DAB+ - is there a future?

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sbiddle

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#19966 8-Mar-2008 10:20

With the annoucement that a DAB+ trial will now take place in Auckland (there has already been a trial in Wellington) it looks like we could well see a rollout in New Zealand.

While the technology is proven I wonder whether there is actually a business model for such a rollout now? People are spending far less time listening to radio and spending far more time listening to their own music and Podcasts. IMHO I can only see the launch and rollout being a failure as people simply won't buy new radios.

Would you spend money on a DAB radio for home or car? Given the choice of listening to digital radio or your own music what would you prefer?

grant_k

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#115363 8-Mar-2008 10:33

sbiddle: Would you spend money on a DAB radio for home or car? Given the choice of listening to digital radio or your own music what would you prefer?

No, definitely not. However, as the years go by and new vehicles are equipped with DAB-compatible radios at the factory, we could all end up with them by default anyway. I guess it all depends on whether we adopt the same DAB standards as other major markets for which our imported vehicles are designed. From what I saw a while back, it is proposed to follow the US standard rather than the European one -- is that correct?

Personally, I mostly listen to the radio while out driving in a vehicle.

When at home I do listen to the odd bit of streaming internet radio, but never to a conventional FM or AM radio. Hence there is no way I would bother buying a DAB radio for home use. You can get similar quality via an Internet Stream, although it seems that most current feeds are a lot lower bit rate than a DAB radio provides.

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sbiddle

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#115370 8-Mar-2008 10:57

I just don't see a compelling reason for a large number of people to upgrade.

The DTT DVB-T upgrade is a compelling reason to move to a digital platform. It offers far superior picture quality and improves reception for a large number of people. DAB+ will give us digital audio uaing AAC+ and enhanced features and potentially solve a lot of the coverage problems that exist.

The big question however is whether the audio quality will be any better. The quality of FM radio is great - the problem is that most commercial stations compress their music so heavily and reduce the dymanic range that it sounds terrible. If the likes of ZM are going to feed the same horrible audio into a DAB+ transmitter then it's going to sound even worse than FM does now. Even a good AAC+ feed isn't going to sound better than FM does now.

DAB radio's still aren't standard in cars in the UK despite it being the biggest DAB market - what hope is there of even seeing factory fitted radios in NZ? Remember that DAB+ is also a new standard and like H.264 for DVB-T there are only a handful of devices that support it. The UK is never going to able to get rid of DAB due to the large market of existing devices and while the DAB broadcasts still exist manufacturers are still going to continue producing cheap DAB units rather than producing DAB+ capable devices.

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#115375 8-Mar-2008 11:29

The whole idea of DAB radio will fail, unless the commercial networks pull their heads out of the sand and both agree on which standard to use. I believe one network is trialling one standard, whilst the other is trialling the other standard.

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richms

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#115494 9-Mar-2008 00:23

No, both networks are members of the RBA, and they are pushing for HD radio, which means they use their exising frequancies vs having to pay again to kordia to use their larger muxes of several stations.

kordia want to get their piece of the pie (or make it bigger for outside of Auckland stations since they use kordias sites) and get another freeview type earner up and running for dab+. Stations want HD radio since it will mean that any new stations have to come from them, and they can make money selling the ancillary channels for either more audio or for data like for navigation systems.DAB+ makes then just a content provider for someone else's tx network.

DAB+ does have the ability to have several tx's sharing a channel, no idea if HD can do that since it is based on the existing FM use which doesn't allow for it, once the spectrum hogging FM carrier is turned off it might, but then it might also mean that the 0.4MHz spacing wont work which would be a shame.

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#115498 9-Mar-2008 02:24

It seems DAB radio hasn't really taken off in the UK. Only about 83% of the country is covered. Over here you could pick a freeview
box for 20 quid and use it for your Fm stations. (the ones on freeview)

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richms

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#115563 9-Mar-2008 14:40

Is that 83% of population or surface area? If the latter then thats great IMO, if only 83%of people then thats a bit poor but really, there are areas in nz that get no FM at this stage so really I dont think that some people missing out on DAB is a major issue.

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#115913 11-Mar-2008 10:47

There are some interesting comments on the failure of DAB in the UK in The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/06/dab_fail/).

richms

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#115930 11-Mar-2008 12:32

I have a couple of Cd-rs that were recorded of dab in the uk - the results make the living channel on sky sound good in comparison. With aac+ and decent bitrates for it there shouldnt be the audio quality issues. Broadcasters dont want to send cd quality, just listen to how bad zm and the edge sound on fm for evidence of that, but when their tightness on bandwidth is making artifacts and unlistenable sound then thats taking it too far.

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#116520 14-Mar-2008 06:27

richms: I have a couple of Cd-rs that were recorded of dab in the uk - the results make the living channel on sky sound good in comparison. With aac+ and decent bitrates for it there shouldnt be the audio quality issues. Broadcasters dont want to send cd quality, just listen to how bad zm and the edge sound on fm for evidence of that, but when their tightness on bandwidth is making artifacts and unlistenable sound then thats taking it too far.

A station worse than ZM and the edge is Life FM in Auckland. Totally shocking.

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manaia

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#116538 14-Mar-2008 07:35

I got a new (old) car a few months ago and dropouts on the radio listening to ZM drive me nuts. (Not that I like ZM that much but my wife & kids do). Every few minutes there is a 2 second silence. I've tried every setting on the radio and thought that it might be due to RDS or alternate frequency data that ZM might be transmitting. I have noticed that ZM seems to be lower quality than other stations (BFM - yay!) but hadn't considered that they might be using less bandwidth.

sbiddle

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#116558 14-Mar-2008 08:41

ZM reception is now terrible in Wgtn and they have lost a huge number of listeners. All the major radio stations in Wgtn have traditionally had two main frequencies - 1 for Mt Kaukau and 1 for Towai in Lower Hutt. Having a transmitter on Towai is essential to get good coverage on SH2 all the way from Upper Hutt into Wgtn.

TRN gave up the ZM Towai frequency to bring another station to Wgtn and change the frequency steps and as a result of this ZM is impossible to pick up in most of the Hutt Valley.

richms

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#116562 14-Mar-2008 08:55

I dont find that there is any dropouts at all because of the AF data, I have no idea how it knows which other freq to change to but the change is seamless IME, except when they are not playing the same souce because its adverts. Dont even notice it till the ads normally. Unlike the rock or hauraki where I have to try to remember what channel they are on for the waikato so normally dont bother.

ZMs waikato freq is worse in north waikato because some idiot at RSM gave 89.9 to some station near the top of auckland without any concern for interferance. That other one comes down and will trash it, particually when your on SH2.

And FWIW, compression i am refering to is the dynamic compression, zm is actually to the point of clipping, the edge is not far behind it. life fm, and even worse the pacific island station on 103.something outside auckland are just examples of low bitrate encoding with an obsolete mpeg2 codec.

Richard rich.ms