First the Poll Tax; Now it's Daleks

awol

awol

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Why, oh why do the mandarins of the south want to try out their daft ideas on the Scots? Latest is another "test" (it better be just a test) of text-to-voice technology for Coastguard weather forecasts which gives an artificial voice instead of the softer, more listenable-to tones of the Stornoway coastguards.
The listener response has been akin to the House of Commons reaction to the Brexit deal.
 
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Im with you Awol, selecting Stornaway is a definite case of replacing the sublime with the ridiculous, I just loved the way she said ' three or fowwwer.'
Up with this we must not put!
 
They have those robot-announcers everywhere here in the western med. It's pretty awful, difficult to understand and so monotone your brain tends to switch off after 10 seconds even if you would really like to know about the weather. On the upside, it's on a continuous loop, instead of being done every once in a while.

It'll happen though, because it's cheaper.

We just ignore it and look at the Navtex display instead, which has the same information, but as easily readable text and available at our convenience.
 
As a native Norn Iron speaker I had to learn Scots as a second language so I have no trouble with it, Belfast Coastguard is in Bangor, Narth Daaawn, renowned for the plummiest accent in Ireland, perhaps helps that one of the readers used to sail with us.
 
If the coastguards don't read the weather and are replaced with darleks, then what will be done with the extra 10 minutes every three hours that might become free? (and that's assuming no human has to program the weather into the darlek). Over an 8hour shift, that might mean 20 minutes now free, but what can be achieved in 2 x 10 minute sessions?
 
MM5AHO said:
If the coastguards don't read the weather and are replaced with darleks, then what will be done with the extra 10 minutes every three hours that might become free? (and that's assuming no human has to program the weather into the darlek). Over an 8hour shift, that might mean 20 minutes now free, but what can be achieved in 2 x 10 minute sessions?
Click to expand...

2 extra coffee breaks?
 
awol said:
Why, oh why do the mandarins of the south want to try out their daft ideas on the Scots? Latest is another "test" (it better be just a test) of text-to-voice technology for Coastguard weather forecasts which gives an artificial voice instead of the softer, more listenable-to tones of the Stornoway coastguards.
The listener response has been akin to the House of Commons reaction to the Brexit deal.
Click to expand...

Is this the first of you hearing it? I complained about it on here almost exactly a year ago. And I still say it's 'horrible!
 
MM5AHO said:
If the coastguards don't read the weather and are replaced with darleks, then what will be done with the extra 10 minutes every three hours that might become free? (and that's assuming no human has to program the weather into the darlek). Over an 8hour shift, that might mean 20 minutes now free, but what can be achieved in 2 x 10 minute sessions?
Click to expand...

You've clearly not been to the civil service business planning training session .

10mimutes per station per broadcast. Is there 8 stations these days? 6 broadcasts per day. 8 hours saved. So you can have 1 less coast guard shift in the country. Simple.
 
ShinyShoe said:
You've clearly not been to the civil service business planning training session .

10mimutes per station per broadcast. Is there 8 stations these days? 6 broadcasts per day. 8 hours saved. So you can have 1 less coast guard shift in the country. Simple.
Click to expand...

But they don't record a new broadcast every time- I think it's only three actual recordings per day.
 
Are they actually using the Dalek for the whole MMSI Broadcast now? Previously, it was only for the initial message on Ch16, and then an actual living and breathing human read out the forecasts etc on the working channels.

To be honest, ever since the CG were playing silly buggers, and refusing to give out safety messages and forecasts, but were still taking Minch Reports from ships transiting the Minch, I lost my respect for them, and installed a Navtex.
 
In the 80s, the American Coastguard HF radio station MNM, started to use a synthesised voice to automatically read the High Seas Forecasts.

A combination of their incredible convoluted way of delineating the forecast areas, the fading and noise of SSB broadcasts, together with the stupid voice and its weird word spacing , made getting the weather on the western side of the Atlantic really 'fun'. If there was a word it couldn't 'read' it would then spell it phonetically. The words it struggled with were often really basic and regularly recurring. So every time it wanted to say 'wind' it kept saying whiskey india november delta.

You would have thought that 30 years later things would have improved, but clearly not by much:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2yDpccHuDc
 
MM5AHO said:
If the coastguards don't read the weather and are replaced with darleks, then what will be done with the extra 10 minutes every three hours that might become free? (and that's assuming no human has to program the weather into the darlek). Over an 8hour shift, that might mean 20 minutes now free, but what can be achieved in 2 x 10 minute sessions?
Click to expand...

You clearly have no idea how many more important Solent radio checks one can pack into those 10 mins. Not to forget mayday requests for yachts that have run out of fuel
 
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