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Satellite Radio Coming in 2001
That Guy writes "This article explains how in a couple of years it'll be possible to drive cross-country listening to one radio station, in CD quality, with no static. "
Seems like this is an intermediate step before all music is downloaded
from the internet, and we just have cars with satellite net
feeds. I guess it would matter to me more if I ever left
the 5 mile radius around my house :)
Don't get too excited yet. Packet radio has nothing to do with radio broadcasting. It's a method radio amateurs (hams) use to transfer data (hence packet) between each other. If I'm not mistaken it's slow and high-latency, by "modern" standards.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
Do a little research. No ads. Continuous music. That's why you pay for it.
Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
Why is this ? Obviously because they're proprietary. If we hack/open the source algorithms for this equipment we can start to offer freedom of choice to listeners. I fail to see the point of having a continous, un-interruptable stream of audio if don't actually have any choice.
I don't actually live in continental America, so I don't have any chance of experiencing this, but good idea!
... and today's pet project has
The disadvantage to this system is that there are no local stations, I kind of like to hear stuff about local concerts, bands, and things like that. Listining to these nation-wide stations wouldn't have that same kinda of local flavor.
-entropy
"If I don't save the wee turtles, who will?"
my other penis is a vagina
I get this on my DSS satellite right now. $10 a month, about 50 stations. Absolutely excellent. Wouldn't give it up. No more SCREAMING AND SHOUTING LIKE MAD PEOPLE from the DJ and THE NUTCASE CALLERS THEY THINK THEY NEED TO PUT ON THE RADIO TO TELL US WE'RE ALL IDIOTS... Sorry for shouting, just that's what regular radio makes ME WANT TO DO...
But the real question is, why would you want to?
Ahh, but is there any good music?
I'd gladly pay $10/month for a radio station that played punk rock and/or industrial.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hehe, very cool. Soon I'll be able to veiw those illeagel movies out there with live streaming from the comfort of my conversion van. God bless teechnology. ;-)
-D0n'+ h$+3 M3 b3C0u5e 1'M 4 1337 Hax0R!-
they just had an ad today in something... damnit my memory sucks
Of course you can always transmit more crummy compressed digital audio than :-)
:-)
:-)
;-)
uncompressed digital audio over a given channel, but why would you want to?
BUT, I'm sorry, I can't let your off the cuff analysis of FM go unchallenged...
The simple analysis you did only applies to AM radio. FM radio bandwidth is another beast...
Back in the old days, some guys at the FCC made this mistake you just did. FM radio is a funny
thing, w/o going into much detail, you can trade bandwidth for S/N in FM (unlike AM).
With FM (or any phase modulation scheme), the more SNR you have, the smaller the FM frequency
deviation you can use and still transmit the same info. Since the frequency deviation is smaller
it will (following Carson's rule) also occupy a smaller bandwidth.
So the 44kHz -> 88kHz BW analysis is sorta bogus for FM, it depends on the moduation scheme.
FM radio was designed to work in low SNR environments so it has pretty wide BW.
But if you had 1000:1 SNR, you could redesign it to take up lot less bandwidth
SW guys, stick to SW
Although this seems great, it also seems expensive -- too expensive for small community funded radio stations to join. Not NPR's, but stations with very select groups of listeners and content.
A slightly different idea is being pushed by the US's FCC. Recently they changed certain rules to make opening a small radio station inexpensive. For around $5000 a person can obtain a license and the equipment to start a small radio station with the broadcast range of about a mid sized town. Sure, this is not nation wide, but it is going to be a great way for different kinds of content to get on the airways. This is very good for those who love both radio and non-top-40 stuff. If these things spring up around the nation, you could even get networks together, like BBS's in Fidonet. Then you could find the same show, anywhere in the country, if the town has a local radio station in the group.
Working in a grocery store, I can only say that the "music" on our satellite radio is the bane of my existence!!
:)
Cool for a consumer, tho
Hmm...does this mean another gadget for my old hooptie?
Dan
Mr. Wendell has a freedom that you and I think is dumb.
After the implosion at Iridium, I'm wouldn't be suprised if they began selling satellite bandwidth to other startups like this one.
ap
This thing sounds pretty cool... can't wait until I can check out /. from the wheel of my truck though. That would be pretty sweet.
class public SARCASAM
{Don't worry, the RIAA will but a stop to this abomonation!!!! Imagine... People being able to listen/record high quality music without paying off the RIAA, err, not giving %5 to the musicians (ya right).
No one would ever buy CD's/DVD's again!
I tell you we can't have another fiasco like those MP3's.
}There is something out already that is called L-band. It is more similar to normal radio in that it is transmitted form normal radio towers. Except that L-band is line of sight and is only 800W!. An L-band network will act similar to how cell phone networks work and it is cd-quality as well, except it is local stations.
L-band features 44khz(?), stereo, digital audio and many existing stations are already transmitting on it as an experimental step. I like in Toronto and one 800W source from the CD tower reaches all the way to Oshawa (about 40 km, ~25 miles).
One of the nice features about L-band though is that the there is a data stream separate from the audio stream that can transmit information like the name of the song, current weather, etc.
Before you go out and get an satellite radio receiver, remember this, if an L-band source get's knocked out then it only costs a couple thousand to replace (and there are tons of them spread around), mean while if a satellite gets knocked out, then its a couple hundred million to replace (these will have to be geo-synchronous satellites, not LEO,)..
-?-
-?-
No way.
Cell phones make money. In 30 years, it won't even be thinkable to plug a telephone into a wall. Every phone will be a cellphone. To do this, you need bandwith, and the MCI's, AT&T's and Sprints of the world aren't going to allow KBBL to take up "their" bandwidth.
And if you think "there isn't enough bandwidth for everybody to have a cell phone", you're wrong. Just decrease the size of the cells.
... and even if I did, I could still get the same Dave Matthews Band type lame-o-rock from any local station in the nation.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
With satellite radio, one conglomo hires the equivalent staffing of a few radio stations, and reaches the whole hemisphere. No longer any need to buy up dozens of local stations to sell the latest and greatest homogenized pap handed down from program directors at HQ! Tastemakers love it!
Maybe, if this catches on in a big way, radio can get back to serving LOCAL communities, as it's really more suited than any other medium to do.
I know I'm not rushing out to put a sat reciever in my car, unless it's GPS. I don't like the notion of an even tinier (than the currently tiny) pool of people doling out what I shall hear (and neglecting to mention what might negatively impact their bottom line).
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
These days radio stations aren't worth the time it takes to change the station.
Do they honestly think that by playing the same tired crap over and over people will start to like it?
Oh wait, maybe they are right. People are stupid.
This sig is false.
If this could bring me CapitalGold from London on Saturday mornings during the English Premiership season it would be peachy. Few things better than a cup of joe and Jonathan Pearce doing the commentary on the match of the day to start off a Saturday. Or better yet, RadioChelsea 1494 AM from London, Andy Saunders bringing you live Chelsea FC action from Stamford Bridge. . .
But I have to wholeheartedly echo the sentiments of an earlier poster . . . no matter where you go there are already stations playing the rubbish that they call pop music. No need to tune in to your home station from hundreds of miles away.
they had better have a techno station on there, cuz there are no techno stations i have heard here in oregon...
-mod
... The only thing interesting me nowadays is icecast.. Particularly the HHG radio show (requires x11amp/mpg123/winamp and >128kbps feed) and Mercury Bath (ditto)....
Posted by Fleeno:
If you want to listen to the same radio network, type of music, etc., wherever you drive, get a car with a RDS radio.
Of course, my market doesn't transmit RDS data, so mine is useless!
1) Couldn't we use pulse code modulation to get the same effect without the expense of launching satellites into orbit?
Probably not, or they would. Besides, lift costs are going way down, will go even lower with the new Taurus-class light duty lifters, and if Kistler or Rotory Rocket ever get off the ground, it'll be even cheaper. And what drives development of the cheaper methods? Use of the expensive methods and market pressure...
Imagine this: 200 classical stations to flop through. 200 industrial, 200 techno, 200 gothic, 200 trace ...
YAY!
long live the underground! long live classical music.. o wait..
In Norway and Sweden the national broadcastnig
companies have already began to use DAB (Digital
Audio Broadcasting). This system will ensure
same frequencies everywhere and very good quality
(FM is a problem in an area with many hills
mountains etc, as in Norway). You can even send
image information in DAB.
The receivers are still quite expensive ($1500++)
This agrees with what I've been hearing the last few years (this has been news in the aerospace industry since Iridium was a pipe dream.) As for the ability to carry regional news... well, it's possible to tie in a GPS receiver and have it switch "subchannels," particularly in digital format, to carry regional news. But why bother? Fifty news channels. They're covering the US only, at least to start. Anybody catching a coincidence here?
Geez... someone must be smoking some good weed to think people are going to PAY to listen to the same shitty trash like Dave Matthews Band, Everlast, and all the other latest 'teen' fuckup garbage. How about first coming up with something that's worth listening to. All this other bullshit can come later when people really want to listen.
This is great if you like the mass stuff: here in .nl you have this station Sky Radio that plays the "guaranteed hits", things are or have been big hits. Great for mr. Everyman, but I like other stuff more, like pirate radio.
Now the problem with pirate radio is that the record industry doesn't get it's money. Sounds like the MP3 "war", not? Well, it's the same.
Now satellite radio -- just like terrestrial broadcast -- can't be "pirated" that easy, and the record industry will get more control again. Well, pirates will go internet too, but a mobile internet connection is still a bit further away. So, for some time I'll defenitly keep my radio.
Erik.
"Nobody listens to the radio anymore,"
Wrongo! With more automobile traffic you have more people spending more time in their cars listening to more radio.
All the technology exists - We've had RDS in the UK for a decade, the hardware is simple, even the EMPEG player has RDS.
It lets a station broadcast in many areas on different frequencies, sending an ID code with the signal, and the RDS stereo just searches for that ID. This also allows local traffic news to cut in if you want.
The WorldSpace consortium is mostly targeting the international market but it will have some coverage in the US.
Unlike some other proposals, it's not a pay-per-listen service - no encryption or anything.
The transmission format will be MP3. It would be interesting to rip one of their receivers, interface it to a PC and record MP3 off the air...
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Don't know about the rest of the world but
in europe we have a system called RDS.
This enables me to drive from London to
Glasgow and stay listening to the same national
radio station without interuption regardless
of the fact that it changes frequency 5 or 6
times during the 400mile journey.
RDS does huge number of other things.
Digital broadcast radio is also due online in
the UK in the next few years.
www.worldspace.com Though they plan to introduce it in places like Africa and Asia first, then the united states.
You should try living in the UK. The lack of diversity in radio here is appalling. You're either listening to opera or the spice girls -- there's no middle ground.
--
I made a mistake anyways in my analysis. Too late to by typing last night I guess. I shouldn't have said 44.1 Khz stereo audio... It should be 220050 hz (This affects the rest of the analog characteristics too, 1/2 the values).
BTW: I am left unconvinced... I mean, if you work this stuff out for a phone line, even then you're still better off (Yes, RealPlayer _does_ sound better to me than a "real" phone conversation).... But I have no diploma/degree in what I speak of, so I probably am wrong. What I mean is, wouldn't you want some damn good sounding sound? 128 kbps MP3 is still better to my ears than FM radio... Well, I won't argue... I'm not in telecommunications, so... Fine, ok, you are right.
It's been around for a while too, (at least in Sweden and Bavaria Germany) and uses MPEG layer-2 decoding but at a higher bitrate than normal MP3's.
The only problem is that the recievers hasn't been launched more seriously, which resembles the outcome of HDTV.
If I had a LOT of money I'd by this PCI DAB-card which could save songs on your harddisk together with the supplied name and artist, and let you browse the image contents in a web-browser.
Patrik CarlssonCome on, think through this a little more! Why do you assume that nationwide broadcasts will necessarily be the same as local broadcasts? Change the scale and you change the rules of the game. Here's an example: suppose I want to set up the ALL FRANK ZAPPA, ALL THE TIME station. Probably not very many people want to listen to that, to be honest. Maybe 1/10000 people, let's say. In a local broadcast reaching only a million people, that's only 100 people, probably not enough to keep a radio station in business (read: advertising dollars). But if I can broadcast the AFZ,ATT station nationwide? In a nation of 265M, that's 25,600 people...and suddenly it starts to look like a possibility. It depends on the operating costs, of course; but if the cost doesn't scale as the same rate as the number of people reached, nationwide media will expand diversity, not restrict it. Then again, IANARadio Exec, so maybe there are other factors I haven't considered, but I think there's a good chance of it working out.
I've always wondered if radio stations pay royalties to the record companies each time they play a song. Does anyone know if that's true?
I guess I wasn't listening to Howard Stern this morning and flipping around the channels to other stations to hear songs I like. Granted, Cleveland's radio airwaves used to be better before WENZ went from alternative to urban but there are still decent songs out there if you flip around. I'm sure they'll be wiped out though when the remaining two radio station monopolies (I believe all the commercial radio stations in Cleveland are now owned by two companies, no alternative) merge. "What? Everyone in Cleveland doesn't like either Country or Rap/R&B? That doesn't make sense! Our statistics say that those are the two most popular formats! Get used to it!" :-)
Hmm.. I guess you're right.. Radio sucks. If only there was some other way to get Howard in the morning on the drive to work. I really wish I could afford to build/buy a decent car MP3 player that doesn't replace my car stereo/cd player and is expandable. Oh well. $900 for the current offerings is too much. Maybe something around $250 that would have a CD drive in it for reading CD-R media or at least an 8 gig removable hard drive that you could take in and load with mp3's from your computer... or wireless ethernet.
I guess you can't underestimate the appeal of just "tuning out" by listening to the mindless garbage of crappy music and useless advertising that radio promotes so well.
um, with all stations playing the same 5 or 10 songs all day in constant rotation.. you may as WELL be listening to the SAME station while you drive cross-country. NO THANKS! this is why i dont listen to the radio unless its HOWARD STERN, Jim Rome or Art Bell. otherwise i listen to my CD's while travelling.. THAT WAY i can pick WHO i want to hear and WHEN, not at the whim of some coked out station manager who took money+drugs+chicks to play the same crappy Bob Seger song for the 12 thousandth time this week. what a laugh. they can take their format and stick it right up their Back Orifice.
gatt0n_
I believe that Howard has said on air that he is interested in getting involved with satellite radio. In fact, that's the first place I've heard of it. I believe he would like to use it to get around the censoring problems that have been encountered with some stations. What I don't understand is why E has to pixelate some of the nude scenes when other cable channels are showing much worse.
I concur. Albeit, the only reason I feel that Radio is not dead is because of the ease of the format -- you can jump in almost any car and turn on the radio, without having to have a cd or tape with you. Even though I am pretty much a non-user of radio, I see it's benefits, and do wish for a more "quality" oriented service -- FM has outlived it's limitations, and although it's passable, it's definitely not the kind of quality I can get out of what I consider a "hi-fi" system.
Heck, with all the bandwidth, even 160k mp3's streamed over the airwaves would be more passable, I'd put in my bid for 256kb... but that's just me... and it could probably be done inexpensively... even if you did 5 second retransmits to keep the signal flowing... anyone have any thoughts on this? (yup, I don't think anyone will reply, since this has been up for a day...)
Karnal
well, at that point, you'd have a real limitation as to who could have what freq. #'s to broadcast over. I believe that's one reason for limiting the sig strength.
Plus, on the harmonics, at higher power, you'd get a "bleed-over" (correct me if I'm wrong) and the harmonic frequencies would be unusable at best.
Karnal
Posted by Pushkin:
What will those wacky guys think up next... At least i can listen to WPRB (Princeton University's Radio Station, the best damn station on the East Coast of North American) at school.
Install the ADS Cadet ISA card, compile the Linux device driver (standard in 2.2.8 kernel). AM/FM with RDS (I think RDS on FM only).
Because Stern is the King Of All Media. He is the reason you can say penis and vagina on radio. He introduced lesbians to mainstream America. Stern is god.
Yes, but why would this system displace traditional radio stations for that kind of local market? The only advantage I see is more selection, and the people who care about getting a specific kind of music that much will just bring their own CDs or whatever.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
...to be able to turn on my car radio and hear international music (mostly African and Middle Eastern pop) when I'm driving around town in Columbia, SC. And as long as a potential listenership exists, once the technology's in place I'll probably be able to get it. No more Contemporary Christian/lite rock/golden oldies/"country" crap.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
With "standard" hardware, the peak is 56k.
:(
With "exotic" hardware, the upper limit is 230-400Kbps and still be packet-based.
There's a 10 GHz point-to-point system described in the '95 ARRL Handbook and probably later editions that does 2 Mbps, and with some modifications, can do full 10M Ethernet, and it was designed to have the AUI pinout. (Unfortunately, you need to push the demodulator chip beyond specs to run at 10M, and you need a REALLY good Gunnplexer with electronic tuning. Sorry, no police radar surplus for you. Or me.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The nice thing about DAB is that its channel allocation can be changed on the fly: You can add channels to an ensemble but you can also change the bandwidth requirements of a particular channel. You can even change the bandwidth you allocate to audio versus PAD dynamically (e.g., music part get all the bandwidth, as soon as you have a talk show, say, you decrease the audio bandwidth to 30 kbit/s and increase the bandwidth for the PAD part).
DAB is being deployed all over the world (with the exception of the US, there apparently the NAB is opposing it vehemently).
Have a look at the World DAB site.
my auto doesn't have anything but a radio.
i miss my CDs when i'm driving.
i miss my friends too.
but i like my radio, afterall because sometimes NPR can really shine.
>>reach for the stars! go on, reach...reach!
Actually streaming MPEG audio could be done CHEAPER than just plain audio... Almost all radio stations have their music compressed to MPEG layer 2...
NPR is getting in on the deal which is cool but I'm not so crazy about paying for radio and listening to commercials. The only benefit I see is when you travel but we have CDs and tapes and MP3s for that.
Personnaly I would gladly pay $10 a month for commercial free, moronic DJ free, music. If its like the stations on cable, I'd have a hell of a lot more variety without having to listen to mind numbing DJs and irritating local commercials.
Hopefully I would also be able to break free from the same music that's being pushed down our throats by the music industry and hear some new unheard of talent, but I suppose that's too much to ask for.
It's all over but the yelling.
In 2 to 3 years, I predict the majority of music will be distributed in electronic format across the internet. On top of that, storage and digital playback technologies will become small and powerful enough that one will be able to store most (if not all) of their music collection in a portable device the size of a walkman (probably bigger than a RIO, though...).
The result of this will be the immediate death of all the low-end radio stations (who wants to listen to the same crap over and over again with constant commercials, really?) and the slow degredation of even the more established radio stations as their listenership degenerates.
On top of that, Internet music distribution will ultimately enable the aritsts to achieve a DIRECT link to their fans without the jack-arse middle men record labels who have become dependant on CD-level profit margins. As the current generation grows up with technologies like MP3, more and more musicians (and eventually all the most popular ones) will distribute electronic format songs only, forcing fans who wouldn't otherwise get onboard the bandwagon to follow suit.
Death to the "Music(tm)" industry!
Long live the MUSIC industry!
If any of you happen to see the new Ford commercials, they say that they are putting the satelite radio feeds into all their new production lines. This includes the entire Ford Umbrella corporations.
My wife is interested in this because it will include C-SPAN radio, currently only available in the Washington, DC area.
Audio is _so_ much cheaper to produce than video so it will not be like cable where you get so much repetition. This will lead to more variety
That 44.1 kHz whch you no doubt got from the CD audio specs is not that directly connected to the sound frequency at all. It just means that when digitizing audio for CD, the analog waveform is sampled 44100 times a second. So a fair comparison would be if you used 44.1k samples/sec * 8 bits/sample. On the other hand if you want to work with mp3 compressed audio then that's equivalent to degrading the SNR on your signal, so the analog guys can squeeze their signal quite a bit and still get the same received clarity as you.
And as someone pointed out your calculations just aren't valid because they depend on the modulation scheme.
But the whole calculation is pointless anyway - Shannon's limit is an information theoretic one. This means that the capacity limit is somewhat orthogonal to the choice of modulation (in practical terms, digital is finally going to ride on an analog carrier, so it's just another fancy modulation). Bottomline - whatever bandwidth you can do with digital someone else can do with analog. The only question is who can do it cheaper. Now if you're going to send only sound, the analog way does better than the digital way 'cuz an analog radio is cheaper, and besides it doesn't need the header overhead so it might save bandwidth.
This notion of "digital signal is more robust" is actually quite a common misconception. It's a misstatement of the fact that you can trade bandwidth for SNR. The correct statement is that if you have a waveform received over a noisy channel, and you need to find its exact value at a point in time, you have basically no chance of getting it right, whereas if you are only interested in whether or not it exceeded a threshold you'll get it right most of the time.
So what you're really saying is that it is harder to fit an infinite amount of information in the same bandwidth as a finite amount of information. Big surprise, huh?
The other reason is closer to the truth. You can combine compression and statistical multiplexing to perhaps squeeze in more channels in teh same bandwidth. You can also do this by using fancy analog modulation schemes and matched filters, it's just that that stuff gets expensive.
Radio is simpler, it doesn't need the bandwidth TV needs, so the analog approach, even with a lot of bells and whistles added, comes fairly cheap.
> At night, they let certian stations really crank it up.
Nope, it's just that the ionosphere (F and G layers) is quieter at night, so radio reception improves at night. If radio stations were to "crank it up" at any time of the day, I suspect they'd do it in the afternoon, when the ionosphere is most active.
Forever ago, pre-WWII, some stations were broadcast to a large part of the nation. It was a combination of strong stations, good receivers, and a lack of noise from the broadcast of thousands of channels.
I'm one of those who sometimes makes long trips and the slow onset of static has always been a problem. But now I have a CD changer in my car and the radio, even without the static, is more like a long stream of pure commercials. Besides, wouldn't a CD changer--or, eventually, an MP3 player--be less expensive than a satellite receiver, give the driver much more control, and have fewer hiccups?
Now i can listen to howard stern from anywhere in the country...oh wait i already could anyways.
Checking out the local radio station makes cross
country trips slightly less boring. I really
don't care if I am listening to the same station
as the rest of the country is. Seems like a good
thing for the stations (more money in adverts) but
I don't see how this helps me.
This will just mean more corporate ownership and
control of media - there will be the absence of
even an illusion of independent stations. As it
is, some companies only insert local traffic
reports while broadcasting the rest in multiple
markets via satellite.
If you can get one station all the way across
the continent, how long before your choices will
consist of Disney, Fox, or Westinghouse? The
Internet is intrinsically supporting public expression by individuals - with a little effort
we can restore this to radio.
Support the microradio revolution! There ought
to be a slashdottable web petition supporting
this to send to the FCC somewhere...
Dave Matthews Band is MY favorite band. Now, with matters of music taste i believe we should keep our opinions to ourselves. Bitching about video cards is cool, but dont harp on a band i spend my time following, and love.
rob
Why couldn't we just use satellite to provide internet access of some kind? With the advent of IPv6, we should have lots of IP addresses to choose from.... Maybe radio stations ought to invest in streaming & server equipment and dedicate an entire station to IP. With lots of IP addresses we could have lots of stations... Yes, this may mean more lag, but with improving technology and Internet2 (in twenty years, when it would be available to the masses), we could easily do it this way. Why waste radio signals on music? Use it to transmit nothing but Internet stuff. Let all those smart and dumb terminals on Earth figure out how to handle them.
--
Of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong...
1) Couldn't we use pulse code modulation to get the same effect without the expense of launching satellites into orbit?
2) Right now if I want an MP3 player in my car, I have to build my own. It's pretty cheap and if I burn 10 or so MP3 CD's, I've got about 120 hours of music to listen to (I could even get fancy and put them on some sort of changer.) Then I don't have to listen to commercials and I have a chance of hearing some Zappa (Hell will freeze over before a commercial station plays Zappa) or some of the other bands that commercial stations don't have the balls to play (Dimanda Galas, anyone? Perfume Tree?)
Lotsa places have like 2 radio stations. One whiny country station, one obnoxious hip-hop station. Other places not even that. I should know, I drive long distance all the time.
Satellite radio would definitely be cool, at least I could listen to something to pass the time. And don't talk about CDs or mp3s, I have a huge collection but there's a limit to how many times I can listen to them again and again.
I wonder how big the antenna would be though. The report doesn't say.
Another thought - why don't they team up with some cellular guys to offer Internet service a la DirecPC? That way I could hit mapquest when I get lost...
Of course, this only works for stations that are broadcast all over the country you are in, but in my experience these are the good ones anyway. After all, if a radio station doesn't broadcast over a wide area, how are they going to be able to spend any money on production. And if all they do is inane chatter and mainstream rock music, then who cares whether you are listening to one radio station or another.
As if radio is not bad enough. Really.. I need to have the same 12 songs rammed down my throat no matter where I am in the country. Yeah that will be real fun. No thanks. I've heard big radio and it sucks. I'll take a small-market station with a little variety over the 12 song corporate playlists any day. Long live MP3.
-Rich
Come to think of it I've never seen an RDS radio in the US. Maybe it doesn't exist here.
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
This will probably increase variety, at least as much because of the business model they seem to be using as because of the technology. With traditional broadcast media (and even cable to an extent), each channel is run by a separate company which is competing with all of the others, mostly for a few of the largest demographics.
These satelite radio businesses, however, seem to be set up so that all the channels on the service are owned by the same company, so they aren't competing with each other. Instead, the service as a whole competes with a different service, and whoever covers the widest set of interests wins. This means that each channel would be targeted at a different interest, so rather than a dozen top 40 pop stations, you get one top 40 pop channel, one punk chanel, one industrial channel, one opera channel, one baroque channel, one reggae channel, etc.
Of course, this is all in my arrogant opinion, I-am-not-a-businessman-but-I-play-one-on-the-net, YMMV, void where prohibited, yadda yadda yadda.
--
There is a fine line between stupidity and insanity. I should know, I'm standing on it.
Hmm. One of the big driving forces behind the conversion from analog to digital television is that it allows them to reclaim bandwidth... the digital signal is more robust than an analog signal, so you can use space in adjacent and harmonic channels that would ordinarily have interfered with each other. Also, thanks to the wonders of compression, it's possible to pack several digital video streams into the same bandwidth that would have contained a single, lower quality analog video stream.
I don't know, really, how radio broadcast differs from television broadcast, but I'd assume that at least some of the same points would apply...
You know what kind of ping you get over satellite ? 250ms for a round trip. Try playing your Quake deathmatch with that lag.
Info on the BBC's DAB system is available here.
(They're predicting internet over DAB by 2009, and radios that only play the music you like by 2020!)
Regards, Ralph.
Since satellite signals can't go though solid objects, driving down a street surrounded by tall buildings would effectively block all reception. And forget about listening to your radio in a parking garage / structure, going through a tunnel etc. In fact, driving down a country road with a line of trees down the one side may also interfere - as long as these trees are in the line of sight. Other problems, such as signals bouncing off of buildings, creating two signals milliseconds apart must also be taken into account.
Each radio must have a buffer able to record several seconds of audio. When reception is lost, the radio keeps playing out of the buffer, until reception is restored. Of course each radio transmission would therefore be lagged by the number of seconds your radio is capable of buffering.
Just a small comment, but have you ever turned
on your walkman in a plane when its way up there?
you can pick up radio stations from all over the place. This is because radio bounces off sky and back down. This is why FM can travel accross large water expanses pretty simply cause it bounces sky water sky water etc.. also, the FCC imposes limits on the power of FM radio transmissions. At night, they let certian stations really crank it up. I used to get Minnesota public radio in Houghton MI some nights.
So current FM radio stations *could* be nationwide if the FCC let em.
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
Posted by Napalm4u:
That's right yall read the subject.
When i get cancer i'm suing all those SateeLight persons.
SoNEE, PrimStarr, and those GPS's Compknees
payen for my bills!
Internet access by satellite already exists :)
(at least here in Sweden). It only uses the
satellite for incomming data (with normal modem
for outgoing). Since the acknowledge packets in tcp has to be sent by phone the speed with tcp is only 200-400 kbps whereas udp gets a speed of
500-800 kbps.
More info here.
oh...
you don't read swedish...?
The biggest problem with satellite radio is that it will cost the consumer money. Money for the receiver and money for the monthly subscription. And will it be cheap? How cheap is a satellite?
And since it IS so expensive to own and operate, what will the programming be? The safe, tired, "sure thing" programming that is already crammed down our throats from coast-to-coast. Except now everybody really will hear the same stuff at the same time - over and over again.
And since it IS so expensive who will own/operate this service? The mega-media corporations who already own most of our radio stations!
Thanks to the 1996 Telecom Act well over 44% of our nations radio stations have changed hands (into the hands of the few: Disney/ABC, Chancellor/Capstar, Jacor, CBS/Infinity...).
Why isn't the public upset about this? Why isn't it covered in the media? Oh, the media is all owned by... the same people.
What really should burn people's butts is that the airwaves are FREE and belong to all of us. Yet the spectrum is AUCTIONED off to the highest bidder who locks up that frequency and turns it into a money-making machine. HUGE profits are generated off these "giveaways" and the public gets... uh... more Hootie and Garth.
Ok... so I have an issue about radio. If you do as well, please visit the Americans for Radio Diversity website. http://www.radiodiversity.com
Oh. And if you weren't aware, the FCC is currently taking PUBLIC comment regarding a new system of Low Power FM ((LPFM) or "pirate radio") stations that would serve local communities for very low cost. In fact, a decent low power station could be setup for under $5,000. Compare that with the cost of just getting a license for a full power station (over $100,000 in many cases).
Of course the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is running a hot anti-LPFM campaign and getting help from NPR and the CPB. They like to use scare tactics like: airplanes will fall out of the sky if this is allowed; emergency communications will get disrupted; it will be all chaos! Those in the scene know better and know these things to be false.
You can find out about the FCC's Petition for RuleMaking at the FCC site (www.fcc.gov) or visit the ARD site at http://www.radiodiversity.com
The deadline is August 2nd, 1999! Make your voice heard.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that all of the satellite radio systems I've heard of were encrypted and required a monthly payment. Barf.
I don't know if you realize it, but plain old radio is way more bandwidth-efficient than anything else. Voice over IP is probably the most inefficient way of sending voice in terms of bandwidth.
So if you're going to broadcast radio, it makes tons of sense to do it the old-fashioned way. Just because the Internet is a cool new gizmo doesn't mean it can do everything and do it best.
Wah. *I* have a /. account and therefore my tastes in music matter...
/.
:)
How about some real critism? Like I probably know more about the enter string family than DMB's viola player or better sax solos come out of my ass than out of their sax player. I'm a UVA student where they basically got started a few years ago and I like them as much as anybody but artistic an sophisticated they are not. Artistically they aren't perfect but I bet they put a lot more into what they do than most anything J Random Hacker is going to do when they decide to crack on a band on
So there
This service seems a bit like digital music available through major television cable companies. The idea is that you either install a new radio all together in your car, or you can just buy an attenna adapter that will let you use your existing radio. It's not the "free" radio that most of us are use to, where anytime you want you can tune in to any particular channel. Instead, there is a subscription fee ( $9.95 US for the CD Radio service), and supposedly this covers the revenues that commericial radio creates. Thus, commercial-free radio at a price.
Both CD Radio and XL offer 100 different "stations" respectively, with CD Radio dividing it nicely, 50 for news, 50 for music. Both companies have already produced primitive station lineups already: XL Radio and CD Radio.
Even though I have no direct evidence, I imagine many of the stations to be similar to National Public Radio (NPR) in their broadcast procedure. NPR reports news that is broadcast all over the nation, so reporting local events or weather is ineffecient for every single area around the country. Instead, NPR gives regional broadcasters space within the nation-wide program (anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes) to report local news, sports scores, and weather. If the new satellite radio companies really expect people to give up their old radios for the new deal, then they'll probably come up with a system similar to NPR's. The logistics of such an endeavour are beyond the scope of my knowledge.
If you want to get more news on the new technology straight from the horses' mouths check out both companies' websites at:
CD Radio ( www.cdradio.com )
XL Radio ( www.amrc.com )
Posted by cu85tiger:
Does anybody know?
Would this technology increase or decrease available variety? Would it be like the
web where I can get cool Aussie programs like Deadly Vibes here in Jerkwater SC or would
it be like cable with 200+ channels of mind numbing sameness? I guess the answer to this would be in the cost?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Satellite Radio isn't that new as this article
implies. Actually, I've been receiving radio
programmes from satellite for some years now,
in CD quality via so-called ADR and DSR tuners.
I don't know whether these don't exist in the USA
or are just unknown, but they're available in
Europe and get their data from the Astra Satellites.
Look, the idea is not to allow little old you to drive across the country with one station. The idea is to be able to sell your service to anyone, anywhere. The bigger the market area, the bigger your profit. The main selling point is that it is commercial free. Heck, it could be talk-free, too, with no annoying announcers getting in the way.
While this is neat, I think it's going to have a difficult time replacing traditional radio and recordable media and CDs in the car. Given the quality of most factory-installed car speakers, extra quality isn't likely going to be noticed that much.
... Imagine losing your car radio when it rained!
Monthly fees for car "radio" likely won't go over too well either, except for people who do lots of traveling - and maybe not even them. I know when I spend nearly every weekend driving around at 2 in the morning, one of my favorite things to do was play "AM tag". Basically, see how far away of a station you can pick up. Works very well at night - and will at least keep you awake, unlike straight listening to music.
Also, I hope they don't use DBS frequencies
On the other hand, if this takes off, it might force traditional radio to become more interesting to retain listeners.
-- Rick
Sure? Lessee...
44.1 khz stereo sound requires 88.2 khz of bandwidth (analog). Add in some noise... Ick. Now you need some separation, stereo carrier signals, and a mono signal for all them old crappy radios, (That's why, at least in my country, FM audio stations are spaced by 200 khz...). Lets assume a Signal to Noise ratio of 1 to 1000 (wow, what a kickin' clear line!). We don't need the mono channel, and we can space the signals tighter now than when FM radio was designed, so we'll say 100 khz.
44.1 khz stereo mp3, compressed with a 128 kbps rate (Truly the 'next best thing' to CD Quality) would require 64 khz bandwidth (according to Nyquist).
Now, time for Shannon's law (the theoretical limit of this analog line...) [Blame Data Communications Technology, by James Martin if I've got the equation wrong]:
C = W log(1 + S/N)
2
128 000 = W log(1 + 1000/1)
2
128 000 = W log(1001)
2
128 000 / 9.97 = W
12839 Hz = W
(BTW: I give up. Slashdot is playing funny with my HTML. Those 2's are supposed to be a subcript to log. Just think that they are there...)
Adding in the fact that TCP/IP overhead should equal about 15%, we end up with a required Nyquist (ie. cheap, avaliable, technology) bandwidth of 73.6 khz. If we had some good technology (let's hope we do), were looking at 15 khz. And no separation is required...
Hmmm.... I think I'll put my bets on digital, especially with that clarity of sound... :-)