After a Decade, Digital Radio Still an Also-Ran In UK 200
beschra writes "Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) was developed as early as 1981. After launching in the UK 10 years ago, only 24% of listeners listen on DAB. The article credits a good part of the delay to the fact that the technology was largely developed under the Europe-wide Eureka 147 research project. How does government vs. commercial development help or hinder acceptance of new technology? From the article: '"If Nokia develops something, they'll be bringing out the handsets before you know it," [analyst Grant Goddard says]. "Because DAB was a pan-European development, you had to have agreement from all sides before you could do anything. That meant progress was extremely slow." But this alone did not account for the hold-up. The sheer complexity of introducing and regulating the system was also a major factor, Mr. Goddard adds."'
Re:Nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)
In theory, that's great. Unfortunately, being digital, it doesn't degrade gracefully. You either have a clean signal, or you pass the threshold that the error correction can handle and have nothing. When you're driving down winding country roads, you frequently fall into signal shadow. With FM, this means that you just get a lot of static over the radio as you go around a corner or in a dip. With DAB, it means that you get silence, then the station returning a second later. The latter is a lot more jarring and distracting.
If I were making a DAB receiver for a car, I would add a white noise generator and have it fade into that when the signal got near the threshold for dropping out.
This is something Internet radio does a lot better. If you are using a stream over HTTP, dropping out of signal range for a few seconds just means that a few seconds of the audio get buffered in various routers, or at the sending end, and retransmitted when you return. Set your buffer size large enough, and you just have a short delay when starting, but no loss of audio during the drive.
Re:Or people don't think it's worth it. (Score:4, Interesting)
The stupid thing is that DVB-T (which Freeview uses) is perfectly capable of transmitting audio at somewhat better spectrum utilization than DAB. Now they want everyone to switch to DAB+, when there are perfectly good DVB networks ALREADY OPERATING in most of Europe.
The only non-DVB-T digital radio standard worth considering is DRM+, because that makes local radio stations possible. DAB can't really broadcast a station to less than a few million people. Technically, DRM+ is probably the best digital radio standard, but it has a problem with market penetration and that may kill it. Local radio might be better served over the Internet these days anyway. DAB and DAB+ have no reason to exist and just need to die.
Just to chime in (Score:3, Interesting)
As many people have already stated, DAB Digital Radio has a plethora of issues.
The radios themselves aren't that cheap, especially portable ones. There's no real benefit to owning one, you get a couple of extra stations that you probably wont listen to and the reception is terrible in most places. For years, I've wanted the technology to take off and be good, a bit like Freeview OTA Digital TV, but it never happened.
Now, for me, technology has moved on. I have a pretty decent android phone and use an app called Streamfurious. With this, I can listen to thousands of radio stations from all around the world, including just about every station you'll get on digital radio, in better quality and over 3G as well. It works surprisingly well, less cut outs than I ever did get with DAB.
Re:Even better use for digital radio . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Or - without the need to leave space for DAB. rest of the spectrum could be reshuffled so that universal cellular transmissions could have more bandwidth. There are also multicast transmissions possible via IP networks, BTW.
Re:Hmm, I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
FM is simple, but who cares when you can have a DSP for a few cents these days
Please define "efficiency in transmission".
Signal out / power in. For example, SSB is more efficient than AM because AM (full modulation) transmits half the power in an informationless carrier and doubles the information in each sideband. I don't know much about the power efficiency of DAB's modulation methods, though.
FM isn't robust, just drive in a built-up area and the multipath interference kills reception on a regular basis.
Yes, DAB is better here as long as you're not travelling too fast ;-).
FM isn't effective, it's a horrible waste of precious bandwidth.
Why the obsession with quantity over quality? Five hundred low bitrate stations pumping out shit is a horrible waste of precious bandwidth.
Finally, you might want to see just how much more spectrum efficient DAB isn't. The capture effect wat any radio ham kno offsets even the reusability argument.
Cost of DAB car radio (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmm, I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
My friend's house is in the country and sits in a natural dip. He can still listen to FM (all be it a little bit hissy at times) on any cheap set without any extra aerials, however he can't listen to DAB at all as he gets about 3 or so seconds of airplay followed by 10 or so seconds of total silence, and this is with a good quality receiver and a roof Ariel.
He also has similar issues with analogue/digital TV, unfortunately they will be turning off the analogue TV soon, so the only way he will be able to watch TV is with satellite dish and multiple set top boxes so there are no fights amongst his late teen children.
And also living quite a few miles from his local telephone exchange he can't get ADSL so no broadband internet so that isn't an option either....
All these things now have a negitive impact on his house value, where as 20 years ago when he bought the place none of these things were important and the isolation was a positive influence on the price.
Yey for the digital age!
Re:Hmm, I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
***I don't disagree, but don't make it worse than it actually is. FM is obsolete***
Y'know, many of the tools I use around the house were inherited from my dad who bought them used in the 1920s. You might assert that the 80 or 90 year old hammer I use to pound nails is obsolete compared to modern powered tools for inserting fasteners. But y'know what, the newer tools require power, special fasteners, and are more expensive, more complex and more likely to break. If I were a building contractor, I'd probably use the newer tools (but I'll bet I'd still have and use a hammer). For me that antique hammer is by no means obsolete.
The only things that would make FM obsolete would be if DAB had better range, lower costs, significantly better audio quality, or some other positive quality. So far as I can tell, it has only one such quality -- less bandwidth. Problem is that most places, there isn't enough programming available to use the additional bandwidth productively and if there were, sub-carrier audio -- which is compatible with analog FM -- could very likely be used instead of DAB. In point of fact, HD-Radio which is the US digital broadcast technology uses digital signals in the sub carrier spectrum while retaining the analog FM signal. (BTW, I don't know anyone who has a HD Radio receiver).
In summary. Newer isn't necessarily better. And complicated is better only if it works.