next year. I've nothing left to say about DAB.

NeuralNetwork

It's also worth remembering when FM went on the air first, there were very few sources of Hi-Fi audio other than LPs. It brought radio up to a level where it was comparable to professionally recorded music sources.

In the very early days of FM, record labels even saw it as a threat to their business model, much as they saw streaming decades later.

DAB could never really have created that level of hype. From a listener point of view, it's just another band with reasonable quality audio. I would wonder if most people even know or care that one's digital and one's analogue. The interface in many cases, especially in cars, is almost exactly the same, particularly with RDS text.