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Norway Becomes First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (thelocal.no)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Local Norway: Norway on Wednesday completed its transition to digital radio, becoming the first country in the world to shut down national broadcasts of its FM radio network despite some grumblings. As scheduled, the country's most northern regions and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic switched to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) in the late morning, said Digitalradio Norge (DRN) which groups Norway's public and commercial radio. The transition, which began on January 11th, allows for better sound quality, a greater number of channels and more functions, all at a cost eight times lower than FM radio, according to authorities. The move has however been met with some criticism linked to technical incidents and claims that there is not sufficient DAB coverage across the country. In addition, radio users have complained about the cost of having to buy new receivers or adapters, usually priced around 100 to 200 euros. Currently, fewer than half of motorists (49 percent) are able to listen to DAB in their cars, according to DRN figures. According to a study cited by local media, the share of Norwegians who listen to the radio on a daily basis has dropped by 10 percent in one year, and public broadcaster NRK has lost 21 percent of its audience.
Some car audio systems are extremely integrated into the vehicle. They may be stuck with a nonfunctional radio for years.
I know people who are still complaining about the digital TV transition here in the US, because they used to be able to get a weak signal with analog, and now they get nothing. Sounds like Norway is having the same problem.
They should have transitioned this over ten years like digital TV in the US.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
DAB has worse battery life than FM, a shorter reception range for the same TX power, and often (depending on bit rate and codec) poorer audio quality. No one was asking for it, its purely politicians grandstanding and looking like they have their finger on the pulse of technology. Also the FM band being 30Mhz wide - less bandwidth than a modern ethernet cable - isn absoltely not use for modern data comms so it can't even be sold off for that to raise money.
I suspect all that will happen is legal broadcasters lose listeners hand over fist especially in car, and pirate radio takes over the FM band.
. . . when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
(Sansui 3000A tuned to KCRW)
No one is trying to take your receiver. It's the transmitters that are changing. You're welcome to keep your receiver that no longer receives anything.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The US standard is HD Radio, which is a proprietary system (not merely patent encumbered, it's controlled by one company and uses things like a custom audio codec that's similar to, but not identical to, AAC-HE) and it remains a mystery as to why the FCC blessed it, as it was opposed by most of the industry and, like I said, is proprietary.
It is not the same as either of the European standards (they have one for FM, and one for AM). The system has one advantage over Europe's DAB for FM system, in that each station can transmit an analog signal and two or more digital channels over the same frequency. The first digital channel is always a digital version of the analog channel, while the others are alternative audio stations.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Oh now come on, it's easy to make a digital radio receiver out of a naturally semiconducting crystal, three paper clips, a speaker, some copper wire, and a Raspberry Pi.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
DAB radio does not provide more channels and better quality.
It provides the option between more channels or better quality: pick one!
And we all know what gets picked every time.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
You're welcome to keep your receiver that no longer receives anything.
Well, if your beloved KCRW goes dark . . . just buy an FM transmitter, and produce the program yourself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Since you would be the DJ, you can then even call yourself up on the radio telephone number, and have a heated debate with yourself.
Oh, and every few months or so, hold a pledge drive, and beg folks for money in exchange for some radio station hats.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Hmm...do we have DAB in the US?
This is actually pretty much the first I've heard of this...
Intentional pun?
Well, even in Norway, where they do have it . . . it seems that a lot of folks will not hear it either. Too bad that a lot of cars won't get traffic reports any more.
Digital radio suffers a big drawback. Unlsee the received signal is pretty much perfect, you are greeted with very high fidelity silence. It's called the Digital cliff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
An analog FM signal slowly fades over distance. A digital radio signal is fine one moment, than nothing, and the nothing happens at a much closer range. As well, there is no advantage bandwidth wise.
Unfortunately, as soon as most people hear "digital something", they immediately assume it is better. Not always. So Norway has switched to a radio system with less coverage.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
DAB is a horrible standard. DAB+ is not so bad, except it is useless for local radio stations.
There are two sensible digital radio standards. DVB-T2 (because the transmitters already exist for TV, so the first 50 or so radio channels are practically free) and DRM+ (Digital Radio Mondiale).
DAB+ is almost as good as DVB-T2, but DVB-T2 was out years before. It makes zero sense to switch TO DAB+, it is legacy before it gets implemented.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
That's flat-out nonsense.
You can have a perfectly steady FM signal at low levels with a constant noise level - and a pretty low one at that if you keep the stereo decoding off - at ranges where digital signals are flat-out gone due to high error rates. And it's not just range - multipath will eat digital signals for lunch (that's reflections off buildings, etc.)
So how do I know? I write SDR software. I deal with this stuff directly, meaning, I write the demodulators and the rest of the signal processing chain. I get better performance than any FM tuner you ever heard of; so I know the range tradeoff for digital is severe. I have RF recordings of many examples. They can be played back, (re—)demodulated, and A:b comparisons made at the drop of a hat. There's no doubt about it: FM analog is superior for use other than local. Likewise the atrocity that is AM digital, IBOC. Quite aside from blowing out two AM channels besides the one the station is actually on, it suffers from the same range and decode fragility that FM digital does.
These are really bad ideas: for services like this, new bands should be allocated rather than shitting all over the existing ones.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.