| UK DAB industry admits DAB+ will be used in the UK29th March 2007 Someone sent me a press release / policy statement last Friday which was written by the Digital Radio Development Bureau (DRDB -- UK DAB's marketing / PR arm), which outlines what they think will happen concerning the introduction of DAB+ in the UK. This document unequivocally shows that when Quentin Howard (who is on the Board at the DRDB) appeared on Working Lunch on BBC2 on Tuesday last week he was completely wrong when he said that the UK will never use DAB+. The following quotes are taken from the DRDB press release (Warning: Bullshit Detectors should be switched onto their highest setting when reading DRDB material):
Translation from DRDB spin into English As I suggested above, the DRDB is notorious for spinning everything, so although this press release makes some admissions that they probably now regret making (the press release was issued in January), it is still full of the usual spin that you expect from a DRDB press release, and, as Quentin Howard's comments on Working Lunch clearly showed, the UK DAB industry wants everybody to believe that DAB+ will mean "nothing in this country", because they're paranoid that people will stop buying DAB radios if they know that DAB+ is on the horizon. So, I'll translate some of the DRDB spin back into English below. Firstly, they say that DAB+ receivers will be significantly more expensive than DAB receivers, but that's obviously going to be the case when you compare them to the bottom-of-the-range-avoid-at-all-costs DAB radios you can buy for £40 these days. They also say: "If high efficiency audio codec products continue to infiltrate the UK market over the following years, the DRDB estimates it will be 2010 before such products make up a significant number of sets in the market". I have to say that the use of the word "infiltrate" is a bizarre way to describe some of the big DAB receiver manufacturers' plans to sell receivers that will be software-upgradeable to DAB+ from July and receivers that support DAB+ as standard by the autumn. Furthermore, it is laughable to suggest that people will continue to primarily buy Betamax-style DAB receivers when futureproof DAB+ receivers will be in the shops, so they're obviously massively downplaying the issue of how many DAB+ receivers will have been sold by 2010. They also say that "Beyond 2010 it is possible there will be an increase in high efficiency audio codec broadcasts," which is an uncharacteristic admission that they think that there could already be some DAB+ broadcasts by 2010, which therefore contradicts everything they'd previously said about DAB+ sales being low, because there's no point in launching DAB+ stations if there's as few receivers as they're trying to make out. And they even mention broadcasters switching off current MP2 services in favour of launching AAC+ stations on DAB+, which again contradicts everything they'd said about DAB+ sales being low. Basically, this is a standard spin-laden DRDB press release, and the only difference between it and all the other DRDB press releases is that they were uncharacteristically a bit lax on this occasion and made some admissions that they will now regret, because they obviously completely contradict what Quentin Howard said on Working Lunch on BBC2.
In reality I've been told that receivers using the new Frontier-Silicon Venice 5 DAB/DAB+ receiver module will be in the shops in the UK by June/July this year, and receivers using this module that have a USB socket on the back will be software-upgradeable to support DAB+. Frontier-Silicon has said that it wants to add DAB+ support to all of its Venice 5 modules, but it won't know until it has finished implementing the software for DAB+ in the summer/early autumn whether they will be able to just produce one version of the module that supports both DAB and DAB+, or whether separate DAB-only and DAB/DAB+ modules will need to be produced. As I expand upon in an article about the new Frontier-Silicon DAB/DAB+ modules, supporting DAB+ may require the use of a larger flash memory chip than for DAB-only support (although the difference in cost of the memory chip is only in the region of 11 to 22p!). If this does transpire then the DAB-only version of the Venice 5 module will be used for entry-level DAB receivers and the DAB/DAB+ version will be used for the mid- to high-price DAB receivers. Thankfully, the mid-to-high price range of DAB receivers accounts for a large percentage of DAB receiver sales -- e.g. Pure Digital's products are nearly all in the mid-to-high price range, and they're the market leaders with 32.4% of all DAB portable radio sales. Frontier-Silicon has said that once sales take off in countries using DAB+ then it will become uneconomic to make two versions of the Venice 5 module, and all modules will ship with DAB+ support. All receivers using the Frontier-Silicon Venice 6 module will support DAB+ as standard, and this module will begin shipping in the autumn. The Venice 6 module will support DAB/DAB+ and Wi-Fi Internet radio as well as FM. So the reality is that there will be literally millions of DAB+ receivers in UK homes by 2010, and the commercial radio groups won't pass up the opportunity to make additional revenue by launching new stations using AAC+ that couldn't be launched on the old DAB system.
International support for DAB+ growing quickly The following countries and regions have already committed to launching DAB+:
France is also planning to launch digital radio next year using either the T-DMB system alone or T-DMB along with DAB+. Whichever route France takes will boost DAB+, because T-DMB is almost identical to DAB+ in terms of the technologies it uses, and Frontier-Silicon has said that its Venice 5 module will add audio-only support for T-DMB in addition to DAB+ if France decides to use T-DMB. Radioscape, which is the other major DAB module manufacturer has also said its modules will support T-DMB if France adopts it. And other countries that I've seen mentioned being interested in using DAB+ include:
And the new DAB+ standard was only announced last November... Whereas lots of countries had misigivings about using DAB due to the technology being so old, DAB+ solves these problems. Also, the Regional Radio Conference 2006 in Geneva allocated Band III spectrum to all the European countries to allow them to launch "DAB". So whereas the old DAB system was going nowhere, DAB+ is likely to become the Europe-wide digital radio standard (I'm including France in this, because I think France will adopt T-DMB and DAB+ and because DAB+ receivers will be able to receive the audio of T-DMB services). Basically, DAB is the Betamax of digital radio1 and in the not-too-distant future you won't be able to buy a DAB-only receiver; so DAB+ will inevitably be used in the UK, and it is simply a matter of time before we get it.
1 - For people that might protest at DAB being labelled the Betamax of digital radio because Betamax was supposed to be the technically superior standard compared to VHS, apparently this is an urban myth, and there was virtually nothing to choose between Betamax and VHS in terms of the picture quality the two formats offered, and the reason VHS won out was due to better marketing, more film titles being available for it and probably a bit of luck thrown in as well.
Terminology The DRDB's press release says that DAB currently uses the "MPEG II" audio codec, which is not the correct name for this codec. MPEG-2 is a family of audio and video coding standards, so it is incorrect to refer to the audio codec used on DAB as "MPEG II". Similarly, some people refer to MP3 as being MPEG-3, which is wrong for the same reason. The correct name for the current audio codec used on DAB is MPEG Audio Layer 2, which is usually shortened to MP2 because the file extension for audio files that use this codec is ".mp2", just like MP3's file extension is ".mp3" -- the official name of the MP3 codec is MPEG Audio Layer 3. Also, Ofcom is referring to the new audio codec used on DAB+ as being "AAC", but the audio codec adopted for DAB+ is "AAC+", which is not the same thing as AAC. AAC+ is a superset of AAC, and AAC+ is significantly more
efficient than AAC at lower bit rate levels -- that's why its official
name is High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC), and not plain
old AAC.
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