NO MORE 198LW - Digital Radio Switchover

elton said:
DAB is useless rubbish, everyone knows that. I think the outcry from the otherwise silent majority will save the day when they lose reception of Gardeners Question Time, Woman's Hour and The Archers. They'll go ballistic.
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Its not those programs, its the loss of Test Match Special that will cause the silent majority to find its voice.
 
DogWatch said:
In fairness I use navtex and the regular coastguard broadcasts while cruising for our weather. In harbour I may add wifi to the mix.

I have plumbed in DaB on board via a tidy little warfdale personal radio on the line in of the boat's stereo system. The official JVC dongle is a bit pricey as yet.

I can't remember the last time I used LW to listen to R4, I am an avid R4 fan and enjoy the crisp sound on DaB.

I know I know, DaB is lower quality apparently, but at 40 years old I can't hear the difference, I am always surprised by the number of 65+ year old fanatics who have such clarity of hearing... or at least that's what they're told they're hearing anyway :rolleyes:
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NW Scotland 2008. Coastguard strike, so not weather report relays on VHF. Navtex out of range beyond Islay, unless you count the somewhat impenetrable stuff from the Faroes. The odd TV weather report during refreshment breaks ashore was of limited use. I found myself taking a lot more interest in barometric pressure trends and in waking at 0520 to listen to 198 on the SSB. I would make no claims regarding the quality of sound but it is usually only barely audible above the interference.
 
This is terrible news. When I built my camper van 5 years back, I bought a digital tv and radio for it. I've yet to use either, as everywhere we go, the signal is useless. I do use the am and fm on the radio. On the yacht, I have a standard cd/radio. I can pick up 5-live and the cricket on 198 everywhere. I even managed to pick up Radio Wales to hear us lose to South Africa whilst in Waterford recently.

I have a DAB radio on my hifi in the house. It does sound lovely, but I simply don't see it working in most of the places I visit with the boat, or van.
 
Speaking on R4 (analogue) this morning, da minister said that 2015 was only a target date, and that the actual date would be consumer driven. So that'll be when I can no longer get replacement valves for the Pye then.

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Twister_Ken said:
Speaking on R4 (analogue) this morning, da minister said that 2015 was only a target date
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I heard the same after 8am on Radio 4 (DAB) this morning, but they stated the news in more sensational terms something like "the Government has announced it has abandoned plans to switch off analogue radio in 2015".
 
198 kHz R4

This is a very worrying development indeed. The political agenda (identical for both Labour and Condem) seems to be the perceived kudos of the UK being the first "entirely digital" country. Pure dogma. Real world issues of safety, remote reception difficulties etc. are being ignored.

Incidentally, to answer previous posts, R4 LW is also used for the World Service overnight.

Another use of R4 LW which no-one seems so far to have picked up on is the phase modulated data transmissions which use the same carrier as the entertainment AM information. The principal application is radio teleswitching for electricity load control (several thousand MW UK wide) and meter rate switching for over 1 million customers UK wide, but also includes EA flood warnings. It is not at all clear how this requirement is to be serviced if R4 LW dissapears.
 
Yawn..................

Here we go again,whats wrong with LW ? then AM ?then.Black and white vhf transmissions to colour then ?the switch from 405 to 625,then terrestial to satellite TV now its VHF to DAB and who the hell would want a video recorder or one of the fancy mobile phone thingies.The luddites never ever go away.
The reason the Dab signal is so manky is the pathetic tx power being used at the moment as soon as the existing junk has been cleared from 220 some decent strength signals can be sent.
Anyway get a nice internet radio to go along side your Xtal sets.In case you lot have not noticed its the 21st century not 1938.
 
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oldgit said:
Here we go again,whats wrong with LW ? then AM ?then.Black and white vhf transmissions to colour then ?the switch from 405 to 625,then terrestial to satellite TV now its VHF to DAB and who the hell would want a video recorder or one of the fancy mobile phone thingies.The luddites never ever go away.
The reason the Dab signal is so manky is the pathetic tx power being used at the moment as soon as the existing junk has been cleared from 220 some decent strength signals can be sent.
Anyway get a nice internet radio to go along side your Xtal sets.In case you lot have not noticed its the 21st century not 1938.
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Even with decent signal strength there would be problems with DAB in a mobile application - like car radios, which are where I guess most people listen to radio! Unlike cell-phones, there is no graceful handing off procedure from transmitter station to transmitter station, so a car travelling long distances will certainly encounter many occasions where things fall apart.
 
Will DAB be usable abroad if Europe use a different compression?

One of the joys of LW r4 is that you can pick it up a long way away. Will UK shipping forecasts be available in the middle of the North Sea or even Baltic if LW goes? Not just for the shipping forecasts, but good entertainment as well, especially if not fluent in the local lingo.
 
elton said:
DAB is useless rubbish, everyone knows that. I think the outcry from the otherwise silent majority will save the day when they lose reception of Gardeners Question Time, Woman's Hour and The Archers. They'll go ballistic.
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DAB is good where and when it works. Where would we be without Planet Rock?

However, on the whole I think a lot of people will switchover from FM to podcasts and internet radio, the whole broadcast model is going wrong.

If I'm driving in my car, I should be able to download the latest news over the 3G network, as a podcast, with error correction etc etc. Then I should be able to listen to it, fast forwarding through the bits that don't interest me.
Why build all the DAB transmitters necessary for national coverage, mostly to broadcast a playlist that is more limited than most people's ipod collection?

The only way DAB makes sense as the sole radio broadcast network is if you move to satellite DAB, which works at a diferent frequency band, so all the existing receivers could be obsolete soon anyway.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
Even with decent signal strength there would be problems with DAB in a mobile application - like car radios, which are where I guess most people listen to radio! Unlike cell-phones, there is no graceful handing off procedure from transmitter station to transmitter station, so a car travelling long distances will certainly encounter many occasions where things fall apart.
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National DAB is a single frequency network. The COFDM guard interval is long enough to allow a receiver to receive from multiple transmitters at the same time with no problems. There is no handover.
 
Pye_End said:
Will DAB be usable abroad if Europe use a different compression?

One of the joys of LW r4 is that you can pick it up a long way away. Will UK shipping forecasts be available in the middle of the North Sea or even Baltic if LW goes? Not just for the shipping forecasts, but good entertainment as well, especially if not fluent in the local lingo.
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Yes, but not using DAB. You'd need to use Digital Radio Mondiale to get that sort of range.
 
st599 said:
Yes, but not using DAB. You'd need to use Digital Radio Mondiale to get that sort of range.
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Looks interesting. Sounds like a fair amount of broadcasting already happens using this technology.

Medium / long range of the signal is one thing, but do you know how the decoder will cope with a relatively poor quality signal? If it is comparable to DAB I cannot see it having anything like the same effective range as analogue, but maybe DRM is rather better than DAB. Can't find any information on this particular issue, although there must be experience of it.

My other concern is power consumption, particularly for personal radios. Will we ever get to the stage where we can have a small pocket radio where you can put 2 AAA batteries in and not have to change them again for weeks?
 
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