The BBC Should Increase the Radio Station Bit Rates on Satellite

The BBC TV channels' audio channels use the following bit rates on Freeview, digital satellite and cable:

Yet the BBC's radio stations only use the following bit rates on Freeview and digital satellite:

Why are the bit rates used for Radios 1-4 only 192kbps when the TV audio channels are usually 256kbps?

Why on earth are the bit rates of 6 Music, 1Xtra and BBC7 only 160kbps?

Why is the Asian Network using such a low bit rate of 128kbps for stereo?

Why is the bit rate of the World Service on Freeview only 64kbps?

On digital satellite, the BBC leases 5 full transponders on the Astra 2D satellite (transponders 45, 46, 47, 48 & 50) and 1 full transponder on the Astra 2B satellite (transponder 38), and with a capacity of 33 Mbps per transponder this equates to a total capacity of 198 Mbps.

Two of these transponders (tp 50 on Astra 2D and tp 38 on Astra 2B) are primarily used for BBC interactive services, BBCi, with streams of Radio 2 (192kbps), Radio 4 (192kbps), BBC 1 Cambridge (about 5 Mbps), BBC1 Channel Islands (about 5Mbps) and BBC Parliament (about 3 Mbps), with the remainder allocated to BBCi. With a capacity of 33 Mbps per transponder, this means that about 52 Mbps of capacity is reserved for BBCi, despite the fact that this capacity is only needed for special events, such as Wimbledon, Olympics, golf, football, rugby, etc.

There's also 18 regional BBC1 streams on digital satellite, each using a constant bit rate (CBR) of about 5 Mbps. This totals a staggering 90 Mbps of capacity.

Given the enormous capacity the BBC have on digital satellite, I would say the following bit rates would be far more suitable:

All that would be required to provide these bit rates is an additional 2208 - 1664 = 544 kbps. In other words, the percentage of BBC digital satellite capacity used for the network radio stations would change from 0.84% to 1.12%. Hardly pushing the boat out...

Also, Radios 2 and 4 are currently on 2 different Astra satellites, 2D and 2B:

Both of these satellites cover the UK:

Satellite footprint for Astra 2D

Satellite footprint for Astra 2B

It is common knowledge that Radios 2 and 4 being on Astra 2B is to allow reception for ex-pats living in Spain -- a few MPs, civil servants and BBC staff had problems receiving these stations at their villas in Spain, apparently!

I can live with Radios 2 and 4 being on Astra 2B for those lucky enough to have villas in Spain, but everybody with Sky digiboxes receives this stream on Astra 2B (the Sky software points the receiver to this stream rather than the one on Astra 2D), so the stream on Astra 2D serves no purpose and, therefore, this capacity could be freed-up to be used for the other radio stations. This would free-up 384kbps, which would leave only 160 kbps to be found of the 544 kbps required for proposed bit rates in the table above. As stated above, BBCi has a reserved capacity of about 52 Mbps, and because of the relatively small audience for BBCi even when special events are being transmitted, I would propose that the 160kbps to be provided by freeing-up -- normally unused -- BBCi capacity. A reduction in bit rate of just 160kbps out of 52 Mbps would leave a capacity of 51.84 Mbps, and the difference in picture quality on the BBCi streams would not be perceivable even to the most experienced and eagle-eyed video coding expert.

Basically, there is absolutely no conceivable reason why the BBC cannot increase the bit rates of their radio stations on digital satellite.
 
 

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