DAB in Ireland: RTE multiplex closed

The following article is from today's Sunday Business Post.



RTE heralds the future of digital radio in Ireland

17 February 2008

Irish enthusiasts - and RTE - are standing by new radio technology. Catherine O’Mahony reports.
Plans to establish an Irish digital radio service using DAB (digital audio broadcasting) technology are on track, despite hiccups with the medium in Britain.
RTE, which is spearheading a trial of DAB radio in the Dublin area, is understood to be ready to expand it to other major urban areas, and is also set to launch its DAB channels on the internet. By the end of this year, executives say RTE will have a full licence to operate a DAB service nationally. DAB is, according to its supporters, the future shape of radio.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the latest on DAB sounds gloomy. After months of speculation, GCap Media, the largest commercial radio broadcaster in Britain, last week finally axed its digital-only radio stations, stating that the medium had not matched expectations.
Fru Hazlitt, GCap Media chief executive, said digital radio was ‘‘economically inviable’’, after the company last year spent stg£8 million on digital radio, while more than 90 per cent of its listeners tuned in to FM stations.
It’s a potential blow for DAB technology, although the BBC, which has invested in DAB for more than ten years, defended its choice.
There are lots of positive statistics for the BBC to cite: more than 22 per cent of British adults now claim to have DAB at home, and it makes up 10 per cent of all radio listening. Two million DAB radios were sold in Britain last year.
DAB is at an embryonic stage here by comparison, although DAB radios have been promoted heavily by electronics shops in the last six months, probably partly since many are British-owned.
RTE has been leading the way on promoting DAB, but its entire annual budget for developing it is a tiny €250,000, out of a total radio budget of €60 million.
JP Coakley, RTE’s head of operations, said RTE hoped to get an accurate picture soon on how DAB sales were going, and would decide partly on that basis how to proceed.
From a consumer’s point of view, digital radio sets are very user-friendly. There’s no crackle between channels and the sets feature a screen that can deliver information about the content, offering multimedia options that traditional radio cannot match.
‘‘In the end, it’s the public who will decide if this stands or falls,” said Coakley. ‘‘If we could see, say, one in 20 people tuning in to us on DAB, that would be game-on.”
He argued that the GCap problems related more to GCap’s corporate strategy than its business model. ‘‘They need to cut costs fast and a quick way to do that is to cut DAB. But they’ve dropped some FM channels as well.”
At present, DAB is still on trial here, since regulators ComReg and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) have yet to issue full licences for digital radio transmission.
The BCI said last week it would need to deliberate as to whether DAB was the correct technological model for the Irish market at all. However, since its time is taken up at present with establishing a framework for digital television, the BCI will not begin to address digital radio issues until the end of 2008.
Meanwhile, 15 radio stations, including two newly created commercial digital stations and four new digital-only radio stations from RTE, are broadcasting to DAB receivers in the greater Dublin area.
Since FM remains the principal way most people listen to radio, most operators are paying twice for transmission, as long as their DAB service is operated along with their analogue service.
This doesn’t deter RTE, whose public service broadcasting remit justifies its role as a prime mover on new technologies.
However, some observers think the cost might well prove an issue for commercial players, especially if it remains unclear precisely how long they will have to keep providing two services.
A report on digital radio by the European Broadcasting Union last year estimated that it might be 2020 before many European countries switched off their analogue radio services.
Enthusiasts for DAB radio believe this technology is the only future for radio, and will replace analogue as the transmission mode of choice sooner rather than later.
‘‘If you look properly at Britain, you can see that digital radio is one of the few bright lights in an industry that’s under pressure,” said Coakley.
‘‘There are now twice the number of services on DAB that there are on FM.
‘‘Our conviction is that this has to happen,” he said. ‘‘We need three things for this to work - we need low-cost receivers, we need a regulatory catalyst and we need new and exciting broadcasters to come on board.”
Dusty Rhodes, whose Digital Audio Productions company is behind two new commercial digital channels being tested - an all-80s channel and an R’n’B channel - said he hoped DAB’s woes in Britain would accelerate moves by regulator Ofcom to provide a proper regulatory structure for DAB.
‘‘It’s not a death knell for DAB, far from it,” he said. ‘‘Watch out because that space [vacated by GCap] will be filled.”
Without a timetable for switching off FM radio, he could understand why some commercial stations would see no logic in paying for DAB.
‘‘It’s still a fantastic system,” said Rhodes. ‘‘What I hope it might do is remind people that we need to talk about setting a firm switch-off date for the analogue service.”
Rhodes has been making money from advertising and sponsorship on his digital radio stations, although he conceded that the prices he could charge were very low. Joe Dalton, media buyer at Precision Media, said it was early days for this technology, and it wasn’t yet on the radar for major brands.
‘‘It’s got huge potential and I do think this is the future,” he said.
‘‘It will grow niche stations and that’s great. But, for now, penetration is low and it’s a limited reach.
‘‘Only 1 per cent of new cars are fitted with DAB radios,” said Dalton.

byrnefm wrote: »

Hi,

has anyone noticed an odd channel name from RTÉ: RTE xxxxx
It's listed as of type 'Other music'.

YEP.... Saw that, sounds good. Brings back memories of my teenage years!

Tagged as "Something for the Millenium Generation". Sweet Just seems to be a loop at the moment.... not alot on it, I hear alot of repeats. Hopefully they'll get more stuff on!

Listened to a bit of this last night, and quite a welcome addition. Those looking for chill type music have had their output slashed in recent times, with Classic FM dispensing of it in the coming weeks on Friday and Saturday nights, and Lorcan Murray taking over Saturday and Sunday mornings on Lyric FM, where that slot always had "new age" music.

RTE 2XM is all over the shop at present... songs are getting skipped to shreds. They played some David Gray song like it was buffered on a webstream, and also, it skips to playing a bit of Air's "Once upon a time" every 5 mins, then into another song.

Also, RTÉ Gold had a presenter at 12 noon today. Dunno who he was, it seemed rerecorded.

DMC wrote: »

RTE 2XM is all over the shop at present... songs are getting skipped to shreds. They played some David Gray song like it was buffered on a webstream, and also, it skips to playing a bit of Air's "Once upon a time" every 5 mins, then into another song.

Also, RTÉ Gold had a presenter at 12 noon today. Dunno who he was, it seemed rerecorded.

Twice I've listened to RTE Choice on a Saturday morning and they were playing two programmes at the same time - one being an RTE show and the other being an NPR show. Hilarious!

RTE Chill is having the skippy tracks problem tonight, too. Not every track, just a few. Sound like damaged CDs imported.

MYOB wrote: »

Truskmore and Cairn Hill that'd make it cover most of my journeys...

It has always seemed odd to me that there is only one low powered FM service on the biggest (in terms of wattage) tx in the country. Read somewhere that i102104 is coming from there too, also low powered. Does this not make it doubtful that Cairn Hill will have DAB?

Are we now having the 'official' roll out of DAB in Ireland? If so I take it you will have the same system used in the UK.

Galtee Boy! If you are north of the Galtee's, you are in the overlap of 3 main transmitters. I am interested in your position as I left a DAB radio in South East Limerick last summer. I will be over in 3 weeks and I may have something to play with.

galtee boy!

How reliable this information is I do not know but I am sure 'someone' dropped me a hint here, sometime ago, that it more than likely is.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=755169

Incidentally, as a PS to my last post, the very top of the main mast at Spur Hill has a transmit antenna for one of the repeaters of the 11GHz Digital TV service in the Cork area - a controversial topic with Watty and others:)
See attached picture. its the vertical thing protruding above the mast

I dunno what planet yer man from Channel 6 is from! UK shareholders are leaving the Irish market!

Interesting to see the divide there. The established players, like Communicorp (98FM, Newstalk, Today FM) wants DAB to work well, yet Dan Healy (i radio, new station) want it to fail. And then you have the Mid-west types who want to protect their little empires (remember the NWR/Ocean FM licence fiasco!)

DMC wrote: »

Nice one. Why does the new mast scream "temporary" at me?

Well if Comreg dont approve (though its unlikely) it'll probably be taken down again.

The DVB-H system is totally unsuited to local and regional radio because each multiplex takes up three frequency blocks in Band III as a result of a DVB-H multiplex being so wide. It's fine for national TV/radio where one DVB-H mux can cover the whole country but very inefficient for a patchwork of local/regional multiplexes.

By contrast DAB+, which also uses AAC+/AAC and RS coding (and can handle MPEG Surround) only uses one Band III block per multiplex and is ideal for an efficient digital radio system delivering local, regional and national radio.

As for efficiency, the new DAB+/DAB/Wi-Fi compatible chips from Frontier-Silicon have a battery life of 150-170 hours, far more than the old inefficient DAB chips.

david23 wrote: »

The DVB-H system is totally unsuited to local and regional radio because each multiplex takes up three frequency blocks in Band III as a result of a DVB-H multiplex being so wide. It's fine for national TV/radio where one DVB-H mux can cover the whole country but very inefficient for a patchwork of local/regional multiplexes.

Er.. Rubbish.

DVB-h can be used on whatever frequency you like and as small as 1MHz per multiplex. Local Radio could use UHF which gives less range and more frequency reuse. But it won't happen.

It's also in handsets now. RTE aren't going to change to DAB+ or DVB-h so there is no advantage to DAB+. Nor much point in arguing what is the "best" system. My only point really is that DVB-h even before RTE rolled out was a proven deployed, pan-European endorsed better system available already in handsets. DAB+ or DRM are not as mature, nor have any advantages for VHF.

The Local Radio people actually argue that DAB even is unsuited. More channels and more competition. They want FM only

We are stuck with DAB now, probably for the next 10 years...