Digital radio - outrageous

"Graham." wrote in message
...

Does anyone here genuinely think that radio broadcasting should continue
in its analogue form indefinitely?

Good question. Of course, it all depends on the cost-benefit analysis.
With every decision like this, you have to weigh up the gains against the
losses.

What really bothers me is that the government won't feel most of the losses.
Further, many of the losses are non-tangible, like my sadness at not being
able to use my beloved Leak FM tuner any more.

So, all the government thinks about is: "How much will it cost us to replace
the analogue transmitters with digital? And how much revenue will we get
from selling the spectrum?".

If that's all you need to consider, then it's a no-brainer: digital
tomorrow. After all, it's the public who feels the pain, and that doesn't
appear in the government's cost benefit analysis.

SteveT

"Gary" wrote in message
...

Use a converter similar to the things for mp3 players in cars.

snip

My friend has one and it is a DAB with FM output.

snip

The modulators in Tesco are about £10 and work very well. We use one when
we go on holiday to play our MP3 in the hotel.

Yes, I think we can all agree that the only way to send DAB to an existing
analogue radio is by using a box which receives DAB and transmits a low
power FM signal for the radio to pick up.

As I said, though, it stops you using the radio's own tuning controls, so
you need another box, or panel, or other user interface to let you tune
through the stations.

And whilst I can live with this for my hi-fi system, it's going to be a
complete mess for all the portable radios we have; all the car radios; and
hopeless for our collection of beloved antique radios.

The only solution would seem to be to get a multi-channel DAB radio that
receives ALL the popular DAB channels simultaneously, and re-broadcasts them
across the FM band. And that is NOT going to happen, is it? Wouldn't you
need a DAB receiver chip for every channel?

Maybe it would be more sensible to receive all these channels over the
Internet, and then re-broadcast them domestically. Probably much cheaper
than receiving DAB. Which makes you wonder why we are bothering with DAB,
and the radio waves, at all. (Yes, I know - mobile). Won't help car
radios, though.

SteveT

"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...

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

My view on this is that given the horrendous costs of fitting a
replacement "branded" car radio,

In fact, it will never happen. Loads of car radios are integrated into
the control panel with their electronics goodness knows where.

Switching off analogue will break the vast majority of car radios.

SteveT

Might it be possible via a Bluetooth interface - this would be bidirectional
so tuning info should be accessible? Not sure what quality would be
available in the audio domain though

--
Paul S

"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
news

"Gary" wrote in message
...

Correctly located 1 RF converter set could serve the entire house. (
well my 3 bed any way)

Ah, so how would that work? Wouldn't it need to have a digital tuner for
every single DAB station, so that it can then modulate each one onto its
own FM frequency?



Perhaps they're thinking of something similar to this.
http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60905

Ah, so how would that work? Wouldn't it need to have a digital tuner for
every single DAB station, so that it can then modulate each one onto its
own FM frequency?



Perhaps they're thinking of something similar to this.
http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60905

Oh, something else to distract the driver and block part of his view, with a
trailing lead to a power socket too.
Not forgetting that it's another reason to break into the car, with the
tell-tale circle on the windscreen that hints at a satnav to steal, probably
put away in the glovebox. Hmm

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
o.uk...
Ah, so how would that work? Wouldn't it need to have a digital tuner
for every single DAB station, so that it can then modulate each one onto
its own FM frequency?



Perhaps they're thinking of something similar to this.
http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60905

Oh, something else to distract the driver and block part of his view, with
a trailing lead to a power socket too.
Not forgetting that it's another reason to break into the car, with the
tell-tale circle on the windscreen that hints at a satnav to steal,
probably put away in the glovebox. Hmm



My son bought one simply because my daughter in law's Ford Ka car radio was
FM only and I have to say that on the odd occasions when I've travelled in
the car it appeared to work fine, a lot better in fact than I assumed it
would (or should) considering that it only has a windscreen mounted aerial.

Perhaps they're thinking of something similar to this.
http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60905

Anyone tried one of these? What's the sound quality and range like? Any
good for sending MP3 around the house?

Paul DS

In article ,
Paul D.Smith wrote:
Perhaps they're thinking of something similar to this.
http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60905

Anyone tried one of these? What's the sound quality and range like? Any
good for sending MP3 around the house?

Paul DS

I bought one and was very disappointed. The range - I don't know, but it
did reach the rear roof mounted aerial to be receivable by the car radio.
It's reception qualities were not good in a medium strength area. Fine
wehn I could see the transitter. This is really due to the location of the
receiving aerial. With a roof-top aerial I'm sure it would be fine, but
one on the front windscreen is too directional to be any use.

If you want to feed MP3 material round the house, there are plenty of
cheaper bits of kit _ you don't need the DAB receiver bit.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.16

"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...
Following on from the earlier thread, take a look he

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8591942.stm

I can't believe this is happening. Doesn't the government realise the


Did you really only just notice these plans?


incredible impact this will have on the public? There must be tens of
millions of FM/AM radios in use, all of which will be rendered useless
(but
see later). Portable radios, domestic radios. Millions of car radios,
ditto. And all those wonderful radiograms and valve FM/AM receivers will
never work again, either. My Sony surround sound receiver cost hundreds
of
pounds and will have to be scrapped.

Doesn't the Sony doesn't have a Line in connection?


This is simply outrageous.
The article talks about "conversion kits" for car radios. I'm reasonably
savvy when it comes to electronics and techie things, but I can't imagine
for a moment what the heck such a thing could be.

Bearing in mind that it will have to work with all car radios, the only
possibility would seem to be the equivalent of the TV set-top box, which
would work like a digital radio and then present its output as FM on one
frequency. So you'd leave your car radio on one frequency and use the
external box to switch between stations.

Yeah, right. So you're going to render the scan up / scan down and
waveband-change buttons on your steering wheel or stalk useless. Ditto
all
the tuning knobs on the radio itself. If an external box could somehow
"watch" what the radio is tuned to, it could - conceivably - seek out the
relevant digital station. But as far as I can see there's no realistic
way
of doing that.

So you'll have to have some other sort of control panel fitted to your car
to control the conversion box. Wouldn't you? For god's sake, it would
look
a mess.

Expensive analogue domestic receivers like mine could be fitted with an
external box, just like an analogue telly. But what about all the other
little radios scattered around people's homes? They're in all sorts of
things. Bearing in mind the moderately obscene price of digital
receivers,
you'll end up spending - what?..... twenty quid? - to convert each
existing
radio to digital with an external box.

What a joke. Each external box will need its own batteries. So now, when
you go jogging, or walking to work, or anything else that involves
listening
to your personal radio, you'll have to carry two boxes. Either that, or
scrap a perfectly good personal radio.

I don't think anyone elxcept you is suggesting use of converters anywhere
except with hi-fi systems and in cars where the existing radio cannot be
replaced.


The thing is, radios and televisions are very different. You usually have
only one, two or three TVs per household. And they are almost always
static, so an external box is feasible. But for radios, which are usually
portable, no way! In any case, they almost always have an internal
aerial,
so you'd need to add the expense of an RF modulator and transmitter
(admittedly very low power) to the conversion box. Ridiculous.

Two questions. Firstly, what do you guys think about the government in
this
respect? Is it stupid? Or does it understand the issues far better than
me
and has good answers for them?

No they haven't got a clue. They believe any half truth the BBC tells them.


The House of Lords Communications Commitee doesn't appear to have a single
technical member. They een had to have it explained that although digital
radios use more power they still only consume a tiny amount of the average
elctricity bill.

Secondly, can any of you think of a feasible technical solution which
would
allow existing analogue radios to stay in service, other than an external,
digital "pre-tuner" box? Am I exaggerating the difficulties of using
external boxes?

One last thing: people listening to Radio 3 will NOT want any degradation
of sound quality. DAB seems to do just that. How will this issue be
dealt with? DAB-2? Which involves scrapping all our DAB radios, too, I
believe!

It's called DAB+ and yes, hardly any existing DAB radios will work with it.
DAB+ could be used to provide higher quality or more stations or a
combination of both.
Much the same could be achieved, at conciderable expense, by allocating more
frequencies to DAB and upgrading the transmitters to transmit the extra
frequencies in addition to the current ones.
Changing the transmitters to DAB+ would be pretty cheap, but would cost the
existing DAB listeners the cost of buying new DAB+ radios.
Also quality could be improved if we shut down some of the stations
currently using DAB. I personally hope we lose some of the more obscure BBC
stations so the BBC can improve their audio quality on DAB. The BBC claim
they're thinking of shutting down BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network but I'm
not convinced it's going to happen. Radio 1 Xtra would seem a more obvious
choice to me than 6 Music, but I have no interest in either.
DAB+ has otherlesser benifits, I think it's less likely to produce nasty
sounds when the signal is of marginal strength. With DAB you can the
'bubbling mud' effect, and even the odd squeek.


All thoughts are welcome.


--

Brian Gregory. (In the UK)

To email me remove the letter vee.

"Brian Gregory [UK]" wrote in message
...
"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...
Following on from the earlier thread, take a look he

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8591942.stm

I can't believe this is happening. Doesn't the government realise the


Did you really only just notice these plans?


incredible impact this will have on the public? There must be tens of
millions of FM/AM radios in use, all of which will be rendered useless
(but
see later). Portable radios, domestic radios. Millions of car radios,
ditto. And all those wonderful radiograms and valve FM/AM receivers will
never work again, either. My Sony surround sound receiver cost hundreds
of
pounds and will have to be scrapped.

Doesn't the Sony doesn't have a Line in connection?


This is simply outrageous.
The article talks about "conversion kits" for car radios. I'm reasonably
savvy when it comes to electronics and techie things, but I can't imagine
for a moment what the heck such a thing could be.

Bearing in mind that it will have to work with all car radios, the only
possibility would seem to be the equivalent of the TV set-top box, which
would work like a digital radio and then present its output as FM on one
frequency. So you'd leave your car radio on one frequency and use the
external box to switch between stations.

Yeah, right. So you're going to render the scan up / scan down and
waveband-change buttons on your steering wheel or stalk useless. Ditto
all
the tuning knobs on the radio itself. If an external box could somehow
"watch" what the radio is tuned to, it could - conceivably - seek out the
relevant digital station. But as far as I can see there's no realistic
way
of doing that.

So you'll have to have some other sort of control panel fitted to your
car
to control the conversion box. Wouldn't you? For god's sake, it would
look
a mess.

Expensive analogue domestic receivers like mine could be fitted with an
external box, just like an analogue telly. But what about all the other
little radios scattered around people's homes? They're in all sorts of
things. Bearing in mind the moderately obscene price of digital
receivers,
you'll end up spending - what?..... twenty quid? - to convert each
existing
radio to digital with an external box.

What a joke. Each external box will need its own batteries. So now,
when
you go jogging, or walking to work, or anything else that involves
listening
to your personal radio, you'll have to carry two boxes. Either that, or
scrap a perfectly good personal radio.

I don't think anyone elxcept you is suggesting use of converters anywhere
except with hi-fi systems and in cars where the existing radio cannot be
replaced.


The thing is, radios and televisions are very different. You usually
have
only one, two or three TVs per household. And they are almost always
static, so an external box is feasible. But for radios, which are
usually
portable, no way! In any case, they almost always have an internal
aerial,
so you'd need to add the expense of an RF modulator and transmitter
(admittedly very low power) to the conversion box. Ridiculous.

Two questions. Firstly, what do you guys think about the government in
this
respect? Is it stupid? Or does it understand the issues far better than
me
and has good answers for them?

No they haven't got a clue. They believe any half truth the BBC tells
them.


The House of Lords Communications Commitee doesn't appear to have a single
technical member. They een had to have it explained that although digital
radios use more power they still only consume a tiny amount of the average
elctricity bill.

Secondly, can any of you think of a feasible technical solution which
would
allow existing analogue radios to stay in service, other than an
external,
digital "pre-tuner" box? Am I exaggerating the difficulties of using
external boxes?

One last thing: people listening to Radio 3 will NOT want any degradation
of sound quality. DAB seems to do just that. How will this issue be
dealt with? DAB-2? Which involves scrapping all our DAB radios, too, I
believe!

It's called DAB+ and yes, hardly any existing DAB radios will work with
it.
DAB+ could be used to provide higher quality or more stations or a
combination of both.
Much the same could be achieved, at conciderable expense, by allocating
more frequencies to DAB and upgrading the transmitters to transmit the
extra frequencies in addition to the current ones.
Changing the transmitters to DAB+ would be pretty cheap, but would cost
the existing DAB listeners the cost of buying new DAB+ radios.
Also quality could be improved if we shut down some of the stations
currently using DAB. I personally hope we lose some of the more obscure
BBC stations so the BBC can improve their audio quality on DAB. The BBC
claim they're thinking of shutting down BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network
but I'm not convinced it's going to happen. Radio 1 Xtra would seem a more
obvious choice to me than 6 Music, but I have no interest in either.
DAB+ has otherlesser benifits, I think it's less likely to produce nasty
sounds when the signal is of marginal strength. With DAB you can the
'bubbling mud' effect, and even the odd squeek.


All thoughts are welcome.



My Pure Evoke Internet radio is over 12 months old now and that has DAB +
already incorporated. Freeview has shown us that many manufacturers won't
future proof their products (usually to save a few pennies in production
costs) unless they're forced to, such as with Sky and Freesat receivers.