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Low-power FM Transmitters Banned in UK
Acey writes "The BBC News is reporting that the Griffin iTrip falls foul of the UK Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949 (PDF). In short, the iTrip is an unlicensed FM transmitter and that's not allowed. The UK distributor, A M Micro, have pulled the iTrip. More ominously they warn that "Use of the iTrip in the UK therefore constitutes an offence and can lead to prosecution of the User". Guess that makes me an outlaw, because you'll have to pry my iTrip from my cold, dead hands."
For all you people (like myself) who had no idea what iTrip is/was, here's the link from googles cache.
From the page: You are looking at the coolest iPod accessory in the world. The iTrip FM transmitter for the iPod can play your music through any FM radio in your car, at a party, wherever the mood strikes you - and you have a radio.
Simple.. wire in an in-line (through the antenna) FM transmitter.. Since you are only transmitting on a private wire, vs public airwaves you are fine.
No-one's ever going to be prosecuted for using one, any more than if you use wi-fi channel 12 in the USA. They just won't be for sale here.
Pirate radio stations broadcast towards England from ships off shore, outside of English legal jurisdiction. Here is some historic info: http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/spotday.htm
I'm in the UK and recently bought on of these. It's an almost identical product called an FM 'Linker' but basically you plug it into any headphone socket et voila you're a radio station.
They say the range is about 5M (therefore just for personal use) but it is well over 100 metres. So I'm waiting to get busted when I broadcast web radio stations around my house (and over a small portion of town).
Don
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There's a 4:30 in the morning now?
Slashdot - The Home of the Tortured Analogy
They actually enforce this kind stuff. My company brought a bunch of 802.11b stuff over there for an event, and the day we set it up someone from their department of silly walks and radios showed up to talk to us about it.
In the end we had everything in order, and a large 802.11b installation will probably draw more attention than a fm transmitter speeding down the road, but they do watch.
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
In Briatin you have to pay for a license for anything which lets you watch a TV signal.
As to whether that sucks...IMO what really sucks is having TV shows, movies, even sports games interrupted every 10 minutes for a 5 minutes commercial break. In return for a 190 annual fee, Brits get 2 free-to-air TV stations and 5 national radio stations with NO COMMERCIAL BREAKS. And we're not talking marginalised, underfunded US style public broadcasting - they're the most popular stations in the UK, with rights to most major sporting events, movies, music etc. So you can sit down and watch a 3 hour movie (with stereo sound) right the way through, just like in the cinema. Or a 5 set Wimbledon final, without missing any shots. Not to mention all those original BBC geek classics like Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Hitchikers Guide (originally a BBC radio show), Dr Who...Oh, and the BBC also has several (free) digital radio and TV channels as well.
Another bonus is that because of the competition with the ad-free BBC, commercial broadcasters in Britain restrict themselves to one commercial break every 15 minutes, so even on the 3 free-to-air commercial stations you can follow the plot of most shows without being constantly interrupted by life insurance salesman. Plus they have to compete with the BBC on breadth and quality, meaning that they can't get away with the endless repeats of Frasier and Seinfeld that seem to define primetime on most major US networks.
Now what I don't understand is this: the BBC can put out about 6 TV channels (including the digital ones) and dozens of radio stations (including local radio) for a charge of only 190 per year per household -- without needing any advertising income. This is far less than the cost of most cable or satellite TV subscriptions - and yet cable stations usually have as many commercials as free-to-air stations, and the programs rarely better BBC quality. What do they do with their money?
I guess it just goes to prove that with the right management and funding, publically owned services can outperform the private sector. Although actually I don't have a TV anymore...a DVD player hooked up to a computer monitor supplies the movies without me needing a TV license, radio and the net gives me the rest.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
I ended up going with the third option for my wife's 2002 Nissan Altima, since it has no tape deck and I didn't want to mess with an FM modulator. It has a CD changer input in the back, but the place linked above doesn't have anything for the Altima. I found a guy who makes custom cables for it, so I ordered that along with a switch to put the radio in aux mode. Installation was pretty easy and actually kind of a fun project, especially drilling the hole in the dash to install the switch. ;-)
So as you can see, there are plenty of options. Of course what would be the best is a little dock that provides power, line out, and steering wheel remote controls. Just slide the iPod in and off you go!
Say hello to zMac.
Actually that's not true. There aren't 100 possible stations. The FM band is almost full as it is, since you have to put your station on a slightly different frequency in different parts of the country if your station is nationwide. This is to prevent cross-modulation or (interference as the carriers from two different transmission stations on the same frequency overlap when you're situated between them). This is why some stations say that they're on a frequency RANGE and not an absolute frequency (radio 4 is on 92-95MHz).
Also since the FM band is divided up into individual possible stations every 0.5MHz, there's actually only 41 possible stations (the band is 87.5 - 108 MHz).
I don't normally flame people on Slashdot, but IMO your knee-jerk pro-authority attitude is the root cause of all our problems in England. Having people with your sort of attitude around is a real drag. The kind of things you want don't make anyone safer, they make life harder and more dangerous for everyone.
Here in NZ we seem to be somewhere between the UK and the US (as in many other things).
The top and bottom 1 MHz of the FM band is reserved for unlicensed transmission with an effective radiated power of less than 300 mW. So as long as you tune your iTrip to 88 - 89 MHz or 107 - 108 MHz you're fine.
I've been wondering about getting an iTrip once the version for the new model iPod is available (Apple changed the connectors on the top...), but my car's radio.casette has a line-in (marked "CD") on the front panel anyway, and that's better quality.