Norway Will Switch Off FM Radio In 2017

New submitter titten writes The Norwegian Ministry of Culture has announced that the transition to DAB will be completed in 2017. This means that Norway, as the first country in the world to do so, has decided to switch off the FM network. Norway began the transition to DAB in 1995. In recent years two national and several local DAB-networks has been established. 56 per cent of radio listeners use digital radio every day. 55 per cent of households have at least one DAB radio, according to Digitalradio survey by TNS Gallup, continuously measuring the Norwegian`s digital radio habits.

Comments

About half

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words they're going to cause problems for nearly half the households?

Re:About half

[kimvette]

Even bigger problem is cars where you cannot replace the head unit without disrupting the CAN bus or losing some functionality (like turn indicator reminders, warning tones, etc.)

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if they did this in the US I'd be one of that 45+% that might be impacted.
Of course, I was impacted by the digital TV thing too, but I found a solution - I gave up TV entirely and just use the computer... my 19" CRT analog TV is only really useful for watching VHS tapes if I want to (or DVDs, but I can do that on the computer too).

I guess maybe if I get a "new" car I'll get all that bull-crap I don't want, like GPS, bluetooth, digital radio, etc... all of which I'd rather not have and would prefer to just rip out of the car entirely, but I'm sure there'll be some headache with that. I want a steering wheel, gas & brake pedals, I'd really *prefer* a clutch pedal in there too, and maybe a CD player (AM/FM radio would work). All this other techno-bullcrap is just more shit to break as far as I'm concerned.

Re:About half

[__aaltlg1547]

Probably more. What percentage of listeners have at least one FM radio that doesn't receive DAB? For example, installed in a car?

Re:About half

[__aaltlg1547]

Ooh, found my answer, "20 % of private cars are equipped with DAB radio." So 80% aren't. I think 80% of people are going to not like this once it happens.

Re:About half

[omglolbah]

"55 per cent of households have at least one DAB radio"

Do the rest care about radio or have the people who listen already moved on?

My parents listen to radio here in Norway, but they use their TV for it these days since all the channels are available through the "Radio" option on their fiber cable/internet/everything system.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Even bigger problem is cars where you cannot replace the head unit without disrupting the CAN bus or losing some functionality (like turn indicator reminders, warning tones, etc.)

WTF kind of cheap piece of shit cars do you drive?? I have never seen a car where the radio cannot be trivially replaced.

Re:About half

[kyrsjo]

Rather the opposite - nice cars (or anything newer than 10-15 years) has integrated headunits, which is basically what kimvette says. On old/simple cars, the radio was just a radio, sitting in a DIN socket.

However, there are aftermarket solutions, some nicer than other. And of course, the nice solutions are krkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkr...

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems they were referring to the need to Replace an FM head unit on a Ford. Some models have the unit physically melded to the cabin environment controls, requiring more work and bigger price tag for the replacement unit.

Re:About half

[kimvette]

SAAB 9-3.

Brands which this affects:

  * BMW
  * SAAB
  * Volvo
  * Cadillac
  * Porsche

Hardly cheap pieces of shit. It's actually a more common design in higher end brands.

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on what they start picking up on the FM band. What are they planning with the new space? Imagine drivers getting free constant public content produced by anyone with a mic and transmitter. Radio stations might just be outta business. And don't get me started on the propaganda/Ligit complaints that could be picked up.

Re:About half

[kimvette]

Chrysler (including Jeep) - okay, cheap pieces of shit there, I'll grant you that
Mercedes
Newer Toyota models (including Lexus), especially the higher end models

You can get a CAN interface to bypass the radio but at risk of losing audio for turn indicators, headlamp warning, key left in ignition warning, and so forth. You may or may not also lose your steering wheel controls for the radio; some aftermarket head units and CAN interfaces can translate various makes' control codes, but some cannot, and most head units lack this integration entirely. Getting vehicles' warning tones with an aftermarket head unit is very iffy at best, so many installers take the factory head unit and relocate it so the functionality is retained, sometimes by rerouting or eliminating ductwork and shoving the radio deeper into the dash, but increasingly often by either eliminating the glove box or extending the factory wire harness and relocating the head unit to a different location, or simply installing aftermarket head units above or below the factory head unit and custom fabricating a new center console.

Re:About half

[BarbaraHudson]

Every cell phone I've owned has had a built-in FM radio tuner. Handy for news when both the power and internet are down.

Re:About half

[kimvette]

Another thing I'd forgotten about; an increasingly common trend with top-end vehicles (not cheap pieces of shit as you claim) is integrating even MORE features from the CAN bus into the head unit, particularly climate control. This is becoming increasingly (and annoyingly) commonplace, and is starting to filter down into midrange vehicles as well.

It's only the cheap pieces of shit and high-end vehicles from a handful of makes which only hand-build cars (Koeningsegg, Spyker, etc.) where volume is too low to justify highly integrated units where you can swap a head unit and not have to jump through hoops to not lose any functionality.

Sure, in most vehicles you can either install a CAN hub or even a passive connector and get the car to run, but you will lose some of the original features and kill trade-in/resale value in the process - and for the vehicles which have jumped on the touch-screen-for-everything trend, good luck selling a car where heat/defrost/AC doesn't work.

Re:About half

[Misagon]

"56 per cent of radio listeners use digital radio every day."

I wonder... Would there be more radio listeners overall if stations hadn't closed down on FM already as part of the transition to DAB?
How many stations worth listening to are still on FM? How many radio listeners are there now in total compared to a decade ago?

Re:About half

[Kjella]

Ooh, found my answer, "20 % of private cars are equipped with DAB radio." So 80% aren't. I think 80% of people are going to not like this once it happens.

That doesn't even begin to cover it, many people have an FM radio that they occasionally use for example at cabins or whatever, more than 80% will probably have to replace some radio. And note that they asked for "digital listeners" not "DAB listeners" meaning if you use your smartphone or tablet or PC to listen to radio, you get counted in favor of DAB even though you don't use DAB.

Actually this (Norwegian) is the truth, in 2014 about 64% of the population listened to radio daily and only 19% on DAB. There's no numbers for it but even less exclusively used DAB. I don't have a DAB radio. It sucks for any kind of battery-driven device, meaning just the kind of remote places and mobile appliances where you'd want radio. We'd do better just upgrading so we'd get 3G/4G coverage everywhere rather than DAB.

Nobody else is phasing out FM or even planning to phase out FM. This is just Norway going off on its own crusade urged on by commercial interests of 10+ new channels, fuck whether it makes sense to throw out millions of radios. On the bright side, I expect this to lead to a massive interest in building out 3G/4G coverage as ex-FMers give DAB the middle finger. Streaming with Spotify + offline playlists is likely to be the new "radio".

Re:About half

[aliquis]

Then again 1995 ... That's 20 years.

And it's likely cheaper now.
Also the idea is to turn off FM because it cost more money.
Also it's Norway. They can afford a DAB unit.

Now over here in Sweden we don't have DAB. We've got FM.

So to go with DAB would mean to build it in the first place. And have everyone get DAB radios.

But in Norway this has already happened.

Stupid things Sweden do: Build new antennas for terrestrial mpegII compressed TV when money could had been spent on fiber to everyone instead.

Re:About half

[thegarbz]

56 per cent of radio listeners use digital radio every day

What about those who only listen every 2 days?

55 per cent of households have at least one DAB radio

How many people don't have a radio at home at all?

Then there's also the premise that going out and spending 25Euro on a radio sometime in the next two years is a problem. This will be a big non-issue.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

I foresaw this from the digital TV switch. When we'd have a tornado warning in the analog days, I could turn on our television as loud as I could(to allow others in the area to be alerted if they weren't already) and we could go to the basement and listen to see where it was and if it was safe to come out. Today even though I live less than 3 miles from the very same transmitter, thanks to RF ghosting, bad weather means absolutely ZERO reception. The same will happen with radio to many others. In the event of a disaster, you will be utterly fucked. I get that digital looks and sounds better for the most part but I'm ALL about dual compatibility just in case.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Every cell phone I've owned has had a built-in FM radio tuner. Handy for news when both the power and internet are down.

Only works if you're carrying earbuds or headphones since the cable is used as the FM antenna, IIRC. Otherwise, you're SOL for reception.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, somebody has to go first.
We shut down analog TV signal ages ago, but nobody really cared because a lot of Norway use satellite in the first place. So RiksTV is whatever.
Going from FM to DAB+ will bring a lot of butthurt, but so long there will be proper radios on the marked it will be fine. The current situation is that there is tons of really crappy radios on the marked, and lots of travel radios for DAB is currently shit.
Changing for cars is even worse, since some newer cars do not have a stereo player, they have something weird instead. The quality of car steros also vary, and I hope the issue will be fixed.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing that people who want to use the FM radio on their phones carry earbuds or headphones.

Re:About half

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Yes, they did shu..//../ but digital is worse when it comes to 99000...///// ddddd..... when I want to wa@/.....,'''[[[[ bad weathe.../[][]][;;;

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a few android auto head units if you have one of the old "not nice" cars. I've got a pioneer in my Rav4 and it cost almost as much as the car.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Handy for news when both the power and internet are down.

A frequent problem for those living in the ghetto.

Re:About half

[hjf]

it's been always like that, since the Walkman era.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

That sucks, but is not universal. After the switch to digital, I went from two usable channels (public + a network) to five (four networks and public). And in the US at least there is a dedicated radio band for emergency weather, something I found useful when lightning took out the local TV network once (back when there was only two channels).

Re:About half

[davester666]

My 2004 GMC 3500 factory radio has all the warnings bells go through it [door open, lights on, seatbelt not buckled, engine has exploded, etc]. 3rd party stereo (Alpine 4000NEX) needed an external 'adapter' that plugs into the existing truck radio plug, and that has a small computer/speaker that beeps as necessary, and also provides all the right speaker and power lines, as well as supporting retained accessory power [radio turns off when you open the door after taking out the key] and as a 'reverse gear is selected', so the display shows my backup camera when I go in reverse.

Re:About half

[ckatko]

So the government should have to pay for walled-garden bullshit from car manufacturers?

Re:About half

[Jack Griffin]

Meh. Didn't we hear the same argument when color TV was introduced? Or CDs, Digital TV, Digital cameras, Fly by wire, the Internet etc etc every other technology implementation ever?
I'm sure there'll be teething problems, there always are. But the great thing when you have a progressive mindset is when you encounter issues, you can fix them and move on.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

You want a tube radio in your car? Talk about retro!

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been an RVer for years. In the analog days, you could get quite a few channels most places. A lot of them were really fuzzy, looked like crap, but you could make it out, and you could hear the audio quite well. Since digital, I have NEVER had a signal that was not at least somewhat corrupted, and most of the time I get completely unusable crap. And there's no audio either, so basically, most of the time, I've go nothing. Yeah, that was an improvement!

TL;DR - if you're in a fringe area, digital does not work at all, where analog would have been usable.

Re:About half

[Quantum gravity]

Nobody else is phasing out FM or even planning to phase out FM.>

A (much discussed) study for Swedish parliament recommended that FM radio be closed down 2022.

Re:About half

[Quantum gravity]

And searching Wikipedia reveals that Switzerland plans to close down FM radio by 2024.

Re: About half

[tandavanadesan]

Colour TV was n broadcast on a format compatible with monochrome, so you only had to replace the TV when you wanted colour.

Re:About half

[quenda]

There is one cheap, easy solution. A DAB+ receiver that plugs into the "lighter" socket, and has an FM transmitter.
This method is use by millions of people for playing MP3s in the car. Bonus if you have an AUX-in on the dash.
They are currently expensive, but only because of small demand.

For more modern cars, you would use bluetooth, and retain steering wheel controls and dashboard display. Don't most new cars support A2DP and AVRCP?
Control your DAB radio and get station and track title displayed on the dash, just like controlling your phone or iPod. Its a bit of a hack, but you could use AVRCP to select stations instead of tracks.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody else is phasing out FM or even planning to phase out FM.

That's not true, actually. The UK, for one, is clearly mulling the idea, in fact, trying very hard to make up numbers to justify proposing it... and failing. Given their habit to make up numbers for other things they want to set policy for, that's telling. Other countries are doing similar things, eg. the Netherlands badly wants to "get with the times", just doesn't dare come out and say so (yet). That makes this really a tidy little lobbyist victory in Norway that they'll inevitably use elsewhere.

Doesn't make it less stupid, of course. In case of disaster FM radio is a good way to still reach people otherwise unreachable, since many people "just happen" to have a receiver around. That includes car radios, kitchen radios, even (and do spot the irony) smartphones and feature phones that have an FM receiver thrown into their RF handling chippery, as a trivial extra.

DAB (with or without added +) for many reasons is a really poor choice to try and run disaster relief radio service over, but it'll be all they have. Go Norway.

Re:About half

[ultranova]

Meh. Didn't we hear the same argument when color TV was introduced? Or CDs, Digital TV, Digital cameras, Fly by wire, the Internet etc etc every other technology implementation ever?

Cassettes and analog cameras weren't banned. They simply fell out of favor because CDs and digital cameras were way superior as far as the end user was concerned. By contrast, digital tv and digital radio don't benefit the end user, they'll simply let parts of the spectrum be auctioned off; so they require legislation to force the end users to pay the costs for the transition so someone else can profit.

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly people. When shopping for a car, turn down ridiculous offers where radio or lightbulbs aren't easily replaceable.

Re:About half

[johanw]

I need that lighter socket to charge my phone, especially when the navigator is on. Do these units come with extra USB sockets? Otherwise I need a one to many socket multiplier first but those are bulky.

Re: About half

[johanw]

Good luck with most modern European cars. There aren't any unless you buy a second hand 10 years old one.

Re:About half

[johanw]

"seatbelt not buckled"

That warning not functioning would be an actual advantage. :-)

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess why i'll never buy a new car

Re:About half

[johanw]

"Then again, somebody has to go first."

No, why? What's so bad about FM that it needs replacing? And even if you replace it, why would you do it with a dead standard that has failed to become popular when it might have mattered, and is now outdated already? If you want digital, use 3G/4G; if you just want radio, analoge FM is the best there is.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

According to wikipedia you do have DAB and you are planning on shutting down FM 2024 at the latest. So start saving dude.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't pay. It's not just one radio i need to buy. You think car radios cost 25Euros?

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Teething issues, like the fact the digital TV has brought nothing new, except non functional EPG (there was teletext before that for EPG, so it's not a new feature), dozen different standards that we have to go through all of them, new channels that replay the same shows even on the same day, errors in broadcasting causing a lot more havoc etc etc.

I remember being promised all kinds of new features with DTV like background info of players in sports shows, alternative view angles etc etc. They can even get the screen size correct many many times.

When can i expect you to fix those issues?

Re:About half

[jaklode]

No, if 56% use digital radio daily, that does not mean that 44% use analogue radio. Many do not use radio at all.

Re:About half

[Blaskowicz]

I do have a cell phone which receives radio without the cable. It is nice for listening to some talk/news and occasionally a bit of music while walking and bored, but it is not really good for that.

Other cell phones, you can use a jack cable instead of a headphone, that is more convenient if you never use earbuds.

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a satellite dish??

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Every cell phone I've owned has had a built-in FM radio tuner. Handy for news when both the power and internet are down.

Uh
maybe you didn't spot the bit about them switching off the FM transmitters..
(the UK government is trying to implement similar scheme, just like the digital TV, DAB is shit dealing with poor reception...a bird farts betwixt transmitter and receiver..lots of nice digital artefacts...)

Re:About half

[Blaskowicz]

Chip amplifiers are very much worth it (class D amps). That's a chip, but it only amplifies sound, supported by a few capacitors etc.
You could have an uncomputerized car radio, with even a knob and needle rather than the "press the + button 95 times or do a search" feature, that uses the chip amp.

Bluetooth transmitter could sit in there.. as long as it's a small module wired as an analog input, next to "aux in".

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they did shu..//../ but digital is worse when it comes to 99000...///// ddddd..... when I want to wa@/.....,'''[[[[ bad weathe.../[][]][;;;

I fee&(*&(*&(l your pa"£$£%n....a sufferer of UK D*&^&gital Telev**&^^sionnnnnnnnnnnnnn (reset box)

Note: Regarding Digital TV, I'm in a marginal signal area...actually within 5 miles of a main transmitter but in the shadow of a hill..large vehicles passing our house affect the signal, time of day becomes an issue as well (why do some channels suddenly become unstable after 17:30 then stabilise at 1:30 again?..answers on a postcard to...nobody, as they don't give a shit).
As to weather affecting the signal..in our house there's a new weather rhyme;
'Can't watch BBC3, a storm there'll be'

DAB reception is next to useless, apart from in one room upstairs where there's a reasonable (hah, it's DAB we're talking about here) signal..whereas FM we've no issues with.

Funny, analogue TV worked fine here (with an occasional bit of ghosting and snow..)

[Captcha: enemas...says it all, really.]

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on what they start picking up on the FM band. What are they planning with the new space?

It doesn't matter what they're planning with the space, the pirate broadcasters are waiting in the wings to take up the slack..

Re: About half

[ericloewe]

Even some 10 year old cars are very tightly integrated.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Both countries have switched over TV to digital. It wasn't without cost for the consumers but it was possible anyway.
A device that receives a DAB signal and sends out an FM signal at a very small signal strength could server as a solution for those that can't find better alternatives.
For cars it can be mounted behind the car radio.

There is no technical reason to why FM can't be shut down and replaced by DAB.
The reasons are political or emotional. Some of the may be valid, some of them are not. Haven't seen any valid ones posted on slashdot yet.

Re:About half

[quenda]

Otherwise I need a one to many socket multiplier first but those are bulky.

Are you a man or a mouse? Cut some holes in the panel if needed and install some extra sockets.

Get this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-S...

cut the plug off, and clamp the wires to the existing socket's cables with something like these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/25-Red...

Another generation, and kids will be calling an electrician to change a blown light bulb :( (Now get off my lawn.)

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

new != quality

Re:About half

[Carewolf]

Yeah, but they have to go to DAB+ not DAB. And Norway being one of the first countries with DAB, started with the old standard which is just MP2 over radio, and doesn't even have error-correction. Plain DAB is plain shit and works nowhere.

Re:About half

[Shirley Marquez]

That could be true but the statistics don't support the assertion. Let's have a look:

56% of radio listeners use digital radio every day. That doesn't necessarily mean that the other 44% are using analog radio; it can also mean that some radio listeners do not listen daily.

55% of households have at least one DAB radio. That may not mean the other 45% are listening to analog radios; some of them may not listen to radio at all or only listen to streamed internet radio.

In other words, we need more detailed information before we can determine how much impact this decision will actually have.

Re:About half

[Shirley Marquez]

Sadly, FM radio in cell phones is fairly uncommon in the US. Not because the chip sets in the phones don't have the capability (most do), but because the US carriers insist that the phone makers turn it off.

Re:About half

[Shirley Marquez]

The NOAA weather broadcasts are great. Canada also has weather broadcasts on the same channels. But most people will have to buy a dedicated radio to receive them. Ham radio operators and scanner users can listen with those radios.

Re:About half

[Shirley Marquez]

Digital TV does benefit the end user, when it works. High resolution picture and multiple channel support are definitely pluses.

Re:About half

[jellomizer]

But those cars also have Digital radio too.

Re:About half

[jellomizer]

This is a EU country, where smoking still seems like the thing that cool people do, not a redneck thing. Do you really want to waste a lighter socket.

Re:About half

[jellomizer]

I am a MAN! creating holes is a job for a mouse.

Re:About half

[BarbaraHudson]

Yes I did, and that's why millions of cell phone users with built-in FM radios are going to hate this change. Duh!

Re:About half

[BarbaraHudson]

Sadly, FM radio in cell phones is fairly uncommon in the US. Not because the chip sets in the phones don't have the capability (most do), but because the US carriers insist that the phone makers turn it off.

They probably want to make $$$ from streaming music data charges.

Re: About half

[IrquiM]

Newer German cars, and not something cheap ;-) It is however easy to program the CAN-bus.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, good luck finding an open frequency to transmit to your car radio on, especially in big cities. I have one, and when I lived in Atlanta, it was worthless.

Re:About half

[Morris von Habsburg]

You're confusing DAB+ with SiriusXM or IBOC/Ubiquity.

Any device manufacturer or slightly advanced geek can download the DAB+ specs (http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102500_102599/102563/01.02.01_60/ts_102563v010201p.pdf) and build their own receiver. Anyone with a DAB+ radio can pick up the unencrypted DAB+ signal Free To Air and play it. How is that a walled garden?

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Erhm. Not really. I don't know anyone who doesn't see smokers as losers.

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news! They're going to turn off those broadcasts!

Re: About half

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be true if they weren't turning it off in 2017.

Re:About half

[aliquis]

Ok, as trial here:
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/a... .. and not covering everyone.

Re:About half

[Jack Griffin]

Cassettes and analog cameras weren't banned. They simply fell out of favor because CDs and digital cameras were way superior as far as the end user was concerned

No they weren't. End Users bitched and moaned about being forced to upgrade all that stuff just as they are now.

Re:About half

[quenda]

This is a EU country, where smoking still seems like the thing that cool people do,

Cool teenagers maybe. While immigrants to Norway tend to be heavy smokers, cigarette consumption per capita in Norway is half that of the US or Australia. So they have a lot of occassional social smokers, not so much the addicts who stink out their cars. Though the Norwegian fondness for wet snuff (snus) is also a factor.

Re:About half

[tepples]

Then there's also the premise that going out and spending 25Euro on a radio sometime in the next two years is a problem.

How would you go about installing such a 25 euro radio into your car?

Re:About half

[gzuckier]

Rather the opposite - nice cars (or anything newer than 10-15 years) has integrated headunits, which is basically what kimvette says. On old/simple cars, the radio was just a radio, sitting in a DIN socket.

However, there are aftermarket solutions, some nicer than other. And of course, the nice solutions are krkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkr...

Recent Honda Civics, for instance. (recent meaning like back ten years, anyway); the security system and remote work through the radio, so (at least back then) you used to see a lot of aftermarket systems installed, with the original radio just stuffed back in the behind the dash wiring.

Re: About half

[gzuckier]

Car Q&A column in the paper the other day had a question from somebody who had maybe a 4 year old Mustang? Hope I'm not slandering the make... Anyway, the indicator light on a switch had died, and you couldn't replace just the light, you had to buy a whole new switch for $50.

Re:About half

[gzuckier]

Boy, you rich guys with your modern fancy cars with radios in them.

Re:About half

[dave420]

Norway is not in the EU.

Re:About half

[Morris von Habsburg]

True, but then FM is not going to banned either. It's just that all the big stations in Norway are leaving FM. You can still use your FM radio to listen to small local stations (and probably pilots). You will also still be able to buy FM radios in Norway but they now carry stickers to warn people that they will be of less use from 2017.

Re:About half

[thegarbz]

I have a DIN mounted radio in my car so quite easily. But in all seriousness FM in cars is starting to become a thing of the past. I'm not sure how things are in Norway or where you live, but for most commutes with various people it's car radios that do USB, Bluetooth, and when phones are attached Pandora, Spotify, or in the most backwards cases listening to music via an iPod and a 3.5mm jack.

I don't think very many people will ultimately miss FM in a few years, and even if they do most could get a portable DAB+ tuner and plug that into your car. Every transition will have a couple of stragglers that will require something to bridge while they wait for their old technology to wear out.

Re:About half

[kyrsjo]

No, not really - integrated DAB is something which is usually an optional extra. Of course, this change is not really news, so you can probably say that those who bought a new car in the last 5 years without DAB or the possibility to easily install it, brought it upon themselves.

So it's the 10 year old cars which are the real problem. I have one of those myself - the radio is also the trip computer etc., and the climate controls use the same display. It works very nicely, but I have no idea how to install DAB without using one of those FM transmitters (= crappy quality, I do that to use Spottify). It's made by GM's German division, so I guess most of the electronics is the same as you would find in their US cars of similar date.

PS: DAB is not the same as XM/sirius! It works with terrestrial transmitters, just like FM.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is my Toyota would outlast every one of those supposedly "good" cars.

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

With T-Mobile I get unlimited high speed music streaming from a bunch of online sources. I use it to stream stuff that I uploaded to Google Music all of the time.

Re:About half

[BarbaraHudson]

And it sucks far more battery life than just the radio. And it doesn't work when you don't have a connection.

Re: About half

[MenThal]

But it is in the EEC which give most of the EU membership crap and just some of the benefits...

Re:About half

[beastofburdon]

American made, of course! (I know GM for certain does this, I think Ford does it too now)

Re:About half

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a Sony DAB CDX-DAB6650 for best part of a decade. It's worked perfectly well in Saab 900, BMW 3 series and now sits in my Saab 9-3.
All that was required was ~$20 after sale conversion kit and a hour's installation time and some new knuckle skin.
I expect to take it with me to my next car.

And AM is not that rare in UK. At least one national BBC (5Live) station is AM/DAB(/web) only.

Re:About half

[__aaltlg1547]

No they don't. They literally do not because there is no reason why the FM radio service ever has to end.

Perfect time

[ArchieBunker]

For pirate FM stations to fly their flags.

Re:Perfect time

[Anonymous Coward]

For pirate FM stations to fly their flags.

"Perfect time"...?!
3 decades ago, as a child growing up in a small Greek city, i had a pirate FM station - i had my room full of wires and stuff, i was electro-shocked several times (stupid home-made circuit), i had the police constantly investigate about me (and few other fellow FM pirates) for disrupting important radio communication/transmitions, and all that for what: for just an old Greek (warning: it would be all Greek to you!) comedy movie about FM pirates...
Nowdays anyone can communicate/transmit his stupidity from the internet - no need for FM pirates anymore.

Re:Perfect time

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Cool! Several friends and I ran pirate FM intermittently for a bunch of years.

Anyone know where to get English subtitles for that film? Might be fun to compare to the handful of other pirate radio movies.

I was hoping to see more interest in local pirate TV when analog NTSC got shut down. The long reign of cable TV weaned enough people away from local antennas altogether, so viewer base probably limited in most areas.

Re:Perfect time

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello friend (and fellow -former- radio pirate) , greetings from Athens, Greece.
Unfortunately i doubt you will find any English subtitles for the film (it was without any meaning to post it here in Slashdot anyway... but nostalgia made me do it!).
Just to give you an idea for the plot (the movie is titled "Basically... good afternoon... - the radio pirates" - making fun of the usually "insightful" commentary of us - Greeks... or not!): Some Greek radio-pirates... play music, making "insightful" comment (usually to and about someone they are in love with... even if the other part just ignores them...)... and they try to "win the air" of some other radio-pirates' gang (by a stronger signal - or by just beating them physicaly!)... and stuff like that.
We Greeks have many good movies (o.k., this is not one of them actually...) that the rest of the world would find great, but... Greeks are too lazy to translate them - not to mention that Greek is the language of the Gods, and you barbarians are not worthy for it yet!

DAB or DAB+?

[Rising Ape]

I find here in the UK the DAB stations often sound worse than their FM equivalents, thanks to an antiquated codec (MP2!). DAB+ was supposed to fix this by using AAC+, but that doesn't seem to have been deployed here. Backwards compatibility issues I guess.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[brambus]

I think many stations in the UK are using MP2 at 128kbps for stereo, which is just atrocious. MP2 should definitely not be used below 192kbps, in which case it'll definitely be better than even FM using 100kHz spacing.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[caseih]

Had a year's worth of Sirius satellite radio with a new vehicle. Couldn't stand to listen to it. the sound quality was awful, just like you describe. Even talk stations were tinny and clipped and grating on the ears. Anything remotely "classical" as far as music was concerned was utter garbage. Analog FM sounds way better. And as you say, it's a codec issue more than a digital issue. A modern MP3 encoder such as LAME can create pretty good audio with a 64 kbs stereo stream.

I guess most people aren't discerning listeners though, because I know of many people who love their satellite radio.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[Kjella]

Today it's a mix but towards the transition they'll all convert to DAB+, of course that's ditching a couple hundred thousand early adopters of DAB (no plus) radios but hey.. we're a monopoly.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[Anonymous Coward]

A modern MP3 encoder such as LAME can create pretty good audio with a 64 kbs stereo stream.

A mono stream? Yeah, OK. Stereo? Forget about it. By default, Lame will encode the stream at 24khz with a lowpass filter set at 11khz. The resulting file will sound muffled and full of compression artifacts.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[sjames]

It *SHOULD NOT* be less that 192kbps, but is it?

Re: DAB or DAB+?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, XM radio stinks. Poor sound quality and 200 stations of garbage.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[arglebargle_xiv]

Had a year's worth of Sirius satellite radio with a new vehicle. Couldn't stand to listen to it. the sound quality was awful, just like you describe. Even talk stations were tinny and clipped and grating on the ears.

Well you have no-one to blame but yourself for that, if you'd remembered to tape on your Brilliant Pebbles with Teflon Tape, plug in your Tice Clock, and outline the speaker in Green Pen, then you'd have noticed the difference immediately, with strong bass in impact and quantity, clear mids, nice extension and clarity in the trebles, and one of the best soundstages in the market, the physical properties of width and depth producing a sense of great size and space when listening (except that final bit where the third cellist from the left paused to scratch their elbow, which upset the recorded acoustic imaging a bit).

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[Anonymous Coward]

what...??

  This reads like a Nigerian request for money mixed with a tinfoil hat rant.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[Anonymous Coward]

MP2 is fine (and in fact better than MP3!) as long as we're talking about bit rates above 224 kbps. 256 kbps is subjectively 'better than FM'

AAC+ (HE-AAC) has been tuned for bit rates under 64 kbps. No codec sounds good there. I've never seen AAC+ used at higher bit rates: it's always been LC-AAC.

That MP2 vs MP3 comment? MP3 has a low-pass filter at 16 kHz by design. MP2 has no such limitation, and thanks to that, can beat MP3 at bit rates above 256-ish kbps.

The only problematic part about MP2 is that there isn't a good quality open source encoder for it. The commercial offerings probably are fine though.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno. Our DVB-T television broadcasts have 224 kbps MP2 audio streams, last I checked. I've heard that the Brits aren't that lucky.

(We don't have DAB at all; it got retired about ten years ago due to nobody using it. A couple of radio stations broadcast through DVB-T, which requires a telly so it's not that useful.)

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[arglebargle_xiv]

Google "Poe's Law".

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[Wowsers]

I originally bought a pocket DAB radio because four stations I listen to were in stereo on DAB, two of them were on AM (mono). As time passed by, ALL the DAB stations dropped their data rates, two of them have switched to 112k mono - unlistenable so don't listen to DAB any more The other stereo station on DAB reduced from 192k to 128k. Only one station left in stereo, at 160k (thankfully is in stereo on FM).

99% of DAB radio is in mono - in no way is that an FM replacement, the dropping bitrate makes even the mono stations sound bad. Look at the DAB radios on sale in the UK, nearly all of them have just one speaker. DAB is NOT ever going to replace stereo FM.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[brambus]

112k mono

Is perfectly workable. The lack of a second channel almost cuts bitrate requirements in half. Then again, it's mono, so yuck!

99% of DAB radio is in mono

That's just f'ing atrocious.

The other stereo station on DAB reduced from 192k to 128k

If it's MP2, then yuck again! AAC at 128k is near transparent. MP2 is definitely not!

in no way is that an FM replacement, the dropping bitrate makes even the mono stations sound bad

It would be an FM replacement, *if* they were to use it right. Unfortunately, it seems most stations are hell-bent on crapping all over sound quality to save a few bucks on bandwidth.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_National_DAB
Note some of this are essentially speech only stations.
Radio 3 (the classical music station) get the bast bandwidth.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[sjames]

That would explain the quality complaints.

Less accessible

[sevenisloud]

One of the things about FM radio is it's so easily accessible - you can (in the UK at least) buy a rubbish FM radio from a pound shop - it might not be great of course, but it makes it a medium practically everyone can enjoy. DAB is comparatively quite expensive.

Re:Less accessible

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Two days later the Chinese will flood the same dollar stores with one cell, one button digital receivers, don't worry about that.

Re:Less accessible

[PPH]

I don't know about the EU and UK, but in the USA, the market for HD Radio has been crippled by IP and licensing issues. The hardware is (or could be) cheap. Particularly if China gets into the manufacturing business.

Re:Less accessible

[sjames]

Further, analog radios can consume next to no power (in some cases, actually no power) and continue to work to some degree even when the batteries are practically dead. That can make a big difference in an emergency.

I have two or three extras they were giving away at a trade show.

Re:Less accessible

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This probably has something to do with the fact that 'HD Radio' is a proprietary non-standard that is whatever iBiquity Digital Corporation say it is, and costs whatever they say it does. They obviously want it to be adopted, because they get nothing if it dies; but that's pretty much the only incentive encouraging them to cooperate on licensing or keep prices reasonable.

There is a pitiful veneer of 'standardization', courtesy of the NRSC; but 'NRSC-5c' is more or less a very lightly de-branded generic descriptions fleshed out by the incorporation-by-reference of the iBiquity documentation.

It makes the various MPEG standards and dealing with the MPEG-LA look like some kind of FOSS hippie commune by comparison.

Re: Less accessible

[tandavanadesan]

This is about switching off FM not analogue. AM well still have it's niche usage for long distance broadcasting.

Re: Less accessible

[sjames]

I was under the impression there isn't much use of AM radio in Norway.

Re:Less accessible

[queazocotal]

The components used to make a DAB reciever, while they have come down lots in price and power use recently - still use a _LOT_ of power - from the point of view of something running on small batteries.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Robert... - for example.
4-5 hours on two AA cells.
FM radios (at modest volume on headphones) can last over 200, with the same cells.

Re: Less accessible

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is listening AM, since there's nothing for public transmitted there.

Re:Less accessible

[Anonymous Coward]

(oh, don't worry, there will be less people to flood on because they diminished population after no one could earn income from making anything technological new or fabricating anything AT ALL).

US

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we even have broadcast digital radio here? I know at one time (years ago) a couple of the Detroit stations sort of near me were making a big deal out of their HD radio stations, but I've not heard about that since (and have no way to tune HD radio).

I think one of my locals already has

[smooth wombat]

There was one station I would listen to, the local rock station (yes, it played real rock, not that poser stuff) and as of late, it sounds like crap.

The only way I can describe what it now sounds like would be tinny and clipped. Songs which used to have a roundness to them sound horrible. It's as if the treble has been tripled and the bass halved. Reminds me of when my work went from analog phones to the "new and improved" digital phones. Immediately voices sounded off and messages and voicemail could and would be jittery.

Fortunately there are still a few stations to flip through, including NPR, but it's the only time I listen to the radio. Normally I just bring my cds to listen to.

Re:I think one of my locals already has

[Pentium100]

The sound quality of FM radio is not that great, especially due to the very high compression. A record, tape or a CD has much higher quality.

However, I like to listen to radio at work - the quality is good enough for background and I do not have to constantly change records or tapes. Also, the compression helps to keep the volume down. I also do not have to constantly decide what to play now - just tune to a station I like and leave it be. Also, when driving short distances, I listen to radio - I grab some tapes or MDs when I am driving further.

Re:I think one of my locals already has

[kimvette]

> I grab some tapes

Cassette tapes? People still listen to those? Can you even buy cassette tapes any more?

I still have a Pioneer cassette deck at home but haven't even hooked it up in years. I still have about 30 blank Type II and Type IV tapes still in shrink wrap. I don't think I'll ever use them.

Re:I think one of my locals already has

[Pentium100]

Yes, cassette tapes. I have a lot of them and see no reason not to use them. Copying the music to a digital format would take a lot of time and not really provide any benefits. On the other hand, recording from a record (I have a lot of those too, I also borrow and copy records sometimes) to tape is more convenient than recording to a PC, though MD is pretty convenient too. However, recording a MD I need to manually mark the tracks, while recording to a tape I just need to listen or any problems (I have a couple of three head decks, so I can monitor while recording). This is because a tape "remembers" where it was stopped, but none of my MD recorders can do that if the MD is removed.

Yes, you can still buy blank tapes, most of them are low quality, but some companies still make higher quality cassettes. Also you can buy NOS tapes on ebay and such.

If you really do not think you will ever use your NOS Type 4 tapes, I suggest you try selling them. Some tapes (especially type 4) can go for quite a lot of money.

Re:I think one of my locals already has

[toddestan]

Well, the problem with FM radio now is that they assume you're either listening in a car or with chinzy $5 earbuds, so they compress the shit out of the dynamic range, which makes it sound like crap. I also suspect that many stations are playing MP3 files or some other lossy format too. FM radio technology not be the best, but it's capable of a lot better than what most radio stations seem willing to put into it.

So much for long distance Listening

[FlyingGuy]

Digital ANYTHING over the air for listening just plain sucks.

If your signal is not perfect you simply don't hear anything. If I am WAY away from an analog broadcast, it might be fuzzy, it might in and out of stereo but I can still HEAR and understand it. With digital, one the signal gets fuzzy is just does not decode it.

This is only one of the reasons why cops and fire fighters hate the new digital radios.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, AM tends to be used for talk, FM for music. Are they phasing out AM?

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

This effect is called "digital cliff". In theory, digitally encoded information (in this case, sound we want to hear) does not suffer the quality degradation no matter that there is actual degradation in signal. Until signal quality becomes so horrible that is not possible to get encoded information from the signal. With analog modulation, you would get more noise in information when you get more noise in signal. Illustrated as: http://www.aerialsandtv.com/_wp_generated/wpea5bfb21_01_1a.jpg In practice this works ok for digital television. You get best possible* image with DTV where you would get unwatchable static-covered picture.

The problem here is that digitalization is often used to decrease the power of the emitter, so you cannot compare digital and analog case directly.

Honestly, I don't have an idea if this works well with sound. Sound is rarely distorted in analog TV, even when video itself is completely ruined. And this depends heavily on modulation and encoding.

*) As much as MPEG2 and MPEG4 can give you

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

In Norway AM is not really used

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[X0563511]

The way the digital stations around here work, is they broadcast both - and the receiver in my car seem to be intelligent enough to downgrade if the digital signal is too weak.

Basically, the radio starts off sounding like poo as it starts off in analog, but then as it 'locks in' (for lack of a better term) it switches over to digital and thus sounds much better. If I drive into a tunnel or such, the digital signal will drop and the radio will (without gap, mind you) drop back to analog, and switch back up when the digital signal is again stable.

I think what it does is it receives both, and keeps a running error talley on the digital stream. It uses this to determine if the signal is stable enough to use. I would expect even better performance if the streams were buffered for a second or two, but this isn't the case (at least the analog signal isn't - verified with my "real" radio)

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[dryeo]

You get best possible* image with DTV where you would get unwatchable static-covered picture.

The problem with the switch to digital TV was all the channels moved into the UHF band which does not carry as far. Here I used to get ch. 2 and 6 clear and a couple of other ones were sometimes watchable, after the switch to digital we don't get any channels. Being 30 miles outside of one of the biggest cities in Canada means no other options, satellite blocked by hills and trees, no cable, no cell coverage and with the privatized phone system 3 9's means that every 9 days the phone is out for 9 hours (18 hours last time), usually due to cable theft.
FM radio is still good but I'm sure if it switched to digital that would also be gone. This raises the question about Norway and how good the DAB coverage is compared to FM

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[wisnoskij]

This. Used to be a thunderstorm just meant a fussy TV. Now a little rain and TV is out completely.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[thegarbz]

Digital ANYTHING over the air for listening just plain sucks.

If your signal is not perfect you simply don't hear anything. If I am WAY away from an analog broadcast, it might be fuzzy, it might in and out of stereo but I can still HEAR and understand it.

You're assuming the goal of listening radio is simply to understand. For most people it most definitely isn't. There's nothing more fatiguing than trying to understand content through static in the background. Heck when FM drops out of stereo most people typically change the channel, and and many intelligent radios consider the signal lost at this point and look for another station.

This is only one of the reasons why cops and fire fighters hate the new digital radios.

The cops and firefighters have a rosy view of the past. The reality is that modern digital radios have receivers with far greater sensitivities than those analogue counterparts. TETRA or P25 on a power for power basis with older analogue equipment works well over 3 times the distance where analogue becomes unintelligible. The modern equipment is now so good they've started downrating the equipment's power output.

If you have a coverage issue at all then it's never the fault of the radio standard.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Brett Buck]

By the way, "lack of distance" has been considered a feature, not a bug, for decades. The current US FM band (87.5-107.9 mHz) was chosen* to minimize "skip" transmission on the earlier, lower, band. This prevents stations from interfering as easily, and thus increases the number of stations permissible in a particular local listening area. There are still "clear channel" 50,000 watt AM stations that occupy exclusive frequencies for the entire country - they were trying to avoid that.

*partly - the other part was marginally a conspiracy to put Howard Armstrong's nascent FM network out of business by making the frequencies it operated on illegal. However, in fact, the lower frequency 42-49 mHz band *did* have the tendency to skip sometimes, and with the superior signal to noise ratio of wideband FM, could sometimes be clearly be heard at remarkable distances - or interfere with local stations at remarkable distances.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

Forward error correction can solve the distance issue--with enough you'd have an almost worthless analog signal, but your digital signal would be still useable. Most digital signals nowadays offer it. Of course, anyone trying to maximize data bandwidth will lower the amount of FEC they offer.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Paradise Pete]

Used to be a thunderstorm just meant a fussy TV.

Used to be a fussy TV no matter the weather. And a pair of pliers to change the channel because the crappy plastic knob fell off.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

You post repeatedly like you have an interest in DAB.

Bubbling to silence is way more "fatiguing" than a bit of fuzz which never stops the signal from being intelligible. Having to recharge batteries daily instead of every few weeks is also tiresome. And, in the UK at least, FM audio is better than the low bitrate MP2 most channels use - i.e. even at perfect reception, it sounds awful.

And there's nothing like a dork sitting in a lab to tell people actually using their equipment whether it works or not. Maybe they are more sensitive on paper. Maybe on paper they do work "well over 3 times the distance". But, no matter how big the kickback to those responsible for buying proprietary digital solutions, they still frustrate people on the ground whose radios don't work in theoretical or simplified lab environments.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Kjella]

TETRA or P25 on a power for power basis with older analogue equipment works well over 3 times the distance where analogue becomes unintelligible.

Outside. I know particularly the firefighters have complained about poorer coverage inside buildings, which is usually where their life-saving work is done. Details...

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[InsectOverlord]

Interesting. Did you have a TV that became fastidious and hard to please during thunderstorms?

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[drinkypoo]

You're assuming the goal of listening radio is simply to understand. For most people it most definitely isn't. There's nothing more fatiguing than trying to understand content through static in the background.

Yeah, there's nothing worse than when the radio reception is poor while you're digging ditches.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[hjf]

bullshit. I'm sure it's possible to create a modulation and encoding system that can "partially recover" a stream. if you have good signal, you get "HD quality", but with lower rates you start degrading. Unrelated, but like Wi-Fi does. 300mbit on clear view of the AP, down to 1mbit if you're unlucky.

Another thing about digital is spectral efficiency: how many bits per unit of transmission you can send. For TV with ISDB-T you can send 3 SD channels in the same space as ONE analog channel. This means, in the case of digital radio, you could use really redundant transmission. Maybe FEC with 3x the data. (FEC TLDR: it converts N packets to N + M, you only need to recover any N of those (N+M) packets, in any order, to fully recover your original data).

If you go into HAM land, they have all sorts of modulation schemes. Olivia MFSK for example, is able to receive data 10dB UNDER THE NOISE FLOOR. Olivia is able to recover information so degraded your ears can't even tell it's there. To you, it's all static.

I don't know how DAB works, but considering it was developed in the early 90s, it probably sucks. It doesn't mean "all digital sucks".

Oh and btw: ISDB-T, for example, is able to give you an excellent HD image in a situation where you'd be getting a blurry, noisy, ghosty image if you were to use analog.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[thegarbz]

It's not an outside vs inside issue. It's a design issue. The sensitivity of modern digital radios are far superior to those of the analogue radios from 15 years ago people are used to. All else being equal, digital handhelds replacing analogue ones have better coverage.

Now taking that into account I have seen:
- People skimping on diversity because some modelling software said it'll be fine (this is a pretty big issue for coverage around obstacles)
- People skimping on power because some modelling software said it'll will be fine.
- Why the fuck can't I get an 800MHz TETRA radio from Motorola with a gain of higher than 1? All our old radios were provided with options.
- People installing new gear on old gear not understanding the different requirements (highly sensitive receive electronics are more sensitive to intermodulation and noise induced by poor earthing).
- People in general installing gear without appreciating the specifics (one antenna I saw measured quite well across a broad frequency spectrum but the ignorant person signing off the job didn't realise that spike of poor performance was right in the middle of the transmit frequency for that equipment).

If a firefighter can't hear or has a coverage issue it has nothing to do with new digital vs old analogue and the fault lies squarely on the designer and installer of the equipment.

Now on the other hand people complaining about sound not being as clear (new equipment has lower bandwidth / higher compression), sound being delayed (compression, transmission, software defined radio, and decompression delays), or longer call setup times (with all the additional features call setup times have increased), then I would buy the argument.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

Having to recharge batteries daily instead of every few weeks is also tiresome

Then that is your fault for getting a crappy replacement. Maybe you were impressed by new features on a replacement so got something that tries to do more, or something that is now cheaper than older equipment used to be. Usually more than one thing changes at a time, but people will jump at blaming the change out of their control before blaming something they did themselves.

Also, for all your dismissal of "on paper" stuff, sometimes you have to be quantitative about things instead of shooting form the gut. The equipment I used to work on made a switch from analog to digital, and during a transition period we had both going at the same time as we switched over. Multiple times someone would complain the new digital equipment sounded crappy in some place they needed to work, and it was all nearly perfect with the analog, until I would walk down there with an analog receiver and find out the place they were complaining from actually got zero reception on the analog system...

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Damarkus13]

Are you still using a VHF antenna? I'm about 30 miles from our local broadcasters with no line of sign (the signal has to diffract over two ridges) and I get reception with an unamplified Gray-Hoverman antenna that I built for about $25.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[sjames]

In practice, it's a bit worse for digital. The decoders seem to lose sync easily and just go black for a bit where the analog would have given a couple frames of static and then a watchable image. If it happens frequently enough, you get a black screen and silence from digital where you would get a staticy but watchable picture on analog.

Multipath on a digital signal is a serious issue where on analog, you will actually stop noticing the ghosts after a few minutes.

On the old analog NTSC, the audio was on a subcarrier such that even if the video was an unwatchable mess, you might get decentish audio because of it's minimal demands on signal. Alas, in digital TV, it's all packets in the same stream and the decoder either can't or won't bother decodingh the audio if the video is lost. That's a real problem since is the video is disrupted, you can often follow a story OK, but when the dialog keeps going away you quickly get lost. Same problem if you're trying to get important weather information.

To top it off, as you say, they snuck the power down when the transition happened.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Z00L00K]

AM is only used in a few areas in central Europe like Germany and France, but it's a dead end in Europe.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[antdude]

Yep, I miss analog TV. I care not for the clarity, details, etc.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[dryeo]

We have a big dual VHF/UHF antenna on a 30 ft pole that can be rotated along with a VHF/UHF amplifier. The antenna needed to be rotated for the best signal from the 2 good signals. This is another disadvantage of digital, with analog rotating the pole you could watch the signal improving from zero to clear and back off when rotated too far. Digital needs time to lock in so you have to rotate really slow and hope you catch the signal.
 

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It also doesn't help that digital transitions are when broadcasters usually give in to the temptation to squeeze in a bunch of extra channels. When they get really greedy, the results are so bandwidth starved that they sound like horribly compressed crap(because they are) even under ideal circumstances. Even if they don't push it that hard, they haven't typically been very conservative about building in a lot of margin for degradation.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

All things aren't equal. They don't broadcast at the same power, which is why in my area DTV reception sucks whilst analogue was fine.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The trouble is usually that the broadcasters just hear 'extra channels!' and zone out. You can have higher quality and redundancy; but using those bits to squeeze in a bunch of extra channels and then pretend that the results are acceptable has a tendency to win out.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has a TV that's like that all the time: http://slashdot.org/~BarbaraHu...

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Blaskowicz]

Where I am in France, if I tune in to AM I mostly hear a shit ton of spanish language spoken very fast, and broadcasts from across the Mediterranean. That requires using an old radio with a needle though, as most every radio with a digits display and electronic tuning just fails at receiving anything (some might work better if adding a piece of antenna or wire, but there has to be a connector on the back)
French AM station are a handful of national radios you can receive on FM anyway, only useful for grandmas and remote places (or from abroad, I guess)

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Blaskowicz]

Indeed with digital TVs I witnessed some crappy sound disruption that made the show unwatchable, at times.
With analog TV, we did have a digital sound track called NICAM, which could get disrupted : then we got fall back to analog mono sound. Some TVs had the option, sometimes on the remote to force analog mono sound, which is useful if it's constantly jumping back and forth between the analog mono and digital stereo track.

A good FM receiver may have a switch to stay in mono for about the same reason!, this time it's purely analog but you have mono + "stereo information" that are combined to form a real stereo signal (LP records are similar), if reception is bad there's a fall back to using the mono part only.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[bkmoore]

Where I am in France, if I tune in to AM I mostly hear a shit ton of spanish language spoken very fast,...French AM station are a handful of national radios you can receive on FM anyway, only useful for grandmas and remote places (or from abroad, I guess)

I live in Germany. Recently built a transistor radio with my son to teach him about electronics and dipole antennas, etc. The first thing we received was a French AM radio station. Next project is restoring a 1930's Koffer (portable) radio. Losing over the air analog broadcasting would be a bummer.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Morris von Habsburg]

Fortunately multipath is not an issue with DAB radio. DAB is especially designed for use in cars, where on FM multipath is common, and DAB has been designed not to suffer from multipath for this reason. The signal is constructed from one or more sources (as opposed to FM where you can only use the signal from one transmitter at a time) broadcasting on the same frequency. If the second signal is slightly delayed but within the time parameters it can even aid to form a better signal. DAB+ uses Reed-Solomon error correction (you know, the ECC also used for audio CDs) which sorts it out.

So, multipath is a problem on FM, it's not a problem with DAB.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[storkus]

I've been thinking about this for years: the same problem affects DMR (MotoTRBO and friends) and D-STAR (and its sibling NXDN) and seems related to diversity, sub-standard trellis and other ECC, and so on that were solved in cell (mobile) phone standards a decade or two ago: most(all?) of the solutions are patented, which is a problem for D-STAR but not for the others. It's just clear the companies involved don't want to put any effort into fixing these problems.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

you could measure the signal that the digital is riding on (not that this solves the original issue)

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[ChrisMaple]

For any sort of digital audio radio system to work, the incoming S/N ratio must be greater than about 18 dB. Any lower than that, and no amount of error correction can fix the corrupted bits.

People who are now in deep fringe areas will lose radio entirely until either much stronger or much closer transmitters are put into operation.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

And now it's usage is increasing, simply because the FM radio band is full.

Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Norwegians are filthy rich and everyone can afford high-end DAB+ radios.

The rest of Europe and probably the US will have FM for decades.

FM No Static at All

[Yergle143]

Guess the Norwegians don't seem to care...

Worry the bottle Mamma, it's grapefruit wine
Kick off your high heel sneakers, it's party time
The girls don't seem to care what's on
As long as it plays till dawn
Nothin' but blues and Elvis
And somebody else's favorite song...
FM No Static at All -- Steely Dan

Re:FM No Static at All

[Anonymous Coward]

chorus: No static at all....

Thanks for the SD ref. made my day :-)

Employment

[PopeRatzo]

Does this mean that there will be an influx of unemployed Norwegians with deep voices?

Long Wave for Mariners

[turkeydance]

Norway's population is concentrated into three urban zones which makes Digital appropriate. The off-shore fishers, rig workers. etc. need Long Wave radio signals.

internet never goes dpwn.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was never a power outage and never will be. There will never be a war, a natural disaster or emergency. Internet uptime is absolute, even in rural areas. So this move makes sense.

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[fisted]

Both analog and digital radio need power. Neither uses the Internet as carrier.

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[dryeo]

When the power goes down here, I have a hand cranked radio so am still in contact with the outside world. Someone up the page commented that DAB radios are power pigs. I don't have experience with DAB but if true it wouldn't be good in a natural disaster situation.

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[fisted]

Someone up the page commented that DAB radios are power pigs.

What comment are you referring to?

I don't have experience with DAB but if true it wouldn't be good in a natural disaster situation.

On the first glance, I don't see why that should be the case.

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[camperdave]

Analog radios don't need power - just a coil of wire, a variable capacitor, a diode, and an earphone.

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[rubycodez]

in reality those get two or three of the strongest AM stations around but not much more. yes I've made a few but in emergency I'd use my battery operated receiver thanks very much

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[sjames]

Actually, no.

In the most extreme cases of improvisation, people have used rocks with a crystalline structure or a razor blade, a pencil, and a safety pin as a detector connected to headphones.

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[fisted]

That doesn't need "no power"; it harvests the energy from the signal itself. A similar thing could be imagined with digital equipment, although admittedly just a razor blade and a pencil doesn't get you very far in that situation.

Anyway, the detector radio, while interesting, cannot pickup FM, so I don't see how it is relevant here.

Re:internet never goes dpwn.

[Morris von Habsburg]

If that's a problem for some people they can just buy one of those solar powered DAB radios. A friend of mine has one in the kitchen and he never needs to plug it in. The light it catches during the day is enough to charge the battery for the rest of the day.

About That Now Available 20 MHz...

[Anonymous Coward]

All the (Not necessarily compatible...) DAB systems use High-VHF/UHF frequencies.

So what then happens to the 88-108 MHZ "FM" Band when DAB is forced upon us/US? (Lost in the Noise is the fact that Norway's Plan only effects the State Broadcasting System- Commercial and Private Stations can continue with Analog for now...)
Somebody has plans for that very valuable 20MHz Spectrum, and they are being very quiet on what they plan to do with it, once they have it.

Re:About That Now Available 20 MHz...

[rubycodez]

what makes you think the USA would ever go to DAB? HD radio is a flop, there is no sign the AM or FM bands are going anywhere.

Re:About That Now Available 20 MHz...

[Morris von Habsburg]

NRK (the public service broadcaster) and all commercial and private stations are moving off FM in 2017. The only stations staying on FM are local stations. They have asked for a 5 to 7 year extension of FM use while DAB+ for local/smaller stations is being rolled out.

So, the plans for the FM space are fairly straightforward. The only thing not in the plan is the inevitable use by pirate stations.

not in the usa

[luther349]

the whole digital radio never caught on hear in the states despite a hard push or it and even including them in newer cars.

Re:not in the usa

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it would've caught on if they weren't dicks about milking every penny out of it. Radio should just "work" without any subscriptions. Then it would've worked. They would've made a TON of moneh from ads---every new car would've had it, it would've worked across the country (unlike FM), etc. But no... they made sure that vast majority of the folks just didn't do anything during renewal time---especially since their shiny car stereos have USB plug to play music off anything.

Re:not in the usa

[Anonymous Coward]

digital radio is more widely available in the u.s. than you think, 80%+ of the country has at least one digital station available. they simulcast their primary analog stream plus usually offer additional secondary streams via digital-only. the technology approved for use in the u.s. by the fcc is hd radio.

the reason it gets no publicity, other than from the stations themselves is that there is no digital mandate, no digital-only switchover planned, and since there is no spectrum savings from digital radio (like there was with ntsc to atsc switchover, allowing stations to occupy adjacent channels), no future multi-billion dollar spectrum auctions.

Re:not in the usa

[Jack Griffin]

Yeah but neither did the metric system, public health or regulation of dangerous weapons. The US is hardly the benchmark for what is considered a good idea or not.

Re:not in the usa

[FlyHelicopters]

You're confusing HD radio with SiriusXM Sat radio, not quite the same thing...

Re:not in the usa

[luther349]

ill agree on public health but the best regulation of whepions is hand everyone one.

Re:not in the usa

[kimvette]

You're confusing HD Radio with satellite radio. Both are digital but HD Radio is free.

The problem with HD Radio is until now you haven't been able to get them in a vehicle, with no to very few models even offering it as an option, and only a couple of aftermarket head units with HD Radio receivers being available. That is only just now beginning to change, with some makes having made HD Radio standard, and others offering it as a premium option. Oh, and AV receivers - very few home AV receivers offer HD Radio as a band, so you need to buy a separate tuner component to receive it.

HD Radio has been a flop for the same reason as AM Stereo (which was actually quite good!); lack of receivers.

Re:not in the usa

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? With the number of cars on the roads with HD radio tuners and the number of HD stations now broadcasting, there are more HD radio listeners than AM radio listeners. And that's just with cars being just about the only place to listen, since most home stereos aren't using it.

Digital hasn't displaced analog FM, because they're co-transmitted and because the rollout has been botched in terms of getting people to realize the benefits and shift the market away from the analog broadcasts (particularly for home audio/portable radios), but it has definitely "caught on" simply by default.

Re:not in the usa

[Jack Griffin]

Yes of course, that explains why the US has the lowest murder rate in the OECD. Oh wait... let's add the education system to the list of things the US fails miserably at.

Just like TV this will bite the big one

[Anonymous Coward]

When analog tv went away, the signals got very weak and undependable.

FM will do the same there

Re:Just like TV this will bite the big one

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with TV, they're big devices you can just plug a little converter box into. You can't do that with an FM radio- you have to throw it out and buy a new one.

Re:Just like TV this will bite the big one

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#Disadvantages_of_DAB

With TV, you know have to power the boxes! Which is an issue if you have a portable TV.

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolling - You're doing it wrong.

I don't get why the government is involved at all

[93 Escort Wagon]

If digital radio is supposedly better for the consumer, why not just let the market decide? One would think the broadcasters would naturally migrate over as their customers demanded it.

And if consumers don't really care about digital versus FM - why does the government? Have the Norwegians solved every more important issue facing their people?

Re:I don't get why the government is involved at a

[kamapuaa]

The market has already decided, and that's why the FM band is being closed.

Of course there will always be s few stragglers, the way some people (myself included) still shoot pictures with film. In this case, the public has an interest in the underutilized radio frequency, so instead of entertaining the stragglers, they open up the frequencies to people who will use them.

Poor radio...

[Quixadhal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re:I don't get why the government is involved at a

[Xolotl]

The governenet cares because they sell spectrum allocations, and can re-sell the ones taken back from analog. Furthermore because the digital broadcasts use less bandwidth per station and are less susceptible to crosstalk they can sell more of them per Mhz of spectrum.

Lies, not statistics

[NorthWay]

"use digital radio every day"
Except they are counting _any_ radio not from FM, i.e. DAB, internet, satellite, cable.

The fucking politicos are pushing an antiquated solution on listeners and I know nobody who agrees with it - this is not going to free any frequencies, people will just set up their own local FM transmitter in-house or in the car so they can continue using what they already have.

Re:Lies, not statistics

[RDW]

We get the same nonsense in the UK, where they've set a '50% digital' listening threshold for analogue switch-off. Right now DAB accounts for under a quarter of radio listening, but they can boost that to over 1/3 by throwing in the other digital platforms. I don't really see the point of buying a DAB set for my home use - there are half a dozen devices around the house that already do a better job of it via IP or Freeview DTV (which carries the national radio channels).

I do have a pocket DAB radio, which drains batteries at an alarming rate and, while small by DAB standards, is much bulkier than the FM equivalent. It generally stays at home while I actually use the FM tuner in my (much smaller) mp3 player, or an IP radio app on my phone.

The powers that be have also decided that the UK will stick with the antiquated original DAB system rather than DAB+, so we have a lot of poor quality low bitrate broadcasts (often worse than FM). In 2015, it's a bit like decreeing that LPs will be phased out in favour of MiniDisc. Of course quality and 'choice' isn't the Government's real concern - they just want to shut off FM so they can sell off the radio spectrum to the highest bidder from the mobile phone/data industry.

Re:Lies, not statistics

[Morris von Habsburg]

The 50% threshold is for Digital Switch Over (DSO). The DSO is not about DAB, it's about FM. It makes perfect sense that for that criteria it doesn't matter which digital medium people use, as long as it's not FM. They are essentially measuring how many people still listen to FM. That has dropped to below 50% for in-house already and is steadily declining overall. Once the majority of all radio listening is digital (irrespective of whether that's using DAB, satellite, cable, internet etc.) the plans for the UK's national FM switch off can come in effect.

Re:I don't get why the government is involved at a

[fustakrakich]

...why not just let the market decide?

Read up on the AM Stereo debacle.

Would the abandoned spectrum be useful for data?

[Dr. Spork]

If Norway does the right thing and opens up the FM spectrum for people and personal their short range transmitters, maybe we'll find something more useful to do with the FM bands. And since Norway are doing this first, they have a special opportunity to set a good precedent.

Question: How many people actually care?

[storkus]

I hardly listen to the wasteland that is broadcast radio other than to check traffic or propagation conditions. I know we're talking about Norway, but is the broadcast radio there worth listening to? It sure isn't here in the USofA. :(

tl;dr if this happened in USA tomorrow I probably wouldn't notice for a week or more; how about you?

Re:Oh FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF do you think cent means? 100. Pinhead. The term was originally written as two words. It's only over time that it became one word.

Other side of the coin

[Luckyo]

Real problem here is that most of the world is still on FM. That means things like emergency broadcasts, information fed to cars, playing radio while you're driving and so on. Tourism/transit in Norway is going to become a whole lot more annoying.

Someone has to start, but it would be nice if they kept at least a small part of the spectrum for visitors from the rest of Europe.

Unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, many listeners in rural area will be left without anything to listen to. Digital radio doesn't cut it when it comes to getting out reliably over any distance.

Re:Unfortunate

[camperdave]

We past the point where rural folk outnumbered urban folk long ago. Most humans are city-dwellers now. Needs of the many...

Too busy to rip the radio out of my car

[EmperorOfCanada]

It is only the fact that have been too busy to rip the radio out of my car. I have a screen/computer to put into it that will then play lectures, audio books, podcasts, etc. Also I have it ready to replace my dashcam with a series of cameras that not only can record but also upload via a dataplan if needed.

At no point in my buying did I even look for an FM or even AM option to add on. And certainly I never looked for a satellite radio technology (those things just piss me off in rentals).

To me even satellite radio is so 20th century. DAB is also just a bandaid to try to keep the radio station media companies relevant.

But the reality is that this isn't a technology issue. For the last portion of the 20th century a variety of media conglomerates bought up all the radio stations and turned them into MBA masturbatory dreams. All profit with no content. About the last time I listened to radio was just before a DJ that I know told me that his new format was to go into work, record all his blurps between songs in one long scripted 1.5 hour session including interviews, and then go home. The songs and his blurps were all run automatically by the computer.

The few things that come off NPR, BBC, or the CBC that I care about "Art of persuasion, quirks, this american life, etc" I download. But even the CBC is just on a march further and further to the PC left and I can't stomach having one great feature cut short so they can give massive amounts of time to someone with some extreme view on some stupid social issue and listen to them grind their axe endlessly.

So the best of radio on today is worse than silence. But my own playlist is awesome and the technology is sitting in a drawer so that I don't have to use my stupid FM transmitter to get crap off my iPhone.

So like my car not coming with an ashtray, I want my next car to not come with a radio, DAB or not.

Re:Too busy to rip the radio out of my car

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I don't know why anyone bothers, given that DJ spew is one of the most insufferable aspects of radio, without even the crass-but-compelling monetary justification of ads; but odds are good, on many channels, that there isn't even necessarily a DJ specific to that station. Once you can their obnoxious chatter, you can programmatically sprinkle it into the playlists of multiple stations in different markets. You only really need to be more specialized if the chatter is supposed to have some 'local' flavor, in which case you do need recordings matched to the appropriate market.

re: broadcasting both analog and digital

[King_TJ]

As I understand it, that's only one of the possible modes of operation for the "HD" FM stereo used in the USA right now.
Up here in the DC area, that seems to be exactly what stations like DC 101FM are doing. If the digital signal cuts out, the radio falls back to the analog broadcast until it can switch back to digital.

The problem with FM HD though is they often opt to broadcast 1 or 2 additional digital stations, and there are no analog equivalents for those. So they just abruptly cut out when the signal gets weak. (And it happens OFTEN when driving around a metropolitan area with tall buildings and the like which intermittently block part of the signal.) Makes the whole thing unusable, IMO.

The FM band is small

[Anonymous Coward]

What could they hope to gain by shutting it down? The frequencies recovered are really a drop in a bucket. Better to leave them where they are.

Re:The FM band is small

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure would be great if the public got some unlicensed airwaves to tinker with, but just like the digital TV transition, they won't spare a single scrap for the public. You see, all you really need for a distributed replacement for the Internet is the natural many-to-one relationship that wireless radio inherently has. When people are downloading content via store and forward caches there's no "trunk" to listen in on, there's no wire to tap, making it much harder to spy on everything. The latest news and videos would likely come in even faster from a neighbor who had just watched the same, not requiring a single point of failure or chokepoint -- more traffic == greater availability, thus neutralizing the "Slashdot Effect". Communities could organize the larger line-of-sight systems just like Fidonet organized an international email system in the BBS era prior to the Internet's availability. Then you'd just buy your hardware once, join the repeater mesh, and not have any subscription fees. The bigger your cache and antenna, the faster your connection.

There's a reason that store and forward over HAM is verboten even though radio spectrum supposedly belongs to the public. It's not that distributed Internet can't work, just look at cellular networks. It's just that the governments don't want it to happen, so they won't let us use any unregulated airwaves at the pertinent frequencies.

Re:The FM band is small

[Morris von Habsburg]

One of the reasons to shut it down is massive cost savings. The Norwegian public service broadcaster (NRK) has mentioned a single channel on FM is eight times as expensive as a single channel on DAB. Add to that the massively increased capacity (44 national DAB stations vs. 5 national FM stations) you essentially get more capacity for a fraction of the cost. The NRK will save 200 million krone annually in distribution and maintenance cost.

posting from 1986?

[Gr8Apes]

I grab some tapes or MDs when I am driving further.

Since about 2005, it was plugin your mp3 player (ipod, zune, replaced by iphone starting in 2007 and android in 2009)

Re:posting from 1986?

[camperdave]

Since about 2005, it was plugin your mp3 player (ipod, zune, replaced by iphone starting in 2007 and android in 2009)

Some of us don't have cars that new.

Re:posting from 1986?

[Pentium100]

I do not use an iphone or similar, especially in a car.

To me, a tape or a MD has one big advantage - it can easily be ejected and a new one can be put in. When I am driving, I want to look at the road, not a display on the player. I can easily choose a tape (I can hold it between me and the windshield and read the label without looking away from the road) and put it in the player (without looking).

The tape (or MD) holds enough music to not need replacing very often, but also not too much as to get boring (most of the time, I do not want to listen to 3 albums of the same artist in a row, no matter how much I like the artist).

I also have quite a few tapes already, so tapes are convenient or me (more convenient than recording them to a computer, then creating the mp3 files would be). Tapes are also convenient when recording from an analog source (like a record - I have a lot of them too). When I want to listen to music that I downloaded, then MDs are more convenient (since I can transfer the music from a PC quickly).

Re:posting from 1986?

[Hognoxious]

Have you got one of those adaptors so you can play a CD walkman via the cassette player?

I have, somewhere. I thought they were the best thing ever when they came out.

Re:posting from 1986?

[Pentium100]

A CD walkman takes up much more space than a MD walkman which is one of the reasons I bought a MD walkman instead of a CD one.

Re:posting from 1986?

[Hognoxious]

MD is MiniDisk, right? True, they were smaller but the quality was a bit poo, IIRC. But they could record, at a time when CD burners were doublepluscrazy dollarpounds.

Size isn't really an issue in a car though. I drove Route 66 in a U-Haul van with my Panasonic player - bought a quarter of the way in when my fucking awful Sony did the decent thing and died - sitting in the auxiliary storage module. That's a crate on the passenger seat held in place by the seatbelt.

Them was the days, aye...

Re:posting from 1986?

[Pentium100]

The sound quality of MD is fine for using in a car or outside. A CD walkman is bigger, which means I would have to carry more (or leave it in the car, but that could attract thieves). CDs themselves are bigger too.

Re:posting from 1986?

[Gr8Apes]

If you set up your playlists properly, and sync things at your house, all of this and more is easily doable on a phone nowadays.

I do have an iphone, so my specific use case applies to that, but the same general steps apply to any phone/mp3 player. I have ripped my entire collection of CDs etc via AAC lossless (used to be FLAC, you can convert between them easily and quickly these days) in my server library, about 500GB or so at this point. I choose what songs etc I'd like in my playlists, and sync only those to my phone. When I get a new album, I tend to sync that album for an initial listen. So I get everything you're talking about plus I don't have to look at the phone because I use a swiping app to change songs. The songs are already preselected, and can be changed at will whenever I'm at home. Given the storage on the device, that's enough play time for between home syncs.

When I push those songs to my phone, I use a 256 kbps bitrate AAC as I found it doesn't make any real difference in the car or phone. (I used to use 320kbps MP3s) I may change back to lossless since the device storage has gotten significantly larger and the size may not matter and as a bonus, I can drive the home stereo purely from the phone and not need the home server running all the time. For home listening the lossless is noticeably better and the fact that lossless is, well, lossless and I can convert to anything later on is the decision to store everything in the home library.

Re:posting from 1986?

[Pentium100]

In my experience using a touch screen device while not looking at it is pretty much impossible since I cannot feel a touch "button" like a real button.

Also, I have a lot of tapes already, so I might as well use them...

Re:posting from 1986?

[Gr8Apes]

it's a swipe, right to left, to go to the next song. Left to right to the beginning or the previous song. Volume is handled by the radio, and this is no mods on an older car. granted I'd prefer all operations to go through the radio buttons, but that's a couple of hundred dollar mod for the interfaces, and I haven't seen the value, considering the current situation.

A few words...

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, what is DAB? Secondly, why shut down "FM radio" and not "analog radio"? And thirdly, what on Earth is the "FM network"? I know there are FM radio stations, most of which are private and (also) broadcast digitally on the Net, but the "FM network"? Finally, who would benefit from such a move? FM radio broadcasting has advantages related to the frequency used (as opposed to MW and SW). So how exactly are those advantages to be preserved simply by switching to digital radio? BTW, in what frequency spectrum is DAB to be broadcast, assuming we are still talking here about radio?

WEVL

[katorga]

www.wevl.org

The best FM radio in the world.

Re:WEVL

[camperdave]

They must be good, because they certainly didn't put any effort into their streaming. Half a minute of waiting and the cache is only at 19%.

Re:Would the abandoned spectrum be useful for data

[schnell]

If Norway does the right thing and opens up the FM spectrum for people and personal their short range transmitters, maybe we'll find something more useful to do with the FM bands.

I think you're missing the point of why this is being done in the first place. Hint: you're right that this is being done to "find something more useful to do with the FM bands" but not in the way you imagine.

Like in the US and many other countries in recent years, spectrum is being cleared out so it can be leased to cellular providers. This is in theory because the demand for wireless voice and data continues to rise rapidly; the demand for FM radio not so much; therefore the spectrum is better used by someone who is delivering what people are asking for more of rather than less.

This is licensed spectrum though, so there will be no room for individuals to screw around with broadcasting on those frequencies. As Charles Dickens - or maybe it was Spock - once said, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Given how many people listen to licensed FM radio today and the pain this shift may cause them, would the "needs of the many" actually be served by turning this spectrum over to everyone and their dog to play around with backyard broadcasting? And, honestly, is there something individuals want to do that they can't already accomplish with the ham and unlicensed Wi-Fi bands that are already available?

Situation in Finland

[jones_supa]

In Vinnland there was experimental DAB broadcasting set up during years 1997-2005, but it was discontinued due to low interest. It's like how Blu-Ray had a bit stiff adoption over DVD -- people felt that FM was good enough.

Re:Situation in Finland

[Jack Griffin]

Blu-Ray didn't stumble because of DVDs, it had stumbled because of information distribution no longer requires physical media (ie the Internet).

Expand your acronyms

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be too much to ask that submitters (or editors) take the time to either expand acronyms or embed links to expansions? Out in the colonies, dab is something you do to a wound when trying to clean it up; it's got nothing to do with radio. Yes, I ultimately ended up Googling it, but it would haven been thoughtful of someone at the helm to not force the need. (For anyone else wondering, DAB = digital audio broadcasting. No idea if we've got any of that out in the sticks, but I doubt it.)

Re:Oh FFS

[by (1706743)]

Pin head. The term was originally written as two words.

FTFY.

Re:Would the abandoned spectrum be useful for data

[Jack Griffin]

If Norway does the right thing

If there's one thing I've learnt from comparing countries, it's the north western Europe seems to get a LOT more things right than everyone else. Without having any background on this topic, I'm going to have a gamble and assume they'll get this right too.

Re:Would the abandoned spectrum be useful for data

[Mal-2]

There's nothing fundamentally different about the 88-108 MHz band compared to the 2 meter band (144-148) except that it has four times the bandwidth. Any transmission mode that works well at 2 meters will also work well in the FM band, as the propagation characteristics are substantially the same.

DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[Z00L00K]

In addition to this DAB/DAB+ is obsoleted by internet streaming services.

Of course - it sucks to stream in a car, and the result may be that people won't be able to listen to radio in their cars at all and instead play their MP3s or whatever and miss out on traffic information and other important information.

I just wait for FM to be turned off and then a major event to happen where information is sent on the DAB+ net where nobody listens and then we have a lot of people driving into a closed off area.

Re:DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[Sique]

I actually never listen to music in my car at all, except the radioprogramming is sending some. But I don't listen to music stations. So MP3s are a non-option for me. (In some way, I am a-music at all, as I don't listen to music in general). My preferred radio stations for long drives are news/information broadcasters, but when I was in the U.S., they seem to be missing in general, at least in the regions I was driving around.

Re:DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[towermac]

I'm thinking you didn't try the AM band. Do y'all still have AM across the pond?

Re:DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[ericloewe]

AM is hardly a pleasant thing to listen to.

Re: DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet streaming is an impossibility for most in the USA due to data caps.

Re:DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[CanEHdian]

In addition to this DAB/DAB+ is obsoleted by internet streaming services.

DAB(+) = Free

Data usage (+ roaming charges) = costly to expensive to "no signal".

Do you work for a wireless carrier?

Re:DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[Z00L00K]

The internet streaming services beats DAB+ as soon as you are at home.

Re:DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[Z00L00K]

AM is rare in Europe. There are a few, but mostly in central Europe.

Re: DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[guruevi]

I listen to Internet radio in my car. Generally not a problem since the apps use a large buffer, entire songs are streamed in advance so I only notice when skipping a song in a low coverage area. Music is only 196kbps and could be as low as 64/96k. Even 2G can withstand that.

Re: DAB/DAB+ is obsolete already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but who listens to the radio at home? The car's the niche market for broadcast radio.

Re:Would the abandoned spectrum be useful for data

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure it's needed over there in Norway? You sure it's not about greed? If this were to provide near-free cell service, that'd be one thing. But I doubt that will be the case.

Mobile phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless DAB makes it into mobile phones, I can't see the movement gaining enough traction to take over FM.

Re:Oh FFS

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If you want to be pedantic about acceptable variations choosing something with such a long history and such wide use in various disciplines is a terrible plan.

"Percent" is probably the most common flavor currently; but 'per cent', 'per cent.', 'pct', 'pc', and likely others are still within the realm of accepted use. Hell, the '%' sign isn't even entirely settled, unicode has something like four defined variants. And that doesn't count the archaic, but historically used and still recognizable, specimens that cropped up between Latin and the present day.

I take it that you were exposed to basic literacy and only basic literacy, none of that messy intermediate stuff.

Re:I don't get why the government is involved at a

[Anonymous Coward]

If digital radio is supposedly better for the consumer, why not just let the market decide? One would think the broadcasters would naturally migrate over as their customers demanded it.

And if consumers don't really care about digital versus FM - why does the government? Have the Norwegians solved every more important issue facing their people?

They are doing it to free up radio spectrum (which is government-regulated), for additional channels and other use. Also, the public broadcaster NRK (Norway's BBC), would have to invest heavily in renewing their old FM sender infrastructure soon if it is not closed down (much of the DAB investment is already done).

Also, for all the math posted here about how many this will impact -- the numbers are the current situation, the closing is two years away and the trend is strongly towards increased DAB use. It will not reach 100%, but it will be much closer than it is today.

Not Applicable to North America

[Freshly Exhumed]

The DAB radio system was not adopted in the U.S.A. or Canada. The Canadian authorities permitted testing of DAB for quite awhile but eventually allowed it to die off due to lack of interest.

Instead, the iBiquity HDRadio IBOC standard was adopted in North America, which is a hybrid digital/analogue system that retains the traditional FM Radio band. While DAB and FM Radio occupy different parts of the spectrum, in North America you can think of digital radio as being a "superset" of the traditional analogue stations in the same band (IBOC means "In Band, On Channel).

So, a tuner with HDRadio capability and an old analogue FM tuner will both tune in the exact same station, but the former will process the digital portion of the station's signal in all its superior quality.

For broadcasters, the iBiquity HDRadio IBOC system can also be switched to 100% digital someday, but it is not likely to happen for a very long time if ever due to all the legacy analogue FM radios out there even in brand new consumer electronic gear. The automakers have come onboard with HDRadio-equipped tuners for the North American market.

Re:Not Applicable to North America

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely.

One drawback to cutting off analog transmissions: interference that might render the analog fm unpleasant but comprehensible can completely silence the digital transmission. It's especially rough in mountainous areas.

Re: Not Applicable to North America

[MenThal]

Mountainous terrain you say? That would be almost all of Norway. I think my half a dozen yearly 8+ hour drives are going to start sucking even more with digital radio.

Re: Not Applicable to North America

[toddestan]

Well, around here, the 8+ hour drive listening to commercial FM radio would suck pretty bad considering that you'd end up listening to about 2 hours of ads by time you're done. I'd bring my own music along, which is what I do. Turning off FM transmissions wouldn't affect me at all (and I don't own a digital radio either).

Re: Not Applicable to North America

[MenThal]

Not sure where here means, but that hadn't been a problem anyway. Two thumb buttons to easily switch stations on the steering wheel, and a third to jump from radio to CD to AUX.

Only 8 channels at a time, need to run automatic station tracking every hour as I cross the land. Ads never was the annoyance, the news was. They all seem to run the news at the exact same time with the exact same news, meaning I get the same blurbs across all stations 10 to 12 times during the drive. Those are the times I swap to the CD with 150 tracks, which I have heard to death by now.

I have a small stack of CDs like this with me, but I've heard them all so much I both know which song comes after which, and even with shuffle on, I've grown accustomed to the PRNG to the where I am sensing patterns.

I seldom use AUX and my phone, because it is a distraction. The stereo has all the main controls I need on the steering wheel, so when I hear more than three seconds of an ad, I'm usually in steeper turns (or trying to overtake someone).

Spotify and other mobile streaming of the phone is spotty at best; there's a lot of steep mountains and long tunnels, some under the Sea. But guess what? They've often ensured that one or two of the National channels actually work in these tunnels! Curios if that'll work with DAB+ as well.

But anything on mobile or external devices are a distraction I do not want when driving; I drive fast, but safe. And given trends with car manufacturers not wanting us to tinker with stuff, and compatibility of handsets not being ideal, I don't expect to see my phone and steering wheel integrate seamlessly over Bluetooth any time soon.

On a tangent; and to kill this subthread with Godwin, I am surprised the older WW2 generation isn't up in arms about this. Owning a home radio during the occupation was a huge danger and act of defiance against the Nazis here back then, much more so than the paper clip on the lapelle...

TIL Norway is like Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds exactly like how Apple obsolete old technology to move to new, ahead of the rest.

Their country's economy seems to be doing as well as Apple too.

Re:Would the abandoned spectrum be useful for data

[Anonymous Coward]

FM is completely undesirable to cellular. The Entire extended FM broadcast band (88 - 108MHz) is equivalent to 1 UMTS cell. It's 1/4 or 1/8 of a modern 802.11 channel, and at such a low frequency it's a very poor choice for cellular because it's not line of sight and the required antennae are huge.

It was obsolete before it started.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, not hyperbole. DAB2 was being developed before DAB was on the market in the UK. DAB2 being unimplementable in DAB1 equipment because the standard is incompatible and the kit uses bespoke chips that can't be repurposed.

It's like they were looking for how many ways to get things really fucking wrong.

And what about hifi separates and receivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not seen any hifi kit with only a DAB radio. New recievers may have DAB, but you have to buy a whole new system, near enough, to get it.

Re:And what about hifi separates and receivers?

[Morris von Habsburg]

There are quite a few HiFi separates with DAB+ but you'd need to live in a country that has DAB+ on-air. You won't find one in the US for instance. This gives you some idea of the brands and models available http://www.digicomparison.com/...

FM threshold effect

[elgatozorbas]

This effect is called "digital cliff". [...] With analog modulation, you would get more noise in information when you get more noise in signal.

This digital/analog comparison mostly holds for AM. In FM, the audio quality also remains good as long as the signal-to-noise ratio is above a certain value, only to plummet below this value. This is known as the threshold effect and it was already known to Shannon in 1948.

DAB

[Anonymous Coward]

Norwegian here. In my limited experience, DAB coverage is much better than FM. FM cuts out quite quick when going up in the vallies/mountains in a car, DAB lasts all the way without any distortion. For comparison, I get digital TV there, but just barely, with an outside antenna. Also got analogue TV before they cut that. It's not a fair comparison between DAB and FM though, as there are so many variables which I don't care to investigate, maybe the broadcasters upped the signal strength or number of transmitters for DAB to make it more popular.

For people suggesting mobile streaming as a solution, they should beware that DAB only requires a bandwitdth equal to the number of channels times the bandwidth of each channel, where streaming requires a bandwidth of the number of users times the bandwidth of each channel (stream). The latter is often greater. For non mobile applications, using wired internet, it's not a problem at all, but in remote locations it's harder. Probably still doable.

Even given the above, I'm not for DAB personally. There's just no point in wasting billions on a new infrastructure that will be obsolete in a decade. FM works well enough, and if people want something different than the main ~8 radio channels, they won't find it in the 80?? DAB channels, and have to go on the internet anyway. I don't think the FM frequencies can be used for point to point mobile communication, they carry too far.

Re:DAB

[doccus]

Upon reflection, I think it's because FM is too easy to be used for underground freedom information. Which, in a new world order totaliatarian state, could be a problem for them..

Re:DAB

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite your crazy conspiracy theories; you can actually broadcast over DAB from a Linux PC using F/OSS software. Unlike "HD Radio" in the US, DAB is actually open...

Re: broadcasting both analog and digital

[X0563511]

Ah, yes - they have those around here. Honestly, I don't listen to those, as (by chance) the stuff they play isn't anything I enjoy.

I can imagine though that it's perfectly fine for stationary radios - it's the mobile receivers who would deal the most with fluctuating signal strengths.

Why switch it off at all?

[doccus]

It doesn't cost them anything to keep them going. They're private companies. Does this mean FM goes back to the radio Caroline days?

Or at least ...

[PPH]

.... turn it down a bit. Sweden has been tapping on the ceiling with a broom handle for some time now.

Re:Oh FFS

[Lakitu]

The public schools churn out morons like you because the left would rather teach leftism than basic literacy. Unsurprisingly.

If I can get 55 of them for a penny, then that's per cent. But % is percent. Or did you think those values were "per centages"? Dumb ass.

You're more than a quarter dumb, aren't you?

Not talking about coins here.

Time-shifting

[tepples]

So how do you expect people to time-shift Internet stream programming at home to listen to it in the car? I thought one of the conditions under which licensors licensed programming to streaming providers was that the programming could not be time-shifted without an analog reconversion.

Interference

[tepples]

Until other drivers start complaining that your microbroadcasts are interfering with their DAB reception and reporting you to the foreign counterpart of the FCC.

Re:Interference

[kyrsjo]

I don't think they use the same frequency...

HD Radio is proprietary

[tepples]

For broadcasters, the iBiquity HDRadio IBOC system can also be switched to 100% digital someday, but it is not likely to happen for a very long time if ever due to all the legacy analogue FM radios out there even in brand new consumer electronic gear.

I'd bet a big part of that has to do with both patents and trade secrets that encumber HD Radio.

Micropower FM

[tepples]

And, honestly, is there something individuals want to do that they can't already accomplish with the ham and unlicensed Wi-Fi bands that are already available?

Yes. One such use case is transmitting the output of an aftermarket DAB receiver installed in a vehicle to the FM receiver in the vehicle's head unit. Not all head units have an AUX IN jack.

The needs of the providers of food

[tepples]

The needs of the many include food. The needs of the providers of food include weather forecasts and other services provided through radio.

Months to download a movie

[tepples]

DVD and Blu-ray are where fiber and cable aren't. If the only Internet providers serving you are satellite and cellular, you'll still have to drive somewhere to find a place to connect to the Internet without having to wait months for the cap on your home connection to recharge enough to download a purchased movie. Or is coverage of rural areas in Norway dramatically better than in the United States and Canada?

Re:Months to download a movie

[Jack Griffin]

Rural people either don't rely on the Internet as such as urban folk, or they have portable HDDs and friends in the city. An optical disc with one single movie on it seems extremely antiquated and inefficient these days.

Re:Months to download a movie

[tepples]

Rural people either don't rely on the Internet as such as urban folk [...] An optical disc with one single movie on it seems extremely antiquated and inefficient these days.

This doesn't make sense. Without "rely[ing] on the Internet", how do you watch movies other than "[a]n optical disc with one single movie on it"?

Re:Months to download a movie

[Jack Griffin]

Are you fucking stupid? Read the bit you conveniently left out of the quote. THEY HAVE PORTABLE HDDS AND FRIENDS IN THE CITY. Did you get it that time? Fucking children these days...

Re:Months to download a movie

[tepples]

they have portable HDDs and friends in the city

How does this work? I thought with a portable HDD, you had to buy each movie instead of renting it, and you had to buy the movie using the same computer on which you watch it in order for the decryption keys to sync up.

Coupon

[tepples]

it's car radios that do USB, Bluetooth, and when phones are attached Pandora, Spotify

Not all phones are smart. How much do cellular data plans cost per year in Norway?

or in the most backwards cases listening to music via an iPod and a 3.5mm jack.

Which doesn't substitute for news, weather, traffic, or sports. That needs either a DAB receiver or a data plan.

Every transition will have a couple of stragglers that will require something to bridge while they wait for their old technology to wear out.

During the digital TV transition in the United States, some of the proceeds from the spectrum auction were earmarked for coupons good for a $40 discount off the price of an eligible digital TV tuner. Do FM to DAB transitions have a comparable program?

EEA not EEC

[andersh]

No, sorry, it's the EEA. The "EEC" is the EU's predecessor. Norway's not a member of the EEA, we're a member of EFTA. The EU and EFTA have an agreement regarding trade and access to the EEA.

Telenor/Norkring

[andersh]

It's not the NRK that owns the broadcasting network, it's Norkring, a subsidiary of Telenor (Norway's telecom champion).

Ownership and management

[andersh]

if consumers don't really care about digital versus FM - why does the government?

You've misunderstood the situation. The state isn't just "dictating" the terms. The national broadcasting network is owned by the state [indirectly], which means they also have a say in the cost of maintaining and developing it. The national broadcaster (TV/radio), and its many stations, is the biggest user of the network.

The 1700 stations currently in use are due for a massive upgrade. The new DAB network will offer better coverage across the whole country, which is an important goal for the state (rural settlement policy and public information access).

Have the Norwegians solved every more important issue facing their people?

Yes, most of our problems are about spending the tons of money we have.

Resource Management

[andersh]

It doesn't cost them anything to keep them going.

The network needs massive investment and the upkeep is higher than before. The new network reduces the cost, improves service and frees up frequencies (for resale). The state will save $25 million/year.

They're private companies.

The [national] network is owned by the state. Private companies pay to use it. The state-owned national broadcasting corporation is the biggest user. Local radio stations may broadcast using their own equipment, but this is about national networks.

Rural winners!

[andersh]

Completely and utterly wrong! The DAB network covers 99,5% of Norway! It's an improvement over the FM network's coverage. Norway is a very long and mountainous country, it's difficult to achieve the same percentage with FM. The people running the network have people driving around the country to check the reception.