GCap's chief exec,
Fru Hazlitt, told the
Radio Reborn conference
this week that the radio
industry should embrace
Internet radio, and not
be scared of it.
This
article puts the record
straight about a few
things that Nick Piggott
told the editor of The
Register website and
which were subsequently
published in an article
defending DAB.
Frontier-Silicon has
launched a DAB+ version
of its Venice 5 module,
although the only reason
why a DAB-only version
was made was due to the
receiver manufacturers
profiteering at the
expense of consumers.
The BBC has said it
will start using new
audio formats for its
Internet streams in the
next few months, which
is very likely to be AAC
or AAC+, but I can
reveal that the BBC
could have done this
four years ago.
France has adopted
the DMB system for
digital radio, which has
got to be one of the
most ridiculous decisions
imaginable considering
that DAB+ has just been
designed.
The world's first ever DRM+ broadcastes have gone on-air in the
FM band in Germany, and it is reported that the DRM+ system will be
standardised next year.
We should have been seeing a steady
stream of new DAB+-upgradeable receivers being launched by now, but
unfortunately the receiver manufacturers are delaying the switch to
DAB+ in order to sell as many non-upgradeable receivers as possible --
it's a new take on the "buy one get one free" offer: "buy two when you
only need one".
Ofcom has sent a document to the
French authorities criticising them for mandating that T-DMB must be
used -- Ofcom also basically admits that DAB+ will be used.
Annual DAB sales in 2008 are forecast
by the DRDB (Digital Radio Development Bureau) to be 50% below their
previous forecasts, and cumulative sales will also be 30% below
previous forecasts.
Heat Radio is now being broadcast at
112 kbps in joint stereo on a number of local DAB multiplexes, and this
is the first station to use 112 kbps in the UK.
Ofcom has launched a public
consultation to garner views on what it calls 'next generation access
networks', or 'superfast broadband', as it is becoming known.
The BBC Trust has provisionally
approved the launch of the BBC HD channel on Freeview, satellite, cable
and the Internet, but they seem to be favouring that the channel should
not be launched on Freeview until 2009-2010. ITV1 and Channel 4 will
also be launching in HD on satellite in the coming months.
Now that Ofcom has awarded the new
national DAB multiplex to Channel 4, we will now see the first stereo
stations using a bit rate of 112 kbps on DAB, compared to the current
minimum bit rate used of 128 kbps.
Although some of the daily newspapers
have been saying that FM is going to be switched off in the next few
years, what the chief executive of Ofcom actually said was that he
wouldn't set a switch-off date for FM yet!
Channel 4 has been awarded the new
national DAB multiplex licence that will go on-air from July next year.
The multiplex will carry ten new stations, a podcast service and space
for 2 mobile TV channels.
Some of the French broadcasters want
to use DMB when they launch digital radio next year rather than DAB+,
but some figures published in an EBU Technical Review article about
DAB+ and DMB show that DMB wastes a large amount of the capacity on
overhead compared to DAB+
'[DAB
uses the MPEG Layer II audio codec]. This
offers a variety of options, in which bit-rate can be traded for
quality. For high quality stereo signals, a bit-rate between 192 and
256
kbit/s is needed.'
