Slashdot Mirror
After a Decade, Digital Radio Still an Also-Ran In UK
beschra writes "Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) was developed as early as 1981. After launching in the UK 10 years ago, only 24% of listeners listen on DAB. The article credits a good part of the delay to the fact that the technology was largely developed under the Europe-wide Eureka 147 research project. How does government vs. commercial development help or hinder acceptance of new technology? From the article: '"If Nokia develops something, they'll be bringing out the handsets before you know it," [analyst Grant Goddard says]. "Because DAB was a pan-European development, you had to have agreement from all sides before you could do anything. That meant progress was extremely slow." But this alone did not account for the hold-up. The sheer complexity of introducing and regulating the system was also a major factor, Mr. Goddard adds."'
The real problem with DAB isn't price or features. It's battery life. My FM/LW radio lasts over a month of regular use. A similarly sized portable DAB unit manages about 6-8 hours. Why would I 'upgrade'?
Only those with a vested interest are pushing it (which unfortunately includes the government because they see the opportunity to make money by flogging off the frequency spectrum currently used by FM).
The really funny thing is, when they come to sell the FM space, no one will want it as no doubt the pirates will take it over.
There are millions of FM receivers in this country, and at some point they will all be purposefully obsoleted at once. People will inevitably step up to fill this void, and suddenly the radio waves will be full of stations not wanting to listen to regulators.
And I can't wait. The playlist-format that dominates radio stations these days make listening to them very annoying - the same records over and over. Hell, the same stations all over the dial - the other day I was waiting for a mate in the car, and was bored, so skipped through FM 0.1MHz at a time, to see what pirate stations were around. At least 3 different frequencies were exactly the same station, all with different RDS names. And even the independent places all play the same shitty pop-music.
Fuck the commercial radio stations, bring on the pirates! DAB may well be the best thing that happens to UK radio in years, but not for the reasons the DAB crowd want it to be.