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Norway To Become First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (reuters.com)
Norway is set to become the first country to switch off its FM radio network next week, as it takes the unpopular leap to digital technology. Reuters reports: Critics say the government is rushing the move and many people may miss warnings on emergencies that have until now been broadcast via the radio. Of particular concern are the 2 million cars on Norway's roads that are not equipped with Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) receivers, they say. Sixty-six percent of Norwegians oppose switching off FM, with just 17 percent in favor and the rest undecided, according to an opinion poll published by the daily Dagbladet last month. Nevertheless, parliament gave the final go-ahead for the move last month, swayed by the fact that digital networks can carry more radio channels. By the end of the year, all national FM broadcasts will be closed in favor of DAB, which backers say carries less hiss and clearer sound throughout the large nation of 5 million people cut by fjords and mountains. Torvmark said cars were the "biggest challenge" - a good digital adapter for an FM car radio costs 1,500 Norwegian crowns ($174.70), he said. For the same cost, digital radio in Norway allows eight times more radio stations than FM. The current system of parallel FM and digital networks, each of which cost about 250 million crowns ($29 million), saps investments in programs.
the internet allows even more radiostations than DAB... keep the old FM going, everybody with highschool education can build a receiver from scrap parts for it, for DAB, not so much. I fail to see how DAB makes any sense at all.
carries less hiss and clearer sound
Hahahahaha. Yes, sure. As long as you get a perfect signal, anyway.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
For talk radio with El Rushbo
It's this kind of change that gives "progress" a bad name. The signals can coexist, no need to rush to obsolescence for generations of both home and auto radios.
I believed DAB failed because it was no big audio improvement since most people don't have high quality car stereos or just don't care.
In the analog TV shutdown many people didn't changed TV but purchased a STB. There's no way to do that in cars where most people listen to radio.
... is monetization. They can sell more channel licenses, encrypt their radio streams, and sell paid subscriptions. This is the beginning of the end of free radio.
DAB uses a different part of the spectrum. FM will be shut down to save on maintenance, not to make room from DAB.
---- Sig. gone.
Not those with a USA high school education. I'll wager most EE grads could not build an FM radio without a drawing.
DAB already uses a different part of the spectrum, particularly L-Band. The US and Canada got around this "problem" (it was mostly howling by the NAB and its members), by cramming in the digital signals with the existing analog AM/FM broadcasts using IBOC/HD Radio..... which hasn't been a success. Its actually harder to find aftermarket HD Radio tuners now then it was when it launched!
DAB sounds like a great idea, and signal wise, it's even quite resillient too. But the problem with it is that it based on MPEG Layer 2 audio - The original DAB standard is some twenty two years old, and this was seen as the best candidate for the codec to use. Most stations broadcast at a low bitrate to squeeze extra channels into the spectrum. What you're left with is a selection of programming that is far below the 192~224kbps golden spot to achieve CD transparent audio with such an old codec, and lots of channels that sound awful! A good FM broadcast sounds infinitely better. DAB+ tried to fix this shortcoming by using AAC, but even then the decoders for this format seem few and far between, with adoption being slow. I hope that the UK don't consider switching off FM for a good few years yet!
Although I wish it were an open standard, the HD Radio standard in the US allows the existing AM or FM analog signals to be broadcast while simultaneously transmitting a digital signal on the same band. This seems like a better approach, though it would greatly prefer this as an open standard.
And compared to FM, DAB is mostly nothing. At a fraction of the range where you'd still be pulling in very usable FM audio. DAB is gone entirely, or slamming open and closed like a berserk doorman on meth.
There have been a series of really bad decisions along these lines. In the US, CQUAM is available for AM stereo, and it, like standard AM, doesn't cause you to lose distant stations or take up extra bandwidth. So what do we see? AM digital stereo modes that take up three AM channels, plus they have the extra feature that they really don't sound very good, whereas CQUAM... well, it does. Analog television: same as DAB, in that you can catch a broadcast at distance and you can still get a picture, where at the same distance, digital television is long gone.
Previous poster who said they should have maintained current infrastructure and put the new garbage elsewhere was spot-bloody-on. But, you know, government. They don't have to do anything well; they just think they have to do something, anything. If it wrecks a bunch of people's circumstance, well, so what. Besides, corporations were slavering to get at that bit of spectrum, and we know who really runs the government.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Progress has a great name. It's government that has a bad name - which it wholly deserves.
Straight-up, this isn't progress. It's entropy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm one of the minority of people who still like radio for music, news, and entertainment, but I don't think I'd spend $175 for a digital FM receiver. I bet Norwegians are switching over to AM,if they listen to radio at all anymore. Do you think they have crazed conservative personalities ranting about the fact they live in a Socialist welfare state there?
Maintenance on what, exactly? It's not like the spectrum itself requires maintenance, and I haven't heard anything saying all radio stations are funded by the government, so as long as a particular business entity can continue to see a profit, while maintaining the same transmission hardware, why shut it down at all?
DAB here in the UK is a failure because we adopted it too early, and we are stuck with first generation DAB rather than DAB+. I hope Norway is a bit more advanced. Most of our stations including many music stations broadcast in 64kbps mono MP2 (no joke). So here, DAB sounds like shit, frankly, and because of the many DAB radios out there that don't support DAB+, it will be a long time before we can move on now. I have a good DAB radio in my car, but I primarily listen to internet streams and FM.
Oh no... it's the future.
Why would I build one without drawing a schematic first? I'd at least have to calculate the values for the components - those would need to be recorded somewhere.
That is all.
My DAB portable radio has a high power usage and chews through AA's at an alarming rate, far far higher than my old FM analog radio. I would be very concerned about the suitability of DAB in sitiations of emergency, where people are asked to have portable radios with a fresh set of batteries, they wouldn't last long at all! And one other problem with DAB, try tuning one in the dark, or otherwise looking at the display. Trying to navigate the stations is extremely difficult compared to a simple tune up or down. And if you have gone off onto a sub menu then it's really difficlt to find where you are. I spare a thought to think how blind or poorly-sighted people have to navigate DAB radio channels.
DAB+ tried to fix this shortcoming by using AAC, but even then the decoders for this format seem few and far between, with adoption being slow. I hope that the UK don't consider switching off FM for a good few years yet!
Most countries that use DAB by now actually use DAB+. Also in Norway, about half the stations seem to use DAB+ now:
http://www.worlddab.org/country-information/norway
And I think it would be difficult these days to buy a DAB(+) receiver which is DAB-only, and does not support DAB+.
Since you seem to be from the UK: the UK is the country where DAB (without '+') was already very popular, which is why the UK is now a bit slow to move on to DAB+ (lots of legacy receivers). In Germany, for example, DAB never really took off. Which is why digital radio was effectively "relaunched" in 2011 with DAB+. By now, there are basically no DAB stations any more in Germany, they all switched to DAB+ (or were started on DAB+).
I still know a few musicians who play live around here, but honestly all I listen to anymore is videogame soundtracks, and most of them not newer than 2000. As a bonus I can now easily input it directly into the car stereo system and never have to listen to radio crap again... a bit bad if there is ever an emergency broadcast though, since I will never be tuned in to it.
Due to government requirements, our local public radio and television agency is soon switching to DAB+. This means that all devices that understand only DAB (without the +, very common until only a few years ago) will no longer be able to receive any channels and therefore be obsolete. Fortunately, FM will still be available, so my receiver from the 1980s will still be working fine. Everybody who bought into DAB too soon will have to buy a new device, though.
It's a shame because I just got my first car with DAB, and it actually works really well. Better than FM in fact, at least for Radio 4 (talk only, they don't play much music so I can't comment on quality). Drops out less than FM did, especially in tunnels and rural areas.
I know it sucks in many places, but if it had been done well it could have been good. I'm just lucky my area has good coverage. Such a missed opportunity.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Is DAB approximately the same thing as HD-Radio, just a different part of the spectrum?
You are welcome on my lawn.
On the one hand I agree with your argument. On the other, it's the reason why a lot of the US has poor internet speeds. Maybe "a company can continue to be profitable" isn't sufficient. I think the consumer impact/benefit needs to be considered as well. I wouldn't argue turning off FM provides much consumer benefit though.
DAB here in the UK is a failure because we adopted it too early, and we are stuck with first generation DAB rather than DAB+. I hope Norway is a bit more advanced.
We were just as early adopters, but in an effort to give as many as possible the finger it will be exclusively DAB+. So if you bought a DAB radio it has both been born and died in less time than most FM radios have lived. If you live in a sane country and need FM radios you can probably get them for a few bucks + shipping, there will be literally millions of them thrown away. To my knowledge there will be zero effort made to recycle them other than as electronic trash, when you could have just put them in a container and shipped them to... anywhere but here, really and sold them cheap or given them to a third world country. We spend billions in tax relief for EVs... but trash millions of working radios, that's good environmentalism. /facepalm
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Even before DAB came out on the market (at least in the UK), they were already speccing out and prototype building DAB2, which *would not be compatible with DAB*. Moreover, DAB's definition required fixed function, so no upgrading old receivers to take the new standard.
And on a technical note, what is the point of DAB2, anyway? Selling a shitload more replacement recievers with the others being useless landfill?
EE here... and I wouldn't be able to build or design an FM radio. Though my major was digital electronics. And I've never actually had a job as an EE...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Ah, "social democracy". Where they do what's "best for you", not what you want.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It is a cash grab. Move the poor people out of their comfort zone and sell it off to the rich.
Ain't Communism Great!
5 million is a SMALL country. The use has cities with more than that.
The NUMBER of Analog FM stations which the bands can accommodate are MORE THAN NEEDED.
And switching them off is a major public detriment, Because of the loss of the major advantage which Analog FM radio has....
Receivers for FM are CHEAP, UBIQUITOUS, Easy to receive transmissions, And Analog signals are very forgiving.
Also, the relatively small NUMBER IS AN ADVANTAGE. When FM receivers are being used for THEIR MAIN PURPOSE, which.....
Is to receive broadcast messages, potentially during a time of emergency when aLL THE DIGITAL STUFF is broken.....
(E.g. Due to EMP)
nope, looks like the same FM broadcast frequencies, it is the mode of modulation is changed from analog FM-Wide to Digital Audio Broadcast
http://radiomap.eu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Looking and listening at the advertisements I hear on those mediums, they are mostly aimed at older - retired - people. At the very least, the advertisers are under the impression (they have the data) that radio and broadcast TV are for the older generations.
Shortwave is for religious programming here in the States - the BBC shut down all of their N. American SW broadcasts a few years ago. AM radio is mostly political crap. And FM here is getting crappy - at least in my market area.
My 2015 Subaru has so many different media options - radio is like 1 of 5 or 6 and that's BOTH AM and FM bands.
It's just technology changing.
What's going to suck though, is that broadcast is strictly advertiser funded. These other media double dip frequently- advertiser AND subscriptions.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
DAB uses the MPEG-1 Layer 2 codec due to being an earlier standard. HD Radio and DAB+ use HE-AAC based codecs. The biggest difference is DAB usually has dedicated spectrum, vs sharing the FM band. Also, HD Radio is patent encumbered and has tons of licensing fees while DAB is an open standard. Norway could be planning on re-farming the FM band for something else, or moving existing DAB broadcasts there and freeing up the current DAB broadcast band.
Except that the HD Radio """standard""" is full of patents, so even if you knew how to make a digital receiver, you couldn't sell it without paying license fees.
And they call it HD to make you think "high definition" when in reality it's barely up to the quality of a 128K MP3. The HD stands for "Hybrid Digital". There is really no need for it to exist other than ZOMG DIGITAL.
Also, nobody cares about stereo on AM anymore, so there's no need for it there, either. AM (in the US) has become talk radio and low-income music for people who don't give a fuck about audio quality. (The AM band is full of Mexican-style music down here in Texas, with the occasional country or rap station in between.) It is also extremely susceptible to RFI, making the sound quality even worse. I even know of two talk radio stations that have LP FM simulcasts so you can get better audio within the metro area limits.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
the internet allows even more radiostations than DAB... keep the old FM going, everybody with highschool education can build a receiver from scrap parts for it, for DAB, not so much. I fail to see how DAB makes any sense at all.
Um... FM reception is a bit tricky actually... And I'm an Extra Ham Radio operator who has a BSEE. I seriously doubt high school grads would posses the necessary technical knowledge to bias the detector properly, much less build a proper FM receiver that requires more than a handful of discrete parts or a pretty complicated IC...
Now AM... THAT'S easy to do with a pretty low parts count... With a set of high impedance earphones, a razor blade, wire and a variable capacitor you can whip up one of those...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
DAB+ won't help. They'll just turn down the bitrate to get more stations in until the average person starts complaining about the quality. That'll be a loiwer bitrate for DAB+. so they'll be able to get more stations in. This is exactly what has happened with digital TV.
An actual politicians viewpoints.
Not to be political, but I I just heard this exchange between Lindsey Graham and James Clapper this week:
GRAHAM: Would you agree with me that Radio Free Europe is outdated?
CLAPPER: I’m frankly not up on —
GRAHAM: Well, it says “Radio,” and a lot of people don’t listen to radio like we used to.
CLAPPER: Well, actually radio is a very popular mode in many places in the world.
GRAHAM: Radio is big in your world?
CLAPPER: Hmm.. my world? Not so much.
GRAHAM: Yea, I don’t listen to the radio much either.
Car manufacturers should have been equipping cars with DAB+ Reivers as a default rule for by the government for at least 10 years already - then a switch over can be done.
Don't really understand why they do that with so little preparation - 2 Million car's not able to receive the new technology. What about visitors from other countries (car tourists..) Car's in Austria are for instance right now still not equipped with DAB+ technology. (okay probably i would switch to internet radio there anyway) Though this means also Navigation systems - TMC will not work anymore there.
It is just not very consumer friendly. Hope they decide to take more time
the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating Slashdot troll
DAB uses a different part of the spectrum. FM will be shut down to save on maintenance, not to make room from DAB.
Save on maintenance, or make take more of the spectrum to auction off to cell phone companies?
when they all play the same thing? Generic music, generic news, generic humor.
Yes, after a little under 3 months from now we'll have that cleaning too.
After that we'll know who forgot that will be April 1st.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
And DAB+ is obsoleted by internet streaming for home use. In cars there's no need for the digital sound, FM is good enough.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I suppose that you could tune in Swedish radio stations, but who wants to listen to ABBA all day.
Lower powers can transmit farther, so it really makes a difference in the RF background noise.
And honestly, I blame the turdtastic car makers putting in garbage radios and "infotainment" that does not support HDFM. it's been a standard for well over 10 years now. so it's high time the car makers and car stereo makers are forced to put it in place.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Same AC. I noted that it was proprietary, which I criticized as a major disadvantage. Sure, the HD is a marketing ploy, but there is an advantage to in band simulcasts. The advantage is that, by operating simultaneously on the same frequencies, it removes the incentive for the FCC to discontinue analog radio broadcasts. There are no frequencies to sell off, and so the FCC is unlikely to see a benefit to discontinuing the analog broadcasts. Although there are advantages to digital broadcasts, analog transmitters and receivers are simpler. Radio has value in disseminating information in the event of emergencies, and it might be better to have something that's simple and just works. It also doesn't suffer from the digital cliff, which is an added benefit. If you want better audio quality, satellite radio is a viable, though expensive, alternative. Digital terrestrial radio has the advantage of making more efficient use of the bandwidth.
It depends on the signal strength - a crystal radio is so simple, you don't need a schematic. BTW, for the skeptics out there, a simple non-linear element such as a germanium diode can actually demodulate a FM signal if you tune to slightly beside the carrier.
To my knowledge there will be zero effort made to recycle them other than as electronic trash, when you could have just put them in a container and shipped them to... anywhere but here, really and sold them cheap or given them to a third world country.
"Giving" your toxic waste to third world countries is neither charitable nor an environmentally friendly alternative to dumping them in your own landfills. WTF is someone living in the third world going to do with an obsolete DAB radio? They don't have DAB stations to listen to, and if they ever get them, they are far more likely to be the same HE-AACv2 DAB+ signals that have triggered you into throwing your radio away than the original MPEG-1 layer 2 based DAB that the radio can receive.
Hmm, another McDonalds burger flippen EE wallowing in the 'STEM shortage'?
Team Rock Radio was the only station I listened to when I had DAB in the car. Then they decided not to renew the £1M per year rent for the use of that space, and a religious organisation took over their frequency. Just before Christmas 2016 they had to shut down what was left of the business. Internet radio is also a tough place to be, even without paying rent to the DAB people.
This is a courageous decision. They should also ban 3.5mm jacks whilst they are passing legislation.
All I want is an internet connection and StreamTuner. DAB is just a waste.
Graham is a retard. It's one thing to say that Radio Free Europe is outdated b'cos Europe (aside from Russia) is already free, making this program redundant. It's another thing to say that it's outdated b'cos it should go to another medium, like TV or DAB.
But then again, this is someone who like Obama thinks that Russia, rather than the world Jihad, is the biggest threat to the US, and who would have the US brownnose countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, while opposing Russia everywhere they can
Isn't DAB on L-Band officially dead now? Everywhere that has actually deployed is using Band III, and L-Band frequencies have been auctioned off for LTE use in many countries that were previously considering using it for DAB.
sigh, because an FM radio can be build with about 5 components that you can make yourself in a few minutes. AM radio takes 2 or 3 and is self powered.
EE here, though admittedly an EE who spends all his time doing CS. I don't recall the exact circuits we did in the lab, but simple AM is what possible possibly with a high frequency op amp configured with bandpass, and maybe some way to tune that. After that you can presumably just use a diode and a cap to create a follower, then maybe another amp to get it to useable level. So that is what 1 chip, at least 4 resistors, tunable caps? something like that. That puts it at like 7 without the antenna, so 8 with the antenna. It is certainly not self powered, at least in any meaningful way. Your not driving a speaker with it at any rate. Power supply brings you to 9 at least, and again that would be a crap radio.
You don't even really have to properly calculate the values of the components, you just have to get in the general ballpark and have a tuning coil and you can pick up anything from old analog TV signals, to FM radio, to aircraft radio.
In short, if you can't build a functioning FM radio in a few minutes with random crap you can find laying around the house, then you simply aren't an EE and you know pretty much nothing about it.
FFS, the CIA has build MECHANICAL AM transmitters powered remotely by microwaves being beamed at it.
Meh, I couldn't build an FM radio that easily. I remember the lab was annoying. Could I do it? Sure. Would I do it? I seriously doubt it. I'd look to see if there is a module or chip that has that functionality and move on. Or just go to amazon and buy one.
We have digital radio in the US, but amazingly most? Aftermarket car radios sold don't have it. I don't get that, but it is true. I'd think by now that the difference in cost should be marginal. We of course use the hybrid old + new, which I also agree shouldn't be a long term solution. I'd slowly phase out the one for the other, or just not approve new analog licenses.
You couldnt design this or something simlar to this?
http://electronics-diy.com/simple-fm-radio.php
Maybe there is a reason you have never held a job as an EE...
Different part of the spectrum, different modulation methods, different data encoding, different meta-data formats, and doesn't hang off the side of an analogue FM station, but otherwise, yes apart from the differences that pretty much encompass everything about it, it is the same as HD Radio.
Wait, what ? I feel like my one EE class got me most of the way there. Do you mean a modern fm radio or just something that picks up a signal ?
When you have a FM demodulator designed for 180 KHz (200 KHz is the channel width, not the sideband extent, which you can calculate using Carson’s rule), that same demodulator, when encountering half the width signal, will produce 1/2 the output volume; because FM encodes the audio waveform with frequency deviation. If the deviation is half, then so is the output waveform. Though I should point out that +/-75 KHz is the actual audio deviation, so really. 150 KHz.
Additionally, within the standard FM signal, encoded at rates of deviation, there is a stereo pilot at 19 KHz, a stereo subcarrier at 38 Khz, as well as digital information (RDS/RDBS) and two mode narrow-band monophonic audio channels up higher yet.
Another thing: The wide bandwidth is part of what gives broadcast FM its capacity for reasonably high fidelity. You drop down to 25...50 KHz total bandwidth, and you'd going to see some noticeable reduction in fidelity; cram a stereo subcarrier in there, and you'll see even more.
So it's not a matter of "just make it narrower" because compatibility with older receivers, of which there are a huge number still happily being used by their owners, would be unable to make useful audio out of the signal and because audio fidelity and stereo imaging would suffer (and that's not what FM listeners would call an "advance".) Oh, and you'd lose the capability for the RDBS and the extra audio channels, too.
The right answer is leave the current FM band alone. The FCC wants new transmission types with reduced range that won't work with the gear people already have in order to fluff the corporations? Fine. Put it somewhere where it won't wreck 70-ish years worth of radio gear owned by a huge portion of the population. Maybe someone will even listen. Stop forcing citizens to make expensive changes they have no need to make.
Corporations drive these consumer-level stupidities. Of course, for the corporations, it's not stupid: They're intending to make a lot more money off of us citizens. And with the FCC (in the US) or whatever other government coercion backing their play, they will succeed, too.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"Norway is set to become the first nation to start switching off its FM radio network..."
How???
I've read read several articles and none of them describe the mechanism by which they will accomplish this. If it was only broadcasts by the state-owned "Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation" I could understand, but it seems like they're talking about all FM radio. It's not like they can just flip a switch and "turn off" part of the EM spectrum. Does it mean that the Norwegian government is going to make it illegal for anyone to do FM broadcasting?
the internet allows even more radiostations than DAB...
...but requires a working Internet connection. Please take notice that the summary speaks about Norway. A country that is in Europe, and not even in the EU.
Europe is not a single country, but a lot of different countries, each with its local cellular service providers.
As soon as you travel abroad, you're roaming, and internet connection can get quite expensive.
Whereas DAB and FM are just available for free from the air.
Also :
- FM (RDS TMC) and DAB (TPEG) have very clear standard for emitting traffic informations, which - at least in Europe - is supported by the vast majority of hardware (in-vehicle infotainment, standalone GPS receivers, etc.)
There isn't such a clear widely supported standard on internet. Google can provide a traffic overlay on their Maps service/app, but there's no standard way for that information to be propagated to your car's computer or your tomtom.
(And again, there's going to be a lot of people use offline maps in their car or using a standalone device, because streaming data from the internet while not it your country costs a lot in Europe, and thus using Google Maps for driving direction isn't that much practical. - Not only less features, but also requires you to download maps in advance using their fugly clumsy interface. at which point a standalone device starts to sound much better).
- FM and DAB also have a standard way to do to temporarily switch channels for some critical/emergency announcement (interrupt the radio you are listening to announce that there's an accident ahead on the highway you're driving on and you need to be careful to avoid the mess on the road. Or that because of the snow, there's a barrage of snow-plows driving at 30 km/h on the same highway where you're driving 130 km/h. You can't overtake them and you need to adapt your speed to avoid colliding).
This standard is supported by nearly any in-car radio for the past 20 years (i.e.: even old FM radios that might not be able to take advantage of all the other information available on the RDS channel can at least interrupt your music for an announcement). It even works while other media sources are playing (if you're listening to music on an USB stick, modern cars will pause their own media player, have you listen to the radio announcement, then resume your music). Even works over bluetooth (with the car emitting "pause" and "play" commands over bluetooth before/after the announcement, if the bluetooth player supports it).
As far as I know, Spotifiy on its own won't interrupt you for anything but advertisement (on free accounts). I doesn't support any traffic announcement. (and it would be problematic, because it would need GPS awareness and again costly data roaming).
You still need the car being able to catch FM/DAB information to be able to interrupt the spotify playing on your tablet.
- And that's the practical implication.
Then there's the matter of taste. Some people acutally enjoy listening to radio. Because of the music program, because of the talking heads, because of the news, etc. which currently aren't provided by internet streaming alternatives like spotify.
Only provided by web radios - ie.: radio that stream also on the internet - ie.: provide over costly internet connection what they also provide for free over the air with DAB.
everybody with highschool education can build a receiver from scrap parts for it, for DAB, not so much.
RTL-SDR would like to disagree with you.
Yup, it's not the same concept of "scrapt parts" (you're referring to electronic component lying around: resistors, transistors, condos, etc.) (I'm referring on the kind of scraps I have around : RaspPis, Arduinos, etc.) but it's still quite close to what a modern geek might have lying around.
Even if QAM / QSPK are much more complicated than FM, it's still possible to hack some at home, and is much more relevant in the modern world (Except for analog broadcast radio and a few legacy handheld radio "walkie-talkie", who the hell gives a damn about Frequency modulation nowadays ?)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They'll just turn down the bitrate to get more stations in
Sounds like Sirius/XM in the US. The quality of the music broadcasts is so terrible, but they just have to cram in more crappy stations.
There goes the oil money, down the drain.
I believed DAB failed because it was no big audio improvement since most people don't have high quality car stereos or just don't care.
There's a huge improvement that isn't qualitative but quantitative.
Using DAB/DAB+ its possible to pack a fuckton more radio channels in the same amount of frequencies.
That plays a critical role in the densely populated region that is continental Europe, where you might cross a border every few kilometers - each country having its own national radios, etc.
e.g.: In central europe, you have regions where Germany, France and Switzerland are all within reach of each others radio waves. And the last one has *4 fucking official nationnal language*
In other words, the FM radio frequencies are quite overcrowded. If you want to push yet another nationnal radio channel it's going to be difficult. Good luck if you're a small local indie radio - getting license for a FM frequency is going to be hell.
DAB makes all of this much more easy: it's much more roomy for additional channels.
even if your car speakers cannot notice the higher quality sound, the availability of radio channels is still something you can notice.
In the analog TV shutdown many people didn't changed TV but purchased a STB. There's no way to do that in cars where most people listen to radio.
It's just about swapping the DIN radio module in your car - can even be done by a motivated end-users.
On the other hand, in expensive high-end autos that have a whole infotainment center directly built in, that's indeed more complicated.
Either you need an extra player (that you connect with the front AUX port, over bluetooth, or connected to the back AUX/CD-Loader or handsfree connector) - i.e.: the in-car equivalent of a STB(*)
Or you need to upgrade-swap the radio module, which is going to be much more expensive and complicated because instead of a DIN standard it's some custom solution, which is proprietary to the car manufacturer... and that's hoping that the manufacturer actually has an upgrade available.
(*) : for technical reasons (catching traffic info over FM/DAB, some standalone GPS boxes have FM/DAB capability in addition to some MP3 player. So it might be possible that not even an extra box is needed).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Workers in 3rd world countries have few wage earning opportunities. This depresses wages and also makes it possible for companies to find workers to disassemble obsolete electronics at a (very) small profit and recycle any parts that have value.
Personally, I think this work should be done in the 1st world countries where the obsolete products are disassembled by robots and in adherence with the strict environmental standards of those countries.
Part of the attractiveness of sending those electronics to poor countries, in addition to low wages, are the lack of environmental protections.
More channels and nothing on
captcha: degrade
Even if its only 128kbps MP3 quality, I can definitely hear the difference when the digital signal syncs. The soundstage sounds a lot broader.
DAB here in the UK is a failure because we adopted it too early, and we are stuck with first generation DAB rather than DAB+
Lots of countries have upgraded to DAB+ since, you might be among the few remaining.
The actual upgrade is pretty simple : DAB and DAB+ are more or less the same. The only difference is that some of the channels can provide an audio stream using a better error correction (Reed-Solomon) and a better codec (AAC instead of MP2). All the rest (signal modulation and packing audio-streams from different radio channels, into a single digital radio emitter) is still exactly the same. (And thus an emitter can still feature over a signle frequency a mix of DAB and DAB+ radio channels, and a legacy DAB reciever can still play the DAB channels).
For anything but the simplest all-in-one low power SoC (e.g.: small hand-held radio with a single embed chip with a hardware MP2 decoder), the upgrade is purely a software one (a media device that is able to play music in MP3/OGG/AAC formats from a USB stick has already the necessary capability to play AAC encoded audio and could use DAB+).
But for some weird reasons, lots of users got scammed into buying newer hardware... thus upgrading from DAB to DAB+ would seem a costly operation. And I think that's why some region haven't switched to DAB+ yet and wait for new hardware to slowly replace the old hardware.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
We were just as early adopters, but in an effort to give as many as possible the finger it will be exclusively DAB+. So if you bought a DAB radio it has both been born and died in less time than most FM radios have lived.
Depends on the type of radio receiver.
DAB and DAB+ are nearly exactly the same.
Same modulation, same DAB emmiter data stream, same list of radio channel, same menu of available stations.
Only once you select a station inside the list available at the emitter, if it's a DAB one, you'll get an MP2-compressed audio stream with some old data correction scheme, if it's a DAB+ one, the audio stream will be AAC with Reed-Solomon error correction.
If you radio is a very low power one, with a single chip that handles everything in hardware (a portable hand held radio that should work with a few AA batteries), yup the SoC won't work with DAB+ because it only has a MP2/3 audio decompression hardware acceleration.
If it's anything bigger that can also play MP3/AAC/OGG files from a USB stick or SD-Card, then it's already has all the capability necessary to play a DAB+ station from the list available at your emitter.
It should be only a software/firmware update. If it's not availble, it's only the manufacturer's fault of being lazy / wanting you to rebuy new hardware.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"nation of 5 million"
That's not a nation. It's a country club.
If they wanted to reuse the FM band for some public service then I could just about understand it - but 20Mhz of VHF spectrum is useless for any modern data comms so I can't see who'd use it. Seems to me this is simply the worst kind of "we know best" patrician politics forcing people to go digital for no other reason that some political idiots think digital is The Future so must be embrased. By force if necessary. Never mind that analog is better in a lot of case particularly a mountainous country like norway and thats before we get onto the issue of electronic waste from all the junked FM radios.
Of course not the spectrum, is is the transmitters. Nearly all stations in Norway use a national radio grid of transmitting towers, normally built on mountain tops, a very expensive infrastucture to maintain. Space for antennas on these towers are valuable real estate, access to power and uoload links equally so. This infrastucture is what will stop supporting FM, local radio stations can continue broadcast at FM, but without major national programs, FM is for all practical prposes dead.
saps investments in programs
In other words, we can't run parallel analog and DAB because we need the money for welfare.
But in an emergency, streaming is useless because of cheap Silicon Valley practices. Show me a streaming service with 99.99999% uptime (including client software and OS).
"...cramming in the digital signals with the existing analog AM/FM broadcasts using IBOC/HD Radio..... which hasn't been a success."
I'm probably incredibly stupid, but I never saw much point to US FM/HD. If the content broadcast on HD is already on the analog channel, the quality on the analog channel will be fine. Why do I need a super duper, new, digital technology to get an improvement I can't notice? And if they just want to broadcast alternate content there's subcarrier audio which works fine, still allows older hardware to get the main channel just like HD, and is actually compatible with some existing gear. The whole thing strikes me as change for the sake of change.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Nope. I have seen that circuit or similar ones, but I couldn't recall them from memory. I might be able to come up with this from scratch if I brush up a bit on the theory. I've done very little in the way of analog circuit design in my life, but I've been doing digital electronics since the age of 7. Maybe that's how I ended up in IT (where my EE education has come in handy very often)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
AM will still working, right? Or every car will need to be internet enabled to just hear new about the traffic?
To my knowledge there will be zero effort made to recycle them other than as electronic trash, when you could have just put them in a container and shipped them to... anywhere but here, really and sold them cheap or given them to a third world country.
"Giving" your toxic waste to third world countries is neither charitable nor an environmentally friendly alternative to dumping them in your own landfills. WTF is someone living in the third world going to do with an obsolete DAB radio? They don't have DAB stations to listen to, and if they ever get them, they are far more likely to be the same HE-AACv2 DAB+ signals that have triggered you into throwing your radio away than the original MPEG-1 layer 2 based DAB that the radio can receive.
I think he was referring to the FM radios as usable radios not trash. The problem is that even in some place like the USA where we still use FM radios, factory radios are worthless. Every car comes with one and most all of them outlive their cars so you can get one for basically free at any junkyard. Even if you shipped 1M of them to the USA, unless you either start installing used radio in new cars or selling new cars without radios, there will be no market for them.
Fling them through the windows of members of Parliament? Perhaps the increased licensing fees from the commercial interests can cover new glass.
fencepost
just a little off
I'll wager most EE grads could not build an FM radio without a drawing.
Why would I build one without drawing a schematic first?
I think rfengr was implying that recent graduates from U.S. electrical engineering colleges would have to look at someone else's existing schematic rather than creating an original schematic on paper.
Or are you recommending a unicast to each subscriber over cellular at $40 per subscriber per month (source: T-Mobile)?
I'm mostly suggesting fiber and whatever generation cellular coverage
Say someone owns a car for ten years. Your suggestion of "whatever generation cellular coverage" will incur a recurring bill which totals thousands of dollars over those ten years. A $200 DAB+ radio is likely to be far cheaper.
Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, isn't he? Beautiful plumage!
My Dad showed me how to build an FM radio when I was 5 years old, but that's because my Dad was an EE who learned his trade before the Internet existed.
Why would EE knowledge ever be useful in IT? What component calculations do you need to figure out user permission in Active Directory? How could digital circuit design help figure out why OSPF isn't sharing properly with the BGP gateway?
I am not at all good at electrical engineering nor have a background in it but I did design and build an FM radio out of scrap when I was a freshman in highschool. I fudged the more difficult math and put another pot in to compensate. It wasn't hard.
Your posts don't make any sense. An EE that can't design a basic circuit but can do IT. That is like a mechanical engineer not knowing how to change a tire but his education comes in really handy when operating a tower crane.
The biggest feature is HD Radio allows for sub-channels with additional programming. FM subcarriers are pretty low quality. One interesting loophole that broadcasters have been exploiting is using HD sub-channels to feed analog LPFM relays (which have different licensing requirements vs. a full power or traditional LPFM feed).
Cheap FM radio does not enrich cronies like the Norwegian plan does. This is what the plan really is about, corny enrichment.
In the analog TV shutdown many people didn't changed TV but purchased a STB. There's no way to do that in cars where most people listen to radio.
Sure there is -- just use an digital tuner that retransmits on FM for your car - I used one of those for years to listen to my phone in my car (until the radio finally stopped working and I replaced it with a Bluetooth capable one). Wasn't the best sound quality, but was good enough. Though many cars have an AUX port that you can just plug the tuner into.
Why? Because IT is more than administering AD. A lot of my work is in innovative environments, where it helps to be able to design and build prototype hardware. You might call that EE work but I see it as supplemental to what I do in IT. Having a good working knowledge of both domains helps both on the hardware and the software side, and the fact that I can do both parts is an immense time-saver (that holds true for many generalists in innovation). Also, EE provide a solid grounding in mathematics; useful when you have to develop algorithms or when working with complex maths or statistics applications, and which allows me to act as a generalist in another few nooks and crannies of IT.
In a lot of cases, designing circuits comes down to remembering, modifying and combining basic patterns. Certainly in the case of that radio. And that's my problem: my memory sucks and I do not remember the basic circuits that I pretty much never had any practical use for (doing digital electronics), even if they were certainly part of the curriculum.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
That puts it at like 7 without the antenna, so 8 with the antenna ... Power supply brings you to 9 at least, and again that would be a crap radio.
I'm not an EE, but even I know how to build a crystal radio... Did you forget how?
If you want to count parts, that's 1 diode, 1 speaker, 1 spool of wire (for the coil and antenna) That's three or four components, depending on how you want to count things.
It is certainly not self powered, at least in any meaningful way.
I'd say that it's ONLY self-powered in a meaningful way. It don't need a power supply.
Your not driving a speaker with it at any rate.
You'll very easily drive a small speaker with even the most amateur construction.
Yeah, I have serious doubts as to that EE credential you've claimed.
Yea having kids burn electronics for the rare metals is not a good thing. The smoke they inhale is toxic as hell. I hear the average lifespan if you start as a kid is like 25 years. Which is probably a lot higher than other jobs in those same places.
66% of Norwegians questioned are opposed. If you ask 3 people at a bar with old people, 2 will say "I'm opposed".
That said, they turned off analog TV and people went to the store and bought settop boxes and nobody knew the difference. They watch the same three TV stations at their cabins in the mountains they watched for the last 80 years.
People in Norway adopt technology at a faster pace then pretty much anywhere else.
When Telenor refused to install anything better than ISDN in places like NÃtterÃy, the farmers broke out their plows and dug ditches for fiber to be laid so they could get high speed porn.
There is practically 100% coverage for LTE or at least 3G on Norwegian roads and people can listen to radio on their phone if DAB isn't interesting.
And 2 million cars on Norwegian roads? Really? WTF!?!?!?
There are 5 million people in Norway with an average of 1 car per house with a Norwegian house containing about 2.8 people. Also, Norway has almost all newer cars as the cost of maintaining a car over 3 years old quickly becomes more expensive than buying a new car. Driving in Norway (at least the cities) tends to be like driving on a track displaying the latest vehicles being driven by toddlers.
There may be a lot of service vehicles without DAB, but for 2000kr Norwegian, a new head deck can be installed or a 400kr device can be bought at Kjell & Co.
They'll turn FM off and 10 people will make a lot of noise and the rest of Norway will simply move on.
On the one hand I agree with your argument. On the other, it's the reason why a lot of the US has poor internet speeds. Maybe "a company can continue to be profitable" isn't sufficient. I think the consumer impact/benefit needs to be considered as well. I wouldn't argue turning off FM provides much consumer benefit though.
In market economies, consumer impact/benefit is generally what determines whether a company can continue to be profitable. If there's no benefit, customers won't pay, so there's no profit. The thing to remember, however, when it comes to commercial radio, is who the "customer" actually is (hint: it's not the person listening to the radio, unless it's a subscription service like SiriusXM).
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Here in the U.S., you can still cobble together a simple AM radio receiver from 5 components (or less) plus some Hi-Z headphones and an antenna wire. It's not great quality sound, it's only monophonic, it doesn't have very sensitive reception (depending on your antenna) and is as basic as you can get -- but it's still got a certain magic to it that you can receive music, information, and news from a distance with such simple technology. So far as I remember, you can build something similar to receive FM broadcast radio with a small handful of components. It would be very sad, I think, if that all went away and you couldn't have your kid build, with some simple components, a working radio receiver, that doesn't requite a Bachelors' degree in engineering to fully understand the complete working principles of (which digital-only 'radio', essentially, does).
If you call me a 'Luddite' then you clearly don't understand the spirit of what I'm saying here.
'Newer' isn't always 'better', just like 'older' doesn't necessarily mean 'bad' or 'obsolete' or 'useless', either, and 'more complicated' has it's own connotations.
Sure, people are perhaps idiots on average, but they have a better chance to choose something for themselves, than to have corporate shills make that decision for them. This is a clear case where a superior service or method (FM radio) is phased out SOLELY to allow for monetization and encryption of radio broadcasts. In Switzerland such decisions go to a plebiscite. Sure, corporate shills disguised as politicians will still try to sway the public to support something that is not in their interest, but people at least have some chance to get their wishes. In most other countries people are presented with fait accompli, and they can go fuck themselves for all the "democracy" that they have.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
As a guy on the spectrum I can confirm that it does not need maintenance to keep up.
I only read the summary, but why bother shutting down FM to begin with? They can roll out digital anyway, Or do they step on each other? Are there other plans for the FM spectrum? Does it go public?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
In an alien invasion we will be screwed.
I think the real news is that Norway only has 5 million people in it! Am I the only one that just assumed the entire nation had more than a large urban city?
This would be a great opportunity for Sirius / XM
That is very interesting. Of course in the US, we don't and have never had such a grid (AM, FM or TV). The local affiliates obtain the national programs via satellite, all broadcast "locally."
That is very interesting. Of course in the US, we don't and have never had such a grid (AM, FM or TV).
While satellite distribution for large networks has become standard (and it why so many small networks can be national), IN THE PAST a lot of systems distributed their signal by such a "grid". In Oregon, for example, with a few large cities and lots of open space, many broadcast stations used a system of translators to serve more rural areas. A receiver on a high spot picked up the main broadcast signal and retransmitted it locally on a different channel. The "PBS" in this state is one service -- OPB -- generated out of Portland and relayed to all the other transmitters. It is currently done vie the Internet, but it used to be done via TV. And much of the major network distribution was done via a microwave backbone. That's the "grid" you claim never existed.
No, it isn't a national grid because "national" in the US is so much larger than "national" in Norway or many other places in the world, but there were grids doing it.
Just coded.
The problem is more in the frequency than in the modulation. A regular AM Rx tuned off center can decode a basic FM signal to a usable quality. Naturally, you won't get stereo or any of the extra data channels stuffed in to a modern FM signal that way, but you will hear it.
I blame the Danes!
More consumers want faster cell phone service, so technologies like LTE are pushing analog aside by chewing up bandwidth - channel by channel. With rooftop directional antennas, filters, and boosters I can pull in around 50 local digital TV stations on a good day. That being said, I would prefer to stream local content from an Ethernet enabled HD Homerun strapped to a nearby skyscraper. Too bad that SCOTUS killed Aereo.
Seems like great incentive for operating pirate FM broadcasts, a massive number of people who have old receivers that are otherwise useless.
Obviously the government would chase down any rogue signals, but isn't that half of the fun of operating pirate radio.
that's good environmentalism
Ultimately you're talking about a rounding error compared to the impact of computers, mobile phones, and all those other disposable electronics we have nowadays. This is the least of people's problems.
Are you criticising them for not re-inventing the wheel? Isn't that the opposite of what people do on Slashdot?
No one seems to have mentioned that each DAB multiplex uses the same frequency for all transmitters. The signal is buffered and syncronised. Neighbouring FM transmitters for the same station has to use different frequencies. This frees up a lot of spectrum.
There was the chicken and the egg problem: Nobody would switch because there were no broadcasters. There were no broadcasters because no one would switch.
The US government didn't work with device manufacturers and broadcasters like it did with TV to switch. There was no voucher program for buying devices for reception.
People generally accept whatever radio comes with the car. There was no push by anyone to have DAB receivers in the radios that come with the car.
If they had built DAB receiver technology into smartphones, that would have been a possibility.
Devices to plug into an audio device and transmit short-range analog on a selection of FM channels exist. There could have been devices that received a digital signal and output an analog signal to the car stereo, but as far as I know, such a device was never made.
Yeah, I have serious doubts as to that EE credential you've claimed.
Admittedly its been about ten years, but I'm pretty sure we never covered ancient 1922 crap, but nice try at pretending to somehow be smarter. Also how again is any of this relevant to switching off FM radio? That tech is not used in modern radio afaik and i'm 99.999% sure it never will be. For that matter the typical antenna length I'm seeing is on the order of 10m, so generally not a car thing. (The longer the better to pull in more power since your not amplifying anything.)
Seriously, I can't believe this was even mentioned in the same context as modern systems. The circuit i proposed certainly exists. a simple search yields link It is likely around $5 dollars in parts, and much less in bulk.
Either way, I'd much prefer digital radio. Vastly more stations in the same bandwidth. Seriously are you proposing that we replace modern tech with 1922 trash? Most likely you can get most of the digital set down to very small board, or possibly just an IC with a few external components. They probably already have.
Perceptual coding like in mp3 and all the rest, or maybe even some of the newer wavelet based variants is far better. You can add on error correcting information so you can lose a certain percentage of the bits and still get perfect reproduction of the original digital waveform.
How can an state regulate to 'turn off' FM !!!??? Why not turning off the prime numbers? What about turning off politicians?
I'm criticizing them for not having the ability to reinvent the wheel if necessary, such as in a disaster that takes out local access to the Internet.
My Nissan Leaf supports DAB, but I live in New Zealand and there isn't any DAB broadcasting as far as I know. But I rarely listen to FM either because the hilly topography means range is smaller and coverage poor...And any FM networks aren't in the same frequency from town to town and you don't where they are. I'll play music from my phone via Bluetooth if I turn on anything at all.
Only boring people are ever bored.
such as in a disaster that takes out local access to the Internet
I'm sure they could just look it up in a book, or disassemble something. The inability to design something with zero reference material is not something I ever consider an engineering trait. Engineering is about problem solving using a given set of knowledge. EE is a field with such an incredible breath and depth that I wouldn't criticise anyone for not knowing something regardless how simple it may be. e.g. some of the smartest HV transmission gurus probably couldn't tell a resistor from a diode when looking on a circuit board, but then most of the people who can would just look up and see a bunch of wires and not know much about them either.
There's a reason there is such a level of specialisation in engineering, and that already starts at university.
I built one before I graduated from high school. But it was a superregen, does that count??
That was in 1964. I think.
That design is super-regenerative, which means it's always oscillating and spewing interference everywhere. Abysmal quality and irresponsible.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
For cost reasons, any consumer electronic device will usually be implemented on the cheapest possible SoC with the bare minimum of unused resources (eMMC, RAM, MIPS etc.)
Nowadays ROM chips with a custom firmware burned in cost too much (add maybe a 0.5$ per unit), firmware is flashed on built-in EEPROM inside the SoC.
In theory, most of modern-day widgets have field-upgradeable firmware.
In practice, no company bothers to do the necessary work, specially since by the time the firmware upgrade is necessary, the device has already been sold and the money has been earned. There is no big immediate advantage in providing upgrade. It's an eventual long term advantage for the end-user, but by then the end-user can only regret having spent the money on the gadget.
(e.g.: Not exactly wireless DAB radio, but out of all the wireless bluetooth speakers I've seen, only Logitech/Ultimate Ears bothers to make regular updates that actually add new features. None of the DAB radio I've owned has ever bothered releasing a firmware upgrade, even if some did advertise the possibility)
For lots of music usage (again, anything beyond the handheld DAB/FM receiver*) the "bare minimum SoC" is already quite powerful.
e.g.: bigger multi-media device need AAC decoding capabilities (to play music from USB sticks / MP3 players in USB-Storage mode, etc.) - That's about what is needed to move a DAB-enabled device to DAB+.
e.g.: In Vehicle Infotainment have a fuckton more processing power (Some high end device are the equivalent of a big over-powered tablet / a small netbook), that's way more than enough for playing DAB+ (or even support OPUS).
-----
*: the handhelds tend to be a single chip with a hardware DAB receiver piping its data straigh into a MP2/MP3 hardware core. There's no real CPU.
This kind chip is designed to be used as a DAB solution for media devices.
(e.g.: combine it with a CD player and a few such other parts, and you can make a cheap all-in-one audio device)
But the micro-controller on this SoC can run a firmware that gives it limited stand-alone properties: it can handle a few bare simple menus and can be wired straight to an LCD with a couple of buttons.
Thus, this kind of chip can be also useful to make dead-cheap handheld radios.
(example of such radio: Revo Pico+ - though it wasn't sold at a cheap price back then)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]