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Digital Radio Mondiale, a Better Standard Than US-Adopted IBOC?
Gsparky2004 writes "Over at Engineering Radio, Paul suggests that Digital Radio Mondiale (or 'Digital Radio Worldwide') may be a better alternative than the US-adopted, proprietary IBOC system. But he's concerned that the FCC is too far down the 'IBOC is the way!' road and won't accept an open source alternative, even one that may work better." For a slightly more pointed take on the matter, check out this anti-IBOC site, which paints IBOC as something akin to the devil himself.
RTFA, it seems the fight is over the AM band! Interesting, given the fact that I am over 30 but still I don't remember a time when anyone cared about the AM band...
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The entire time I'm reading the article, I can't help but think that they could have made a better name choice. I mean, who wants to be associated with one of the most debated schemes in current computing? And I'm curious if they can embed a "no record" bit in this specification?
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Seems like these guys really know what they are talking about. Not only are they criticizing a position - they actually back it up with a bit of science. It really is disgusting to see any proprietary format, complete with royalty payments, forced by the government onto the populace. Makes me hate Clear Channel, et. al. even more.
From where I sit, digital radio is a solution looking for a problem. In the UK, the BBC spent vast amounts of license fee payer's money (i.e. my money) investing in new DAB (the digital radio standard approved over here) stations. Then when it found no one was listening to DAB, and private stations were bailing out, rather than give it up, they spent more vast quantities advertising the f@*k out of DAB to try and boost take-up. And yet still I can count the number of people I personally know who own DAB radios on the finger of ... well, one finger, actually. It's four times as expensive to run a DAB station as an FM station, the coverage is worse, receivers are expensive, and the benefits are minimal. From what I can tell, both IBOC and DRM may suffer mny of the same issues as DAB, although maybe the US market for radio is different enough that it will work out differently.
Oh no... it's the future.
The single biggest complaint from the anti-IBOC crowd, interference with existing analog stations in hybrid mode (coexistent analog+digital), is not somehow avoided by DRM. In fact, the author simply suggests skipping hybrid mode altogether and jumping wholesale into DRM. Given the massive installed base of broadcast and reception equipment, it is naive to suggest that analog could be abandoned overnight in favor of a new digital standard. The alternative is to use hybrid DRM mode and face the exact same problems as hybrid mode IBOC.
There is always going to be a new, better technology if you just wait a few minutes, but they have to pick something at sometime. If you wait because there was something better around the corner you would wait forever.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Digital Radio Mondiale may be non-proprietary, but it relies on patented technology. These boys will sell you a license.
I'm 54; I grew up listening to radio. It's now been about a decade since I last listened to radio, even in my car (first switched to CDs, then mp3). Wouldn't the bandwidth be better utilized by wireless data at this point? Streaming digital broadcasts could easily replace the small number of broadcasts that remain (e.g. sports, news, religious, top40). As an extra bonus, the broadcasters/advertisers can actually tell if anyone is listening.
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I've been with the biggest manufacturer of HD Radio (and TV) transmitters in the US working I've worked closely with iBiquity (holder of patents for IBOC being used in the US) engineers in rolling out the newest HD Radio technologies for many years.
In my opinion it's a moot issue. I've worked on HD Radio exciters for some years, first with great enthusiasm and now with very little. It's a great idea on paper but when you listen to an actual radio in the real world the difference is VERY underwhelming. AM is a lot bigger improvement but FM is almost a wash. I can't imagine anyone paying for so minimal an improvement. If you're into AM talk radio I can see it but I don't think anyone is going to pay the iBiquity tax (every radio manufacturer has to pay for iBiquity IP to have an HD decoder) to have a radio that "sounds a little better". The ability to send multiple programs over the same signal benefits the radio station owner far more than the listener and it doesn't seem to be taking off. The stations don't seem to know what to do with the extra programming time (that could change though). I've heard the market penetration reports weekly (from iBiquity) for years. At first it was going like gangbusters. Now it's just dying and iBiquity is in BIG trouble. They've been considered for acquisition by both Apple and Google and apparently neither found them worthy. That should tell you something.... My company doesn't even want to continue updating the software for these devices because there simply isn't enough payback to make it worth doing. Radio stations aren't buying because it's not making much difference to their advertisers.
IBOC or Radio Mondiale? Who cares? I think we'll have both out there eventually with Radio's that contain decoders for either. Particularly when iBiquity folds (couple years maybe...) and their licensing fee's go away. Market penetration for IBOC is pretty damn deep in the US already (I think my company has about 2500 HD exciters in the field) and radio stations are not big spenders. I can't see them switching and if they haven't gone IBOC yet it makes no sense to do anything but IBOC because, however few HD Radio's are out there, there aren't ANY for Radio Mondiale. Being open (free) doesn't make any difference because you still have to BUY a radio with the free decoder.
They want us to use a system that chose to abbreviate DRM? I hope they call it DRW when it comes out in English speaking countries, otherwise if it becomes popular, people will start WANTING DRM, and **AA type companies will misinterpret it to meaning DRM (digital rights management) on everything.
Does DRM include DRM?
This is America, damnit! We set the standards. None of this foreign stuff for us like GSM, the metric system, or any of that other crap that will never make it in the market.
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I don't listen to AM/FM radio anymore, it's podcasts and playlists for me.
I don't think it makes sense to keep a century-old format alive just to keep antiques (literal and figurative) alive. For that, I'd suggest hooking up an AM modulator to the line out of a music device, and they'll get their mushy distorted sound the way they like it.
AM radio doesn't have to sound mushy and distorted. "Nothing New Under The AM Sun" [1977]
AM radio has range and reach when you need it. Programming is - or can be - distinct and local. That won't matter to the geek with his podcast. It can matter to the farmer or trucker on the back roads.
IBOC was designed to prevent broadcasters from competition. One of the alternative schemes was to use spread-spectrum across the entire AM broadcast band, on top of existing stations. This would make the "properties" of incumbent stations far less valuable.
It's worth keeping analog AM as an emergency broadcast medium. The receivers are simple, dumb, and reliable, and the transmitters have huge range. That's useful during floods, hurricanes, and such.
According to TFA, the (more) open system is actually relying on a number of not-so-open protocols and formats.
* Open source system. Royalties are paid by the transmitter manufactures only (and do date, most major US transmitter manufactures have already paid these). There is no royalties paid by the broadcaster to install DRM or by the consumer when purchasing a DRM capable receiver. One company does not own the rights to the modulation system for all the broadcasters in the country.
It's good that no royalties have to be paid by broadcasters or consumers, but given that I was just at the Open Hardware Summit and have a curiosity about things like GNU Radio, hopefully the amateurs won't be shaken down if they build their own receivers or transmitters.
* The CODEC is HE-AAC 4, which is widely used world wide.
AAC is patented, and they make you pay money.
In addition to that, DRM30 station have the ability to transmit low frame rate H. 264 video.
H.264 is patented, and they make you pay money.
The thing is, even if this isn't a completely open format, it's entirely plausible that this is the closest that anyone has gotten. While we could consider using this for now, we should always look forward and try to figure out how open we want the next set of standards to be.
coding is life
Both Digital Radio Mondale and IBOC (Ibiquity) are bad. Both require a host of patented codecs to run (go over to the DRM project page and look at the requirements to build it - DRM suffers from the classic design by committee issues.
But IBOC is worse: Ibiquity has, as a part of the required standard, that all transmissions SHALL be encrypted with a key you have to license from Ibiquity. If they don't like what you are doing, NO KEY FOR YOU! For example Griffin was going to offer a IBOC tuner on USB (their Radio Shark HD), that would have allowed you to record the bit stream for time shifting purposes. Ibiquity says "THOU SHALT NOT RECORD THE STREAM" - and Griffin had to cancel the Radio Shark HD (after they had announced it, BTW).
Read that last again: this isn't a "you MAY encrypt, if you want to" - this is "You SHALL encrypt. Get over it."
Personally, I'd rather see a truly Free solution out there, but where's the profit in that?
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Yeah, it's analog, yeah it's noisy like analog is, but it has a great, simple, warm sound.
When talk / news / sports are broadcast in AM Stereo, the impact in your car is really sweet! In car listening to that kind of programming is pleasant, and the lack of higher frequencies, combined with the separation possible on AM, makes for a very unobtrusive and comfortable listening experience.
There isn't anything else like it.
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned shortwave radio...
A few days ago I had to get out to a customers' site and rode a taxi there. The taxi driver was a bit talkative, and we ended up discussing his music system - an iPod connected to his car stereo, playing some online station [from random foreign country]. It got it internet connection over wifi from a base-station in his trunk. The base station in turn was hooked up using 3g gsm (the reason for the base station is that there are data-only phone plans that are way cheaper than running your data over your normal phone GSM account herabouts, and that that way he could also hook up his laptop).
In my boat I have a similar solution but with a CDMA-over 450Mhz (the old analog mobile phone frequency) based router, with about the same performance but better coverage out at sea.
Why pervert the normal radio frequencies with digital junk? They're needed for situations where all you have is that old receiver and a reception from hell and really really, badly need that weather report...
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I am a broadcast engineer with over 30 years of experience.
IBOC is a true joke. It's the FIRST broadcast service ever authorized by the FCC that actually CAUSES interference-mostly to your NEIGHBORS above and below you on the dial! IBOC is also an FCC sanctioned PRIVATELY owned system that costs broadcasters over $25K in upfront licensing fees-and then more in continuing royalty payments.
What most of us want (broadcast engineers) is for the FCC to authorize TV channels 5 and 6 for a dedicated digital radio band using DRM. Low band VHF is the WORST place for Digital Television (it goes in order UHF channels 20-40, UHF channels 14-20, UHF channels 40-51 , VHF channels 7-13 and finally VHF channels 2-6). Right now there are about 25 DTV stations on channels 5 and 6 in the entire country-and it's been proven that EVERY ONE can be accomodated on UHF (To accomodate the station in Philadelphia on channel 6, a station in Reading, PA would have to move to a different UHF channel and give Philly its current channel, OR Philadelphia can move to channel 3 if they insist on staying on low band VHF-a BAD idea!).
If the FCC got off their ever widening ASS and did this, every AM station that wanted a digital FM could have one-with enough left over for every FM station too-AND a nationwide FM frequency for the National Weather Service/Homeland Security to operate on!
Europe created GSM after the US already had digital cell phones and created it to intentionally be incompatible with analog and US digital cellular phones and towers. And then you blame the US for not switching to a system that required all their customers replace their equipment or stop working? Analog cell phones weren't completely phased out for over a decade after GSM became available in the US.
GSM was Europe's NIH. They created it to be incompatible and then many countries made it illegal to use anything else. They even went to the trouble of avoiding American technology (CDMA) which offered more efficient bandwidth utilization.
It's unfortunate that there was a GSM divide, but it's the fault of the GSM creators, not the fault of the US or US operators.
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IBOC requires the purchase of a new receiver. There's no getting around it. Even the smallest portable model costs $40-50 in the US. A larger unit can run hundreds. This is one of the biggest problems blocking adoption. Hybrid mode notwithstanding, it renders a century of radio purchases obsolete. The open nature of DRM allows many after-market options for adapting these legacy radios to continue to work. Even your vintage cathedral receiver could be enabled without permanent modification by sampling an IF stage at one of the tubes and either routing it to a computer, or a small inexpensive decoder somewhere in/on the case.