"Alan" <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote in message
news:AtSTnMGj7pQKFwgC@amac.f2s.com
> In message <7afjm6F1vb133U1@mid.individual.net>, DAB sounds worse
> than
> FM <dab.is@fooked.com> 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 shit
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 shit
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 shit)
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.



--
Steve - www.savefm.org - stop the BBC bullies switching off FM

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

"It is the sheer volume of online audio content available via
internet-connected devices which terrifies the UK radio industry. I
believe that broadband-delivered radio will explode in the years to
come, offering very local, unregulated content, as well as opening a
window to the radio stations of the world." - from the Myers Report