27th December 2004

Philips' replacement for their DTR1500 receiver, the DTR500, is now available.  more

26th December 2004

Argos have reduced the Pure Evoke-1 XT to half its RRP in their January Sale. more

15th December 2004

Ofcom have published their radio consultation, which seeks views on, amongst other things:

"Ofcom also seeks the views of industry and the public on the likely demand for additional nationally-allocated spectrum for DAB , whilst recognising Digital One’s investment in digital radio as the current commercial national radio multiplex licensee." more

13th December 2004

The Travel Now station is no longer transmitting on the Switch London local DAB multiplex. more

13th December 2004

A new page with details about Top-Up TV channels, how to get it and available receivers has been added. more

13th December 2004

Oneword, on the Digital One national multiplex, was observed to be testing at 56kbps mono overnight one night last week. Oneword usually only transmits from 6am to midnight and transmits at 64kbps mono. more

13th December 2004

The BBC have responded to the DCMS review of Digital Radio.

For once I won't berate the BBC Digital Radio department for their heavy use of spin, because they've finally come out and requested extra national DAB spectrum publicly (page 34 (of 52) of the pdf file):

"We recommend that additional spectrum be used to supply increased capacity for audio quality enhancements to UK-wide services provided by the BBC and commercial radio" more

12th December 2004

Sky have decided to stop subscribers recording HDTV transmissions by requiring people to have equipment which supports the HDCP digital rights protection system.  more

12th December 2004

With so many Freeview receivers and all Sky+ receivers having a digital audio output these days, it makes sense to take advantage of the superior audio quality that can almost invariably be attained by using digital audio output (S/PDIF) rather than by using phono analogue audio outputs (or using a SCART to phono adapter followed by phono leads) to connect your receiver to your hi-fi system. more

6th December 2004

Texas Instruments, one of the world's leading silicon chip developers, have announced their intention to design a chip for mobile TV codenamed "Hollywood". The chip will combine the traditional 3-chip solution of RF front-end, demodulation, and channel FEC decoding into a single-chip, and the chip will be able to receive both DVB-H (for the European and US markets) and ISDB-T (for the Japanese market). more

6th December 2004

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute, ETSI, have adopted DVB-H as the standard for mobile TV services in Europe. more

6th December 2004

The H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding) and HE AAC (High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding) codecs have been adopted by DVB in addition to the currently supported MPEG-2 video and MPEG audio Layer II codecs. more

1st December 2004

The new Sony DVD recorder with Freeview tuner is, as far as I'm aware, the first DVD recorder with an integrated Freeview tuner. more

1st December 2004

A new 80 GB, twin-tuner Freeview PVR manufactured by Fusion has appeared on the 24-7 Electrical website priced at £228 including delivery. more

27th November 2004

From their article from yesterday with the same title as above, the Media Network Weblog reports:

"In Germany, the Media Council for Berlin and Brandenburg (MABB) has stopped issuing licences for Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). In that part of Germany, DAB has not proved popular with the public." more

23rd November 2004

The BBC have published listener numbers for shows accessed by Listen Again on their BBC Radio Player for the first time. more

22nd November 2004

ITV2, which was previously only available if you had a Sky subscription, changed last night to being FTV on satellite. more

22nd November 2004

ITV have postponed their decision as to whether they go free-to-air (FTA) on digital satellite and have signed a 2-month extension to their contract to stay encrypted on Sky. more

19th November 2004

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

17th November 2004

According to David Chance, who runs Top-Up TV, sales of Freeview boxes are set to exceed 3 million this year taking the number of households with Freeview to 5 million more

15th November 2004

One of the two groups, the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA), developing competing UWB specifications have released their physical layer (PHY) specification. more

15th November 2004

ITV's digital satellite contract with Sky expires this coming weekend, and Greg Dyke thinks that whether they decide to renew their contract with Sky or follow the BBC and go free-to-air (unencrypted) will determine the future of digital satellite. more

12th November 2004

Argos have reduced the prices of most of their DAB products and have a free delivery on all products offer until Tuesday 16th November. more

9th November 2004

Interestingly, despite a report that the BBC had refused to allow Sky to use the name "Freesat" (which the BBC own the trademark to), Sky have called their new service "Freesat from Sky".  more

6th November 2004

Nokia have announced that they will be producing a phone with an integrated DVB-H (DVB for handheld devices) digital TV receiver on it by 2006. As many as 20 TV channels will be available according to the article. more

2nd November 2004

unbeatable.co.uk have reduced the price of the above twin-tuner PVR by an additional £10 to £159.99 (£7.99 delivery). more

2nd November 2004

Ofcom have allowed all TV and radio broadcasting complaints to be dealt with by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). That sounds harmless enough until you realise that the "Advertising Standards Authority is the independent body set up by the advertising industry", so the advertising industry is now allowed to regulate itself! more

31st October 2004

A fire on the mast of the transmitter has caused it to collapse onto a transmitter building and has left approximately 1.3m without BBC Radios 1-4, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire and Classic FM. The BBC and Digital One DAB multiplexes are also affected. more

30th October 2004

Some of the main points include: digital TV household-penetration now at 55%; Freeview receiver sales of 400,000 in 2nd quarter; 5 million broadband connections by September and new subscriptions at a rate of 50,000 per week; total number of DAB receivers sold to the end of July was 682,000 (the figure to the end of May was 607,000) more

29th October 2004

Saga Radio is to be withdrawn from all the Now Digital-owned local DAB multiplexes it is currently transmitting on from 1st November. more

27th October 2004

Pure Digital's replacement for their Evoke-1 has been reduced by £40 to £59.99 at Argos. The Evoke-1 XT recently won What Hi-Fi's best portable radio in their awards issue. more

22nd October 2004

The above local DAB multiplexes have been reported to be testing. The multiplexes officially launch on 31st October. more

21st October 2004

One of the original DCMS conditions for 6 Music was that:

"The service will offer popular music from the 1970s to 1990s"

yet the report says that 45% of the music it plays is from 2000 to 2004. more

21st October 2004

This quarter's RAJAR listener numbers were published today and the following table shows the number of "digital-only" listeners. more

19th October 2004

This well-regarded digital satellite PCI card is now available for just £39 including VAT. It comes as standard with www.dvbviewer.com software, which is also highly-regarded. more

19th October 2004

The "independent" review into the BBC's new digital radio stations commissioned by Tessa Jowell has been published and is available on the DCMS website. more

15th October 2004

A survey of 40,000 users' digital audio players' hard drives has found that MP3 tracks comprise 72% of all audio tracks, compared to 82% a year ago, with AAC (default in Apple iTunes) and WMA both increasing by about 5% each, with AAC being at almost zero percent 7 months beforehand. more

11th October 2004

For the first time, figures showing the extent to which people listen to digital radio via the digital TV platforms have been published (they will no doubt be already known by those organisations who pay for a subscription to RAJAR) by the MediaGuardian. The figures show that 28.8% of adults have listened to digital radio via the digital TV (DTV) platforms, which equates to 14.1 million adults (based on RAJAR's figures of there being 48.86 million adults). more

11th October 2004

The DRDB spinmeisters predict that there will have been: cumulative sales of 13 million units by end of 2008 and household penetration of 29% by end of 2008. more

29th September 2004

Capital Radio Group and GWR have announced a £711m merger to create the largest UK commercial radio group. more

28th September 2004

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), who represent the European public service broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, have expressed their preference to use 720-lines progressive (720p) for HDTV instead of 1080-lines interlaced (1080i). Current standard definition TV (SDTV) uses 576-lines interlaced. more

28th September 2004

The Now Cambridge DAB multiplex has started testing with the following stations broadcasting: BBC Cambridge, Classic Gold, Q103, The Storm, Vibe FM, Zeta Digital. more

23rd September 2004

The country station 3C has started transmitting on Freeview at 64kbps mono. more

18th September 2004

Finally, a digital satellite hi-fi tuner!! Pace are bringing out a dedicated digital satellite radio receiver, model number DSR210F, in Summer 2005.  more

16th September 2004

With a view towards the forthcoming Ofcom digital radio review and consultation, I've written quite a long article that looks at ways to maximise the efficiency of the Band III spectrum that is already available to DAB, and what is expected to be allocated to DAB in the UK.  more

15th September 2004

The US might be the first country in the world to get a DVB-H network transmitting TV services to mobile phones. Crown Castle has been undertaking trials of DVB-H in Pittsburgh and, Michael Schueppert, senior vice president of business development at Crown Castle commented that "DVB-H is working very nicely and its performance is exceeding expectations". more

15th September 2004

I have to say that's a very strange title for a seminar when the UK are actually number 2 in digital radio, way behind the US at number 1 with XM having 2.1 million subscribers and Sirius with 600,000 subscribers to their satellite digital radio systems. more

10th September 2004

O₂ will trial the new DVB specification for handheld devices, DVB-H, next Spring with 500 of their customers in Oxfordshire. The trial is to determine which TV services are preferred by consumers, out of the 16 TV channels available, which include music, sports, news, comedy, soaps, documentary, drama, cartoons and specialist channels including interactive gaming and shopping. more

7th September 2004

Canada, one of the earliest pioneers of the DAB system, has had 3 applications to roll-out digital radio systems more

7th September 2004

(source Wohnort)

Ireland's equivalent of Ofcom, the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg, who are responsible for managing the radio spectrum, have published their response to a public consultation regarding DAB by saying:

"There are serious concerns that in order to provide a financially viable DAB
service, it is necessary to increase the number of channels per multiplexer and
by doing so eliminate the key advantage of DAB, that of near CD quality audio. more

1st September 2004

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the DAB industry's constant claim that DAB is being sold purely on the back of providing a wider choice of stations. They claim this whenever they try to justify their indefensible use of low audio quality across the board on DAB. more

31st August 2004

A new model of the Vauxhall Astra is to get DAB fitted as standard from October. more

31st August 2004

This new Pure Digital battery-powered DAB / FM portable is claimed to operate for 30 hours on DAB and 80 hours on FM using 6 x C-type batteries. more

27th August 2004

The development agreement is to investigate the possibilities of Channel 4 Radio to replace Oneword on digital satellite, Freeview, cable and the Digital One multiplex. more

25th August 2004

The Humax 8000T Freeview PVR is finally getting the ability to record radio with an over-the-air download (OAD) this weekend. The bugs / features that this OAD will fix are listed here. more

25th August 2004

The Freeview Receivers page has been updated with a few new models and the best prices I could find at on-line retailers. more

23rd August 2004

talkSPORT and Premier Christian Radio have now started transmitting on Freeview. Both channels are using 64kbps mono. more

22nd August 2004

I'm not sure whether it's available at "normal" (i.e. not Extra) Tesco stores, but there's been reports that Tesco Extra are selling this DAB personal radio for £29.97 instead of £119. more

18th August 2004

As was reported on this website on the 24th May, the BBC are using multicasting for their broadband streams of their Olympics coverage. more

17th August 2004

Three radio placeholders are transmitting on Freeview Mux C. It has already been confirmed that 3C Cool Country and the Premier Christian Radio stations will start transmitting on Freeview more

17th August 2004

Ofcom have published their annual report on the state of the communications market, which will be supplemented with quarterly-updates throughout the year. The report is split into separate sections for the radio, TV and telecoms sectors, with lots of facts, figures and graphs in each document. more

13th August 2004

The Advertising Standards Authority have not upheld a complaint made about AOL's claim that their Radio@AOL internet streams are CD-quality. more

11th August 2004

Radio 2 "will be encouraging listeners to go online, sample digital radio and explore digital technology during September" and "will also team up with digital only networks such as 1Xtra, BBC7 and the Asian Network to give audiences a taste of the new services output for the campaign". more

11th August 2004

The above article suggests that the BBC have been in talks with other broadcasters regarding their plans for a Freesat system, which is good news. more

3rd August 2004

Ofcom have upheld complaints about an advert for DAB claiming that it provides CD-quality, but the advert ran for 6 more weeks after complaints were made!! more

3rd August 2004

Channel 4 are planning to launch a new national digital talk radio station to take on Radio 4, according to the Telegraph. more

29th July 2004

SBN (Student Broadcast Network) has become insolvent, and owners, Campus Media plc, have decided not to continue funding the business. A buyer for SBN is being sought, failing which it will be wound-up. more

29th July 2004

The following table shows the number of digital-only listeners. The figures are arrived at either: directly, if the station only transmits on digital platforms, or by subtracting the number of analogue listeners from the total number of listeners for a station. more

28th July 2004

To reserve this you need to know the 3-digit store number that you want to pick it up from (store numbers are just before the index in the Argos catalogue), ring Argos Ring & Reserve more

28th July 2004

The Gadget Show on channel five reviewed DAB on Monday 26th July, and the show will be repeated at Midnight Friday night / Saturday morning.

The points made were as follows: DAB's audio quality isn't CD-quality and nor is it as good as FM; DAB portables eat batteries (10 hours use per set of batteries, or less) compared to FM portables; DAB coverage is patchy; In-car DAB reception was pretty good; Recommendation: If you don't mind plugging portable radios into the mains and you want the extra choice then getting a DAB portable is okay. Otherwise, for home use, stick to FM. more

26th July 2004

There are reports that a few more transmitters are receiving the EPG (electronic programme guide) today, and the rumour is that it is being rolled-out nationally today and tomorrow. more

24th July 2004

The above DAB multiplex is now testing more

24th July 2004

Kerrang is finally being added to Emap's DAB multiplexes in the North of England -- it was reported that Kerrang was supposed to have been added on 1st July. more

22nd July 2004

Tessa Jowell has put back analogue TV switch-off from 2010 to 2012, with the phasing-in of switch-over starting in some regions in 2007.  more

19th July 2004

From 2007, DAB in the UK will also be broadcast on L-band, and this will make the vast majority of current DAB radios partially obsolete, because virtually all DAB radios sold to date, and on sale at the current time, cannot receive L-band channels, and are only capable of receiving Band III signals. more

19th July 2004

Two new Goodmans micro systems containing DAB tuners have appeared for £100 more

18th July 2004

Capital and GWR commercial radio groups are in merger talks that would see the formation of an £800m radio group according to the Scotsman (and also in the Sunday Times Business section, page 3). more

14th July 2004

Nokia have signed-up to use Coding Technologies' aacPlus audio codec (aacPlus is Coding Technologies' name for their High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding codec (or HE AAC for short)). more

13th July 2004

Ofcom senior partner, Kip Meek, said the following at the Radio Festival in Birmingham today:

"We're aiming for 2010 to 2012 in digital switchover in TV and I don't think it will be that long thereafter [for radio]" more

9th July 2004

To quote from the article:

"As of July 1st, the digital version of Kerrang! Radio is now available on Emap¹s seven wholly-owned multiplexes across the north of England." more

6th July 2004

The Urban Choice radio station has started transmitting on the regional MXR West Midlands DAB multiplex at 64 kbps mono. more

6th July 2004

Although switching-off analogue radio couldn't happen for many years simply due to the fact that there's such a vast number of analogue radios out there, I'd be in favour of an early switch-off date because then people will realise just what they'll be missing once analogue is switched-off more

6th July 2004

Market research conducted in Sydney which surveyed 1,500 people about their attitudes towards digital radio found that:

"CD-quality sound with no interference was nominated as the most attractive feature of digital radio (nominated by 75 per cent of respondents)." more