Why the Hypocrisy?

23rd June 2005

DAB and the digital satellite, digital terrestrial and digital cable TV platforms all use the MP2 audio codec. 98% of all stereo radio stations on DAB in the UK use 128 kbps, yet as you can see in the following table, the bit rates used for the audio channels for the TV channels on Freeview all use a bit rate of either 192 kbps or 256 kbps.

If 128 kbps MP2 really was good enough for DAB then why do all of the TV channels use far higher bit rates for their audio channels? That is of course a rhetorical question, because 128 kbps isn't good enough and never will be good enough.

TV Channel	Audio Channel Bit Rate kbps
BBC Four	256
BBC News 24	192
BBC One	256
BBC Three	256
BBC Two	256
bid tv	192
Channel 4	192
E4	192
E4+1	192
f tn	192
five	256
Ideal World	192
ITV News	192
ITV1	192
ITV2	192
ITV3	192
Men & Motors	192
price-drop tv	192
QVC	192
Sky News	192
Sky Sports News	192
Sky Travel	192
The Hits	192
TMF	192
UKTV History	192