Petition to stop FM being switched off

In article , Dave Plowman (News)
scribeth thus
In article ,
Eeyore wrote:
Besides, DAB is inferior. Good FM beats it hands down.

I'm surprised at that statement from you, Graham. DAB at a decent bitrate
knocks FM into touch. Of course if you want to compare 'good' FM to poor
bitrate DAB to make a point, so be it.


DAB at a decent bitrate eh;?. And what's wrong with Mono to ;?..
--
Tony Sayer

In article , Steve Terry
scribeth thus

"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...
There's a 10 Downing St petition to stop FM/AM being switched off:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/
Please sign. Thanks.


What's your fecking name, King Canute?

the future is DRM, good job too

Steve Terry



Theres one who doesn't have much to do with the radio industry;!..
--
Tony Sayer

Kráftéé wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
| "Alan" wrote in message
|
|| In message , DAB sounds worse
|| than
|| FM wrote
||| There's a 10 Downing St petition to stop FM/AM being switched off:
|||
||| http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/
|||
||| Please sign. Thanks.
|||
|||
||
||
|| Why would anyone want to sign something that may prevent us getting
|| hundreds of radio stations on DAB?
|
|
| What you say is wrong for the following reasons:
|
| * The Digital Britain report said that the FM band would be used for
| "ultra-local" FM stations once all of the bigger FM radio stations
| have been switched off. So FM actually isn't planned to be switched
| off, so the FM band couldn't be freed up for DAB anyway
|
| * DAB uses frequencies of around 200 MHz, whereas FM uses
| frequencies of around 100 MHz - i.e. DAB couldn't be transmitted in
| the FM band anyway
|
| * DAB won't be getting any more spectrum than it's already got,
| because DAB spectrum was all allocated to Europeam countries in 2006
| (there is one unused DAB channel at the moment that was going to be
| used for a 2nd national commercial multiplex which fell through when
| Channel 4 decided against entering radio last year, but I think
| that's just going to be pretty much wasted when they replan the
| spectrum)
|
| * Apart from in London, where I think the figure is around 55
| stations, people can typically receive about 35 radio stations on
| DAB. DAB could never carry hundreds of radio stations. DAB was
| designed in the 1980s. It is an incredibly inefficient system
| because the technologies it uses are so old.
|
| Some other things that you might like to bear in mind which it
| sounds like you're probably unaware of at the moment are that
|
| * DAB provides lower audio quality than FM, Internet radio and radio
| via digital TV
|
| * DAB's audio quality isn't going to get any better in future
| because the MP2 audio codec it uses is 20 years old so they've
| obviously been optimising it for years but it still sounds crap at
| the low bit rates that it's used at in the UK
|
| * DAB's audio quality is actually only likely to go down, because as
| more people get DAB then that makes it more appealing to commercial
| radio stations to launch new stations because there's more potential
| revenue. The downside of that is that the bit rate levels of
| existing stations have to be reduced to fit new stations in, so the
| audio quality goes down as a result
|
| * 98% of stereo stations on DAB in the UK use a bit rate of either
| 112 or 128 kbps with the MP2 codec - in comparison, the BBC uses a
| bit rate of 256 kbps MP2 for the audio on its TV channels, and the
| vast majority of TV channels tend to use a bit rate of 192 kbps MP2
| for the audio. Basically, the UK radio broadcasters are using bit
| rates that the MP2 audio codec wasn't designed to be used at.
|
| * One thing that might surprise quite a few people is that the
| digital platform that carries digital radio at the highest audio
| quality is now the Internet, because the BBC launched new 128 kbps
| AAC live streams for the stereo stations apart from Radio 3 and 192
| kbps AAC for Radio 3 last week - 128 kbps AAC is the equivalent of
| around 224 kbps MP2, so it's far higher quality than 128 kbps MP2
| that the BBC uses on DAB. Also most of the bigger commercial radio
| stations also provide far higher qulaity online streams than they
| provide on DAB. And the audio quality on Internet radio's only
| likely to increase over time as Internet speeds get faster and cost
| per Mbps falls.
|
| * If you actually do want hundreds of radio stations there are over
| 10,000 Internet radio stations, so DAB obviously can't compete with
| that
|
| * DAB cannot deliver on-demand content - only broadband (and cable)
| can deliver true on-demand streams
|
| So if you were thinking that DAB's going to turn into a good digital
| radio system, I'm afraid it's basically just FM done digitally but
| at lower audio quality and you get a few more stations. If you have
| **** FM reception then you'd benefit, otherwise you'll actually get
| lower audio quality on DAB than on FM.
|
| The reason why DAB is being backed by the government is because it's
| to bail out the commercial radio groups who don't want to pay to
| transmit both analogue and digital for the next few decades - DAB
| was just a few years from failing, because sales have been really
| **** since 2006 (that's why DAB nearly collapsed last year when
| GCap Media said it wanted to withdraw from DAB completely). The
| BBC's Director of Radio Tim Davie said recently that at the rate
| we're going FM wouldn't be switched off "in our lifetime", which is
| correct, because it's only selling at 2 millino per year with 6%
| growth last year (which is ****) and basically it would have taken
| about 30 - 40 years to switch FM off, so we have to all be forced
| to get DAB like good little citizens to bail out the commercial
| radio groups so that they don't have to pay dual analogue and
| digital transmission costs.
|
| The radio broadcasters also have another reason why they want
| everyone to listen via DAB, which is that it's the platform where
| their stations face the least amount of competition - so they'd
| lose the least amount of listeners and hence revenue - whereas if
| Internet radio became popular they're scared that people would
| desert their stations and listen to others, and they can't allow
| that, and neither can the government. It's just pure protectionism,
| basically.

I doff my cap to your superior knowledge on this subject and shall
withdraw from the argument.


This Internet Radio sounds like the dogs b#ll#cks, how can I receive it
in my car at the same cost as FM broadcasts (I only listen to the radio
in a car).

JN

You can often get adaptor plates to allow a 'standard' size radio to be
fitted. Plenty want to upgrade the unit fitted as standard. Or use a DAB
to FM convertor - just like plugging a FreeView box into the TV aerial
input.

Perhaps we all need to get into the "retro fit radios" business. I have 5
perfectly good FM/AM radios, none of which could be retrofitted for DAB.

And why would I want to purchase something that only works in the UK? From
my kitchen, most DAB reception is simply too bad to listen to but I can
happily get the same stations on FM. Also, my DAB radio uses significantly
more power that my old FM/AM sets.

Paul DS

Alan wrote:
In message , DAB sounds worse than
FM wrote
There's a 10 Downing St petition to stop FM/AM being switched off:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/

Please sign. Thanks.




Why would anyone want to sign something that may prevent us getting
hundreds of radio stations on DAB?

There's not enough business to use all the slots on DVB or current
DAB - where's the business model to pay for all these stations
you dream of?

BugBear

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Eeyore wrote:
Besides, DAB is inferior. Good FM beats it hands down.

I'm surprised at that statement from you, Graham. DAB at a decent bitrate
knocks FM into touch.

Sadly, that's not what's on offer.

BugBear

In message , tony sayer
writes
In article , Ian Jackson ianREMOVET
scribeth thus
In message , Kráftéé
writes
Jimbo GM4DHJ .... wrote:
| "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
| ...
|| There's a 10 Downing St petition to stop FM/AM being switched off:
||
|| http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/
||
|| Please sign. Thanks.
||
||
| cool thanks ......

Maybe some more bandwidth to play with.......Naah I doubt it (it'll be
sold to the highest bidder)

Who IS going to buy that part of the spectrum? There's not a lot of
activity between (say) 30 and 87MHz at the moment, so I don't think that
there will be as great a demand for the FM radio spectrum as some people
think.

There are tracts of spectrum from around 30 to 87 MHz that are hardly
used as no one wants them;!...

Offhand, I'm not sure what one might expect to find. Old FM cordless
phones 30 to 33MHz. IF region 33 to 40MHz 'protected'. Some radio
control around 49MHz (?), plus old toy walkie talkies and baby alarms.
Amateur 50 to 52MHz. There used to be a blind landing system on 75MHz.
Some council, gas and electricity board stuff around 80Mhz? OK, all of
the spectrum will be allocated, but the actual usage is very low.

Of course, one of the problems with these relatively low frequencies is
the size of the aerial, especially for handheld portable use (even if
loading is used). And, there's also a severe problem with sporadic-E
interference - especially around this time of year. It is not without
good reason that, some time ago, Band 1 was abandoned for TV
transmissions in many European countries.
--
Ian

In article , Paul D.Smith
wrote:

And why would I want to purchase something that only works in the UK?

why not, your TV only worked in the UK?

From my kitchen, most DAB reception is simply too bad to listen to but I
can happily get the same stations on FM. Also, my DAB radio uses
significantly more power that my old FM/AM sets.

Do not forget that if DAB beomes the normal broadcast medium, there will be
more transmitters

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.11

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:47:08 +0100, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

In article , Eeyore rabbitsfriendsan
writes

More diversity is what's required

That worked REALLY well with Freeview, didn't it?

Dave, Dave+1, Dave +1+1, C4, More4. E4... endless repeats of the same
stuff. Yeah, diversity.

There's never been more channels and never been less worth watching.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:05:54 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Fredxx wrote:

"Alan" wrote in message
In message , DAB sounds worse than FM
wrote
There's a 10 Downing St petition to stop FM/AM being switched off:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/

Please sign. Thanks.


It's a shame that the petition made no mention of the most important
factor which is than DAB has poorer sound quality than FM.

Why would anyone want to sign something that may prevent us getting
hundreds of radio stations on DAB?

I don't see the comparison. I want freedom of choice. DAB gives me an extra
freedom, but that's all.

My experience of digital, such as Freeview and the like, is that quality of
transmission is actually worse than the equivalent analogue transmission!

Slightly off-topic but a neighbour of mine got a Samsung LCD TV a couple of
years back. The colours were wishy-washy compared to her previous Sony CRT and
motion blur and noise were very obvious.

Newer is NOT necessarily better.

Very true.

As a comparison, do you think the multitude of TV channels has really given
us more choice? I now watch less TV than ever before!

Same here. Entire days on end ( sometimes weeks ) without bothering with the
utter tripe being broadcast now.

+1

I think the BBC should be funded on a pay-per-view basis. And Eastenders etc
should be terminated for promoting illegality and dumbing down.

I used to oppose such an idea but I am coming around. If the BBC were
pay per view then people may suddenly get a lot more choosy about what
they watched. However we might get wall to wall eastenders and a
complete loss of the interesting minority programmes.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.