Digital radio - outrageous

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 02:46:45 +0200, J G Miller wrote:

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:51:21 +0100, Roderick Stewart wrote:

If they're serious about replacing FM with DAB, they'd need to do
something similar to what was done with TV in the 1960s and ban the
manufacture of any new receivers that could only receive the old system
for a reasonable interval commensurate with the expected life of a
receiver, before abandoning the old system.

Did that happen with analog television receivers?

Sorry, I did not make it clear what I was asking.

I was referring to the fact that analog only television receivers have not
banned during the transition to digital television in the UKofGB&NI.

Only in civilized countries such as France, has it been mandated that televisions
sold in stores must have capabilities of a digital DVB-t tuner, and more recently
the capability of MPEG-4 as well as MPEG-2 decoding.

"Dave Saville" wrote in message
...

I just had another thought - What about all the Satnavs, and similar,
that take FM traffic data?

That's a good point. How is it transmitted now? Is it piggy-backed onto an
existing transmission? Or does it have its own, separate, frequency?

If the latter, it could perhaps continue, what with it being such a low
bandwidth.

SteveT

Dave Saville wrote:
On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:06:18 UTC, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
wrote:

charles wrote:
In article , Steve Thackery
wrote:

"tim...." wrote in message
...

I suggested 5 years because that's about the time it takes for a car
to depreciate to the point where fitting a cheap generic radio
wouldn't devalue the car further.

But in most cars you can't replace the existing radio with a "cheap
generic" one, because they are fully integrated into the dashboard and
stalk/steering wheel controls. You can't just pull them out any more.

I don't think this is true. I certainly had a quote from a car radio
dealer to replace my fully integrated factory fitted radio with one
incorporating DAB - not cheap, so I didn't do it.


Exactly. So what percentage of car owners are going to want to pay a
ridiculously high amount of money just to change the radio when they've
already got a stereo where the radio works perfectly well? Not many, IMO.
Which leaves the DAB adaptor route, which has its own nightmare
drawbacks.

2015, my arse.

I just had another thought - What about all the Satnavs, and similar,
that take FM traffic data?


You can blame the BBC for turning those devices to junk as well.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - digital radio news & info

The BBC's "justification" of digital radio switchover is based on lies

Andy Champ wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

They're supposed to be fitting DAB as standard in all new cars by 2014.
But the time it takes to replace all the cars on the road is 12 - 13
years - there's 30 million cars on the road, and sales are about 2.3
million per year. So even 5 years after all new cars have DAB fitted as
standard would leave a lot of people having to use a DAB car adaptor,
and people will not want to use them, because they require wires
dangling all over the place, a working cigarette lighter for the power.
It's just a disastrous idea, basically.



I think you'll find that 12-13 years is the _average_ lifetime of a car.


I was using a figure that someone from the Society of Motor Manufacturers
and Traders (SMMT - the car industry's trade body) told me last year or the
year before when I spoke to him about this. Basically the car manufacturers
work on the assumption that all the cars on the road at any moment in time
will be replaced 12 - 13 years later.


That doesn't mean that there aren't any cars older than that.


Of course. But I'd guess that the number of cars on the road that are older
than 12 - 13 years old only make up a tiny percentage of the total number of
cars on teh road.



--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - digital radio news & info

The BBC's "justification" of digital radio switchover is based on lies

"charles" wrote in message
...
In article , Hugh Newbury
wrote:
charles wrote:

...


Yes. I forget the exact dates and details, but many years before 405
was switched off, you couldn't buy a TV set that was *only* 405 - it
had to be 405/625 dual standard, or 625 only.

but, I don't think there was any Government input to what was on the
market. It was simply BREMA* making the decision.

* British Radio Equipment Manufacturers Association.


So what are BREMA saying today about DAB/FM?

do they even still exist?

brema.org.uk has certainly been gone quite a while.

--

Brian Gregory. (In the UK)

To email me remove the letter vee.

jamie powell wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...
jamie powell wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...
jamie powell wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...
You'll need a decent sound card (one that doesn't perform sample rate
conversion) to make the most of it, but decent sound cards start at
around £40.

erm.... virtually *all* consumer grade sound cards perform sample rate
conversion, unless you have an ancient (12+ years old) one.
Everything is resampled to the card's native rate - usually 48 or
96KHz.


Mine doesn't perform sample rate conversion, and I think it cost £50 a
couple of years ago. The latest Soundblaster (or maybe the last 2
versions/generations) don't perform sample rate conversion, and they
cost a bit less. So I think what I said was fine.


I think you'll find that it most certainly does, and you simply haven't
noticed.


I've got an M-Audio Audiophile 2496, which doesn't perform sample rate
conversion.

That's not a mainstream consumer-grade card,


What I originally said was that you'd need a "decent sound card" to make the
most of the iPlayer AAC streams. I didn't say anything about consumer,
prosumer, pro or anything else like that.

As I said before, what I originally said was right, because the onus is on
the person reading what I said to ensure that the card they buy doesn't
perform sample rate conversion by default.



--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - digital radio news & info

The BBC's "justification" of digital radio switchover is based on lies

In article , Charles wrote:
Yes. I forget the exact dates and details, but many years before 405 was
switched off, you couldn't buy a TV set that was *only* 405 - it had to
be 405/625 dual standard, or 625 only.

but, I don't think there was any Government input to what was on the
market. It was simply BREMA* making the decision.

* British Radio Equipment Manufacturers Association.

It's irrelevant who made the decision. The salient fact is that a very
sensible decision *was* made and everybody followed it. Nowadays technical
innovation everywhere seems to be an anarchic uncoordinated mess.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

In article , DAB sounds worse than FM
writes

Of course. But I'd guess that the number of cars on the road that are older
than 12 - 13 years old only make up a tiny percentage of the total number of
cars on teh road.

Its not that tiny. Take a look next time your on the road at how many
vehicles have registrations earlier than "R". I doubt that its 50%, but
it isn't a tiny percentage, perhaps 10-20%.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

In article en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart writes
In article , Charles wrote:
Yes. I forget the exact dates and details, but many years before 405 was
switched off, you couldn't buy a TV set that was *only* 405 - it had to
be 405/625 dual standard, or 625 only.

but, I don't think there was any Government input to what was on the
market. It was simply BREMA* making the decision.

* British Radio Equipment Manufacturers Association.

It's irrelevant who made the decision.

Of course it is relevant. That such a decision could be made by a
*British* trade association simply demonstrates how dominant the UK TV
manufacturing industry was at the time in the domestic market.

Nowadays most (all?) TVs sold in the UK are imports because there is no,
let alone dominant, UK TV manufacturing industry. So no such decision
*could* be made, let alone enforced, today.

Don't look to the government either - unlike the French government, they
hide behind Eu anti-competitive legislation.

Just one more consequence of the gradual erosion of our sovereign
capabilities that we *all* voted in over the last 50 years, whether at
the ballot box or the checkout till.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

"Woody" wrote in message
...

We are using 1980's technology (mpeg2) to handle 21st century sources, but
we still and always have limited the maximum data rate in the UK to 192Kb.
Some continental stations use 256Kb or even 320Kb. Agreed they take much
more bandwidth but they sound much more like CD quality than our rubbish -
even R3!.


Yes if DAB used high bit rates and offered better quality than FM it would
be seen as a quality desirable service, and more people would want to adopt
it. At the moment the opposite is the case.

It appears that there is not much benefit to be gained from discontinuing
FM, so hopefully it will stay.

--
Michael Chare