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. more

21st June 2005

BBC Worldwide have made a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio, which allow  the subscription-based digital radio system to broadcast Radio 1 across the United States. more

21st June 2005

Emap have bought Scottish Radio Holdings for £391m. Emap already owned 27% of SRH and increased their offer of 1040p to 1088p per share for the remaining 73% which was accepted. more

12th June 2005

The French are taking advantage of their "wait and see" approach to the adoption of new digital TV and radio systems by including radio stations in a DVB-H trial in Paris. DVB-H can carry about 6 times as many radio stations at a given level of audio quality and in the same amount of bandwidth as DAB can due to DVB-H using state-of-the-art, efficient technology compared to DAB's technology which was chosen between the late-1980s and very early-1990s.  more

10th June 2005

The contemporary rock music station, Xfm, has won the Manchester FM licence, beating off competition from classic rock / rock stations such as The Arrow, Kerrang and The Storm, as well as a host of other contenders. more

10th June 2005

David Hewson, who writes in the Doors technology section of the Sunday Times, wrote the following last weekend about the audio quality on DAB:

"DAB radio is in the same sad state as ever. Like just about everything else in the digital audio field, it is technically and aesthetically inferior. DAB works by compressing audio - taking out bits and hoping we won't notice. It does this not using the old standard of MP3 but the even older one of MP2, and the results are dire." more

3rd June 2005

Virgin Mobile and BT are to trial ultra-low picture quality mobile TV probably using the DMB system (which can be transmitted on a standard DAB system). BT purchased 20% of the capacity of the Digital One multiplex last year, and plan to launch 3 mobile TV channels in this space.

20% of the capacity of a DAB multiplex only amounts to 237 kbps, so each channel will only have a bit rate of 79 kbps, and this 79 kbps has to encode both the video stream and the audio stream! more

3rd June 2005

Ralph Bernard, the chairman of GCap Media, the commercial radio group formed from the merger of GWR and Capital Radio, has said that subscription-radio could only be 5 years away. more

3rd June 2005

Ofcom have published their preferred plan for digital switchover, and they want the current 16-QAM Freeview multiplexes to change to 64-QAM, because this increases the capacity of these multiplexes so that they can either carry more TV channels, increase the quality of existing channels, or allow HDTV channels to be transmitted. more

18th May 2005

The BBC have announced a new trial for their interactive media player (iMP), which allows people to download TV and radio shows for up to 7 days after they've been transmitted, much like the BBC's Radio Player. more

13th May 2005

The trial will consist of 16 mobile TV channels including: Cartoon Network; Chart Show TV; CNN; Discovery Channel; Shorts TV (short film service); Sky News; Sky Sports News; Sky Travel more

26th April 2005

E4 and E4+1 are to joint Freeview from next month. more

21st April 2005

A new ITV channel, Men & Motors, has appeared on Freeview channel 38, and is to launch on May 2nd. more

20th April 2005

DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale, not to be confused with digital rights management), the new digital radio standard that currently targets the LW, MW and SW frequency bands, is to be extended from its current maximum operating frequency of 30 MHz up to 120 MHz, with work expected to be completed by 2008 to 2010. more

4th April 2005

The consumer electronics industry body, Intellect, have expressed their preference for the UK to change from the current 2K DVB-T transmission mode to the 8K mode, citing that 8K improves reception quality due to 8K's robustness to impulsive interference.  more

4th April 2005

According to Ofcom's TV market quarterly-update, 59.4% of homes now have digital TV.  more

30th March 2005

Speaking to someone in BBC Distribution last week he admitted:

"There has been a long debate about the bit rates on the digital TV platforms and the BBC has decided not to increase the bit rates of the radio stations to remain platform-neutral."

Let's just set the record straight here: this has nothing to do with platform-neutrality; this is all to do with minimising the difference in audio quality between DAB and Freeview / digital satellite, because this minimises the criticism that the BBC get for taking the decision to provide low audio quality on DAB. more

21st March 2005

All the commercial radio groups' submissions to Ofcom's DAB public consultation have been published on their website along with some of the individuals' responses (Ofcom are still going through the individuals' responses and hope to have published them all by tomorrow).  more

14th March 2005

The following table shows the BBC Radio Player's 30 most-listened-to shows along with the bit rates used. more

5th March 2005

Ofcom have proposed (in the main consultation document page 145) to remove the minimum bit rate levels that are currently in-place and favour a scheme whereby the audio quality should not be degraded by MPEG encoding by more than a certain amount. That sounds fair enough until you read exactly how much they propose the audio quality can be degraded to. more

5th March 2005

Finally, there is something that I would welcome and that would benefit the general public. more

5th March 2005

Ofcom are proposing that 5 new Band III channels be used for DAB, and that 3 of these channels should be used to provide local DAB multiplexes for places that don't already have them, and they propose to auction-off the remaining 2 channels as national multiplexes. more

5th March 2005

This consultation represents the last opportunity the general public has to express their views on the lamentable state of the audio quality on DAB, and to express their opposition to Ofcom's proposal that the commercial radio groups should be allowed to actually drop the bit rates of their stereo stations. So I would urge as many people as possible to respond to this consultation, no matter how short an email you send. more

2nd March 2005

It has been widely reported in both the print media and on BBC radio that sales of DAB radios outsold those of analogue radios for the first time in January. Unfortunately for the DAB industry, this is totally incorrect. more

2nd March 2005

Tessa Jowell seems to have ignored opposing plans by Lord Burns & Birt and Michael Grade and has gone for something in between. more

25th February 2005

The Finnish public service broadcaster has stopped broadcasting DAB citing lack of cheap receivers and lack of interest from the Finnish commercial broadcasters. more

24th February 2005

Apple have dropped the price of their iPod Mini by £40 to £139 including delivery. more

18th February 2005

At the 3GSM mobile phone industry conference Philips have announced a DVB-H system-in-package (SiP) chip to be ready for the last quarter of 2005. more

18th February 2005

Nokia have announced that they will co-operate with Microsoft to allow Windows Media Audio music files to be played on Nokia mobile phones. more

18th February 2005

French mobile TV specialists DiBcom have demonstrated the first working DVB-H silicon chip. The chip, which measures just 8mm x 8mm is planned to be designed into a mobile handset by March in time for the CeBIT consumer electronics show in Hanover, Germany.  more

16th February 2005

Smooth FM has launched on digital satellite channel 878. more

16th February 2005

Jazz FM is changing its name to Smooth FM on FM in London and nationally on digital radio. more

16th February 2005

Thankfully, people that would like to listen to niche genres do have an alternative in broadband internet radio. For example, on the Shoutcast MP3 internet radio server there are between 200 to 300 that play jazz, a lot of which provide audio quality superior to that available on DAB in the UK. more

10th February 2005

Sony have announced that all their TVs with a screen-size larger than 26" will have digital tuners in them. more

9th February 2005

Ofcom have published a consultation document outlining their plans for the timetable for analogue TV switch-off. more

8th February 2005

BT are planning to launch a TV-to-mobiles service via the DAB system in late-2005. more

4th February 2005

Pioneer have released the world's first car stereos with integrated AAC decoders. Specifically, the car stereos can decode iTunes AAC, and it's not certain whether it will decode AAC files encoded using other encoders, such as the AAC encoder included in Nero 6. more

2nd February 2005

This is the cheapest this Philips Freeview receiver has been, and it's a highly-regarded Freeview box, which also won an award for being the "Best Sounding Freeview Receiver" in one of the hi-fi magazines. more

2nd February 2005

According to the MediaGuardian, there will be 6 bidders for the new Freeview TV channel slot. more

2nd February 2005

Channel 4 have said that E4 will be free-to-air (FTA) by the end of 2005. more

31st January 2005

An in-car DVB-T receiver can now be bought in the UK for £399.97.  more

29th January 2005

The MABB regulate the various media in that region. The original web page written in German can be found here.

Although I had previously read on another DAB-related website that the MABB had decided to do a complete U-turn and support the development of DAB in Germany, it seems that they are still of the opinion that it would be far better to adopt DVB-H for digital radio transmission than to stick by such an old and inefficient system as DAB. more

28th January 2005

French company Alcatel have held preliminary talks with Luxemburg-based satellite operator SES Astra with a view to starting a subscription-based satellite digital radio system for Europe, which will be modelled on the XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio services in America. more

27th January 2005

The quarterly RAJAR figures have been released. more

20th January 2005

Crown Castle, the operator of Multiplexes C and D on Freeview, has announced that they are making space for another TV channel, which could start as soon as 1st April. more

20th January 2005

The above link is to an English translation of the press release in November last year where the MABB, who are the broadcast regulators for the Berlin & Brandenburg region in Germany, announced their intention to drop DAB in favour of more advanced technology such as DVB-H and DMB. more

19th January 2005

Nero 6 is available for just £0.00 plus £2.99 delivery, and Nero 6 owners can download an update that includes the new H.264/AVC (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10) video codec. more

19th January 2005

Given the fact DAB portable radios eat batteries, it makes sense to try and reduce the cost of batteries and get the most out of them. more

17th January 2005

ITV is in talks with the BBC over launching its channels on a free satellite system along with the BBC.  more

17th January 2005

Fusion Digitec have announced that they're releasing a new Freeview receiver with an integrated DVD-R/W drive, the FDR100. more

17th January 2005

According to figures released by the BBC today, sales of Freeview boxes in the run-up to Christmas pushed the number of homes with Freeview past the 5 million mark. more

12th January 2005

Apple's first flash memory-based MP3 player, the iPod Shuffle, is available to pre-order on the Apple Store website. more

9th January 2005

The LG LGPCBM340 DAB/CD portable stereo with MP3 playback is currently available for just £68.94 including delivery. more