Analogue radio will CONTINUE in Blighty as Minister of Fun dodges D-Day death sentence

In all the noise about DAB vs FM, can I ask why in the last few years the ONLY radio transmission system I find that works reliably around these parts (North Hampshire, Thames Valley, London) is DAB.

FM will give one station if you are lucky and near, say, central Reading or central London. All FM car radios are otherwise useless, and similarly a domestic unit unless it's on a very large ariel.

Our two Pure portables "just work" pretty much anywhere.

Oh, sorry, forgot: Long Wave works, and provides about as much choice as FM. And about the same sound quality.

DId someone turn the power down on all those FM transmitters?

OH RLY?

I love these parts of EV's speech:

"The UK is at the forefront of developments in digital radio, and we have a huge opportunity not just with the UK market but also throughout Europe."

"More than 50% of digital radios on the world market are made by British companies – Pure, Roberts, Revo and others – with UK technology in nearly 80% of digital radios."

Yes, Mr Vaizey. Because we are the main proponent of DAB, (note DAB, not DAB+) therefore there is little interest for other potential market players to invest any real resources to create radios for export to the UK. I also would take issue with your use of the word 'forefront'. Maybe from the POV of national infrastructure, but certainly not from a end user point of view. Ofcom's own charts on European purchase: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/communications-market-reports/cmr13/international/icmr-4.16

So yes, massive market to export to, isn't there? Take up is considerably poorer for a variety of reasons I suspect, the lack of BBC being one of them.

Digital radio could be implemented well. Unfortunately the UK has now a c'ked up, half arsed implementation being driven by lobbyists with no real sensible agenda. And ridiculous BBC articles; I'm looking at you, Sillito.

The contents not there because the people arent there, and the people arent there as the content isn't there.

Time to scrap it and start again.

Urm, Digital 1 is kinda congested.

"even though the existing Arqiva-owned commercial multiplex Digital 1 is hardly congested." - Really? It's currently bursting at the seems with a shed loads of mono-only stations because there isn't the space to run them in stereo.

We used to call it Bird FM

Coming home after a few days on the lash, still vibrating from the music and ... Bird FM.

Even in a dingy flat in an inner city .. close your eyes, pop your cans on and you have a garden.

Ought to be the flagship test station for DAB

Has anyone waved the disability flag?

The basic over-compressed DAB audio quality may sound rough to those who care to listen/are bothered by it, but for hearing-aid users heavily compressed audio can interact really badly with the aids' DSP (background noise suppression etc) and make it sound 10× worse (or even unintelligible).

I bought the budgie a DAB radio to listen to as I was assured it would work in my area.

But all I got were angry squawks from the budgie when I got home as the DAB radio had lost Radio 2 as the signal had been lost and the radio wanted to be retuned.

Now that I've switched back to Radio 2 on FM there is peace again in the house, well sort of.

Interference

VHF/FM will be becoming victim to increasing levels of interference from all the dodgey ("CE marked") imported power-supplies, and the VDSL copper-based telephone-line broadband (up to 30MHz signals on unshielded copper, and potentially higher harmonics from "rusty-joints"!).

At least with FM, being analog, the audible sound of the interference gives those who are technically minded a strong clue to the source of the interference, and the means to some self-help to address it.

With digital, almost any interference that exceeds the error-correction thresholds will cause squeaks and drop-outs or bubbling-mud, and the average user has no way of knowing whether it's a weak signal, a central-heating thermostat, the power-supply for the Christmas lights, or the aircraft flying overhead (though the latter shouldn't affect DAB with it's echo-proof / SFN / long symbol-periods).

Obvious solution

Are there short range USB DAB transmitters?

Then you could get a rasberryPi with wifi, have it receive radio from iPlayer on t'internet and rebroadcast it to your DAB radio. Then that would be twice as digital as the DAB radio and so twice as good.

I can't go DAB in the car

Because I would lose the ability to play CDs and MDs.

I like my MD head unit, I can play copies of my LPs with it, including stuff not on TPB.

I like my CD changer as well

DAB is too like a poor MP3 to me

Kicking the decision down the road

In case you hadn't noticed there's a general election in 2015. Are you surprised?

Another one of OFCOM's DAB fiddles is...

...To only publish DAB population coverage maps, rather than geographical coverage maps, hiding the fact that large rural areas and long lengths of trunk roads won't get DAB at all.

DAB is still flaky in many parts of the country. They say it has no interference, yet ignore the fact it can break up and sound WORSE than interference.

I have a DAB radio indoors and the signal is usually okay,but can drop for no reason. However in my car its FM of course. The coverage of digital is simply not good enough to allow cars to get as good a signal as FM.

DAB good?

Just to add my bit..

I've given DAB a fair go..

My first DAB radio was a Psion Wavefinder. Good little piece of kit once they sorted out the driver problems.. The problem it had is that being USB only, you needed to attach it to a PC, so, even with a laptop, it was stretching the definition of portable.

My second DAB radio was a Robert's pocket radio. This was a good little radio, just suffered the normal DAB problem of bad reception when moving (which sort of negates the point of a pocket radio as you are likely to move at some point while using it) and went through batteries at a rate of knots..

My third was a Sony Pocket DAB. Unfortunately, I ignored the warning about shutting it down properly before removing the batteries and blew it up as a result..

My fourth was the replacement for the above (another Sony Pocket DAB). This was OK. It was relatively small. Used a lot less power than the above Roberts radio (although still went through two AA batteries in 5 days with 1 hour listening each day) and still suffered the same reception problems.

I think the problem with DAB is that partly that technology has overtaken it, and partly that it was based on old technology to start with.

Look at my situation. I still listen to a lot of radio. Mostly in bed or when I am travelling. When I am travelling, I have an iPhone app (called Tunein radio) that gives me access to the webstreams of tens of thousands of radio stations (including all the ones I am interested in on DAB). The reception I get is far from perfect, but is far superior to DAB, simply because the mobile phone networks have *already* invested a lot of money in their networks..

At home, I listen to the radio on Freeview which, unlike DAB, I can receive well all over my house (which is odd,as our local transmitter for both is Crystal Palace)

High Cost Of DAB

Part of that is because each DAB mux covers a very large area.

You are smalltown FM with a 200 watt transmitter on top of your local hill. You might maintain this yourself or have a low cost transmission contract. You also probably have geographical features nearby which contain your signal. Ergo you end up broadcasting to a radius of 10 miles and perhaps 200,000 people. This fits your business model and you turn a small profit despite the downturn in radio advertising revenues.

Along comes the offer to join the local DAB multiplex. This broadcasts for radius of 30 miles and covers major cities and a total of 1.5 million people. It utilises 3 transmitter sites, 2 of which are major sites which cost a premium to to have mast space on. You don't need this coverage and you certainly can't afford it. Nobody 30 miles away gives a toss what's happening in Smalltown.

DAB is just not currently scaled to work for smaller stations where costs have to be ruthlessly controlled in order to ensure they turn a profit.

DAB vs 3G

I have tried DAB in the car, it's horrible. FM has become pretty bad too - I can't help feeling an earlier post suggesting they've powered down some FM stations must be correct.

The big surprise is that a phone on '3' on an all-you-can-eat data plan gives more continuous coverage than DAB - and sounds much better too, not to mention having almost infinitely more choice - even before you count the replay services such as iPlayer radio.

Has anyone found a decent DAB radio?

I would really honestly like to hear of any DAB radio that will give me adequate reception. My study is on the first floor on the outskirts of Basingstoke, and the few DAB radios I have tried sounded dreadful. Not only the usual symptoms of a poor signal, but a kind of regular fluttering sound. Blame the poor reception? But my FM radios work fine in exactly the same place.