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MP3 Transmitters Now Legal In the UK
SilentOneNCW writes "From December 8th, it will be once more legal to own and operate an MP3 Transmitter in the UK, primarily used to convey music between an MP3 player such as Apple's iPod to your home or car stereo. The device was originally banned because their transmissions can override and interfere with legal radio stations, which is prohibited by the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1949. Strong consumer demand for the devices and pressure from Liberal Democrats were among the primary motivators for the amendment."
I'm thrilled about this and I don't live in the UK. I use fm transmitters like this to do audio installation art and performances of electronic music.I have a dozen tiny fm receivers and a few transmitters so i can route signals out from laptop/battery powered effects/violin/cheap mp3 players playing loops/home made gadgetry through the speakers that i can spread out through the place i'm performing, it's not particularly loud but i use the electronics to augment not replace the sound of an acoustic instrument usually. It's cheap, highly effective and portable, i can turn any place i like into a performance space, since a lot of places with interesting acoustics often don't have electricity available and aren't suitable for running a bunch of cables around for a large multichannel system this opens up a lot of performance opportunities to me. (also the far away radio transmission sound works for the music I do and the interference between transmitters is fun to exploit as a sound source, especially when i use a couple receivers to feed the output back into the system. people's movements within the space i'm performing change the behavior of the system as well which can be nice as well, makes the whole space responsive) and now I can do this sort of thing in the UK as well. yay!
Therefore as far as I know there's no new permanent FM licenses granted, altough the occaisional short term licence may be granted for special events.
This means that in the UK you're unlikely to be in a place where the FM range is full. Even in London you can find a few gaps. Although I didn't know of any drive in cinemas in the UK. Because of the law mentioned in this article, gyms tended to not transmit on FM either, I've seen two solutions to the problem, some gyms have headphone sockets on the pieces of equipment and others have special receivers that transmit on a different band, they give you a receiver when you enter the gym so you don't need your own. This is why FM radio is not exactly a big selling feature on MP3 players over here (well it's not in the US either considering the popularity of the iPod, but in the UK if someone launches a device with built in FM the first response is 'what no DAB?')
It will be a while before FM disappears entirely, their first priority is getting analogue TV off the air. Why is it the government is forcing this? I don't know, it should be up to the market to decide.
Good points about the FM transmitters. As far as TV goes, there are a couple of reasons they're forcing the migration to digital. At the moment, the analog TV (and a little more from analog radio) takes up a LOT of the most useful frequency spectrum, plus its very vulnerable to interference. Most digital TV transmitters are broadcasting at very low power (around 4%) so they don't swamp the 5 analog channels. Digital can give better broadcast quality, can fit in many more channels in the same bandwidth, and much more resistant to interference. The fact that it works at all, given the tiny power budget and spectrum its squeezed in round the analog channels is pretty impressive.
DAB radio is in much the same boat. The complaints about getting a signal and low quality would go away if DAB could crank it up, spread out a bit and not worry about overriding FM transmitters.
With the analog channels off, the digital transmitters can boost the power (i.e. better range) and use some of the huge amount of freed bandwidth so they don't have to compress so much (i.e. less blocky artifacts). Even better, they can start broadcasting the free-to-air HD channels over freeview, which they just don't have the free bandwidth to do now. Regions are switching over to digital TV only from 2008 to 2012. I for one can't wait. TV signal with good reception, lots of channels and HD to boot? Given I live in the wilds of Dorset, my analog signal is barely watchable, and I only get about 2/3 the multiplexes. Improving that has got to be good.
Oh, one last thing. The public owns the airwaves, thus the government gets to allocate their use on the public's behalf. Given digital TV is so much better, and they can't really coexist, its a choice between digital or analog. It's not one the market can decide, as you'll just end up with a bunch of legacy equipment that won't go away for 30 years and stops the new equipment working properly, while private companies profit excessively at the cost of the public. Just look at the huge mess having two systems of weights and measurement has caused.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
... that in the UK, laws are generally less restrictive than in the US. Not only that, but unlike the US, where everyone blindly obeys every law no matter how ridiculous it may seem, in the UK we obey laws that are locally convenient, not too intrusive, and not plainly a bad idea. The rest are so commonly flouted that it's basically more trouble than it's worth to do anything about applying them.
Yup. I've tried tuning in outside the car - travelling in convoy, and instructing the other driver to tune his radio to mine - but unless you're really tailgating the car in front, there's no way you can pick up that signal. You can tell how low the power is because 'proper' stations interfere with it if you accidentally stumble on their frequency. So there's really no incentive to try to create a 'pirate' station - it just won't get picked up.
So it's great news - a new piece of legislation actually 'for the people'. Brilliant!
Incidentally, you should retract your aerial if you want to improve reception - or get an FM modulator (that's wired into your aerial) rather than a transmitter. Or get a head unit with a line-in port (although that's more expensive).