FM switchover - Coalition steamrolling us ?

[misterfish]

We always listen to the radio when driving. Our car has a built-in radio and cd player and there is no simple DAB equipment swap/addition available. There is an aftermarket addon unit which can be bought for £150 which allows the continued use of the existing display andsteering wheel controls. However, it seems that to get decent and uninterrupted reception on DAB needs a new aerial as well. So all of this equpment along with the necessary fitting will be at least £400.

So what does this offer me. More stations at best (with radio text) - but we no longer have the traffic announcement facility that we use.

We currently use a DAB radio in the house as well as digital radio on Sky and Freeview and have no problem with using digital radio, but this is an active choice. To be forced to spend hundreds of pounds to continue listening to radio in the car does not sit well with me, especially as I can see it offering very little extra.

I am surprised that all new cars don't have a DAB system fitted as standard.

Misterfsih

 

[RogerS]

.....
I am surprised that all new cars don't have a DAB system fitted as standard.

Misterfsih

Because the buying public don't see any advantage in shelling out for DAB ? If there was the demand for it then the car manufacturers would fit it. They are not daft.

Game...Set....Match, I think.

 

[wobblycogs]

I can't honestly see DAB ever really taking off unless they switch off FM transmission. There're just too many downsides to DAB to make it a viable alternative for most people. At the end of the day when you put a £10 FM radio up against a £100 DAB radio there's no competition over which one most people will buy.

Personally I think internet radio will take over and DAB will be scrapped before it really gets off the ground. Almost everyone with an internet connection now has wifi at home which could easily stream internet radio to devices in the house. Out and about is covered by your phone and mobile data and althogh it's expensive at the moment but it's coming down in price all the time. DAB, at best, can only hope to cover those spots the don't have mobile coverage.

 

[RogerP]

..... Almost everyone with an internet connection now has wifi at home which could easily stream internet radio to devices in the house. Out and about is covered by your phone and mobile data and althogh it's expensive at the moment but it's coming down in price all the time. DAB, at best, can only hope to cover those spots the don't have mobile coverage.

Far from everyone has wifi at home and far from everyone has a mobile phone that'll stream radio.

 

[wobblycogs]

At the moment, yes, but both technologies are growing rapidly. If we are honest the goal here isn't to give everyone perfect coverage it's to make money and no one seems to be able to see a way of making DAB profitable. The technology to do IP radio is already sitting in millions of peoples pockets though and the cost to entry is tiny for broadcasters. I'm not saying it'll happen tomorrow or even next year but ten years from now it could well be a reality.

 

[Eric The Viking]

I think you're dead right.

There is commercial incentive to provide WiFi access, as it's useful in all sorts of applications (cafes, libraries, transport, all sorts of public spaces, in fact). Dab is "only" radio and duplicated by both the Internet and Freeview, AND it's bloomin expensive to transmit (from a radio station's perspective). Provided WiFi becomes ubiquitous, and stays cheap enough, and secure enough (and clinically safe enough, too!), I think it will cause DAB's early exit. There's no reason to switch off FM (apart from flogging off the spectrum), but I bet that won't stop the determined bureaucrat.

Cheers,

E.

 

[JakeS]

Far from everyone has wifi at home and far from everyone has a mobile phone that'll stream radio.

And not all DAB radios cost £100, for that matter.

I'm kind of curious - other than price and coverage, what are the downsides to DAB? Coverage increases are planned, as mentioned in the proposal in the first post in this thread, and price will keep going down the more units are sold - you can buy a DAB radio for £20 these days, although the one I found at that price in a 30-second web search was luminous pink, to be fair.




Personally I'd be perfectly happy if internet radio became widespread, so long as it also became as cheap to listen to as FM or DAB. Presently the cost of listening to those is the cost of powering the device, but the cost of listening to internet radio on the go is the cost of powering the device plus the cost of all the data. I wouldn't be surprised if the data charge goes down, but I'm not so convinced it'll become free any time soon. Maybe flat-rate, but not free.

As Eric suggests, ubiquitous WiFi is probably the most likely answer, but that has problems as well - it's got even more coverage problems than DAB, and even if a network of high-power WiFi stations were set up around all the backwaters and nature reserves of the country, it's a two-way communication, so your device has to have a powerful enough transmitter to get back to the base-station.

 

[RogerS]

You'd need a large phone then to take a decent size loudspeaker! And some bloody good batteries to last all day out in the garden ......

 

[RogerP]

I'm kind of curious - other than price and coverage, what are the downsides to DAB?

The audiophiles will tell you FM is superior and national coverage is better. But FM where I am is hissy-horrible without a big outside antenna, DAB is clear as a bell full signal strength and the radio I have (Pure Evoke) does most of the tricks digital TV boxes (Virgin, Sky ) do. Record on a SD, pause and rewind, record a series, loads of inputs/outputs, remote handset etc. Runs on a rechargeable built in battery pack and in most places around the house and garden doesn't even need the telescopic aerial up.

 

[wobblycogs]

From my point of view Internet radio is already "free" as I have unlimited data packages for both my phone and my wired Internet connection. Admittedly, I'm ahead of the curve with that and I pay more than your average punter for the benefit of unlimited data but as every year passes data gets cheaper and cheaper. I can easily see a day when data becomes so cheap all plans are effectively unlimited*.

As for coverage, most people spend most of their time in towns an cities and covering them with WiFi fairly simple. The country side will always be a problem from a coverage point, no company will want to cover it and I just don't see the Government stepping in any time soon to deploy a country wide system.

As for why I think it'll move towards IP radio, Eric hit the nail on the head: DAB requires a dedicated device and all it gives you is radio. With a data connection and a phone you have that plus everything else the Internet has to offer.

* I'm sure the various networks will be gouging us for money for a good few years yet though.

 

[JakeS]

As for coverage, most people spend most of their time in towns an cities and covering them with WiFi fairly simple. The country side will always be a problem from a coverage point, no company will want to cover it and I just don't see the Government stepping in any time soon to deploy a country wide system.

The problem that I see with this is that for a lot of people, a significant part of their radio-listening is done on the road. I don't know what it's like for everyone, but I know my commute has significant sections where I don't even have a mobile phone signal (not very long sections, but easily long enough and frequent enough to make it very annoying to listen to Internet radio). There's pretty much no chance of WiFi magically appearing!

 

[wobblycogs]

That is certainly a problem and one that I don't think will be addressed any time soon by anything other than FM. One obvious data solution is satellite but that will clearly be too expensive for a long time to come, in fact due to the limited bandwidth / huge cell size it will probably always be an expensive option. I could imagine a switch to DAB to cater for people that are outside urban areas but the problem with that is it will have a comparatively low number of listeners combined with an expensive technology.

 

[RogerS]

From my point of view Internet radio is already "free" as I have unlimited data packages for both my phone and my wired Internet connection. Admittedly, I'm ahead of the curve with that and I pay more than your average punter for the benefit of unlimited data but as every year passes data gets cheaper and cheaper. I can easily see a day when data becomes so cheap all plans are effectively unlimited*.

As for coverage, most people spend most of their time in towns an cities and covering them with WiFi fairly simple. The country side will always be a problem from a coverage point, no company will want to cover it and I just don't see the Government stepping in any time soon to deploy a country wide system.

As for why I think it'll move towards IP radio, Eric hit the nail on the head: DAB requires a dedicated device and all it gives you is radio. With a data connection and a phone you have that plus everything else the Internet has to offer.

* I'm sure the various networks will be gouging us for money for a good few years yet though.

Or you just keep your £10 FM transistor radio.