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All posts by Charles Stuart

Below are all of Charles Stuart's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


@ Ian. I think that the point is that only certain locations can be covered and, while the areas available for coverage via the Waltham transmitter miss many of its population centres, the population covered is sufficient to make a service viable. Also, it's in conjunction with the Nottingham relay, so most of Nottingham will have coverage. Think of the Waltham service as a Nottingham local station with a large hinterland.

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So does the map on the Crystal Palace page include the contribution from Croydon? And should there be a map on the Croydon page to show its contribution to the total coverage of the local MUX?

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I like the combined Nottingham service area map. It's very informative. Could you please prepare similar maps for all the areas that will be served by two or more transmitters? If you could give each transmitter its own colour, where not an SFN, it should be really interesting.

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C
The end is near for analogue radio... radio gets very high
Wednesday 28 August 2013 6:03PM
Bristol

In the US they have something which I think is called sideband transmission stations. They offer sound radio that is encrypted as a subscription service, attached to a standard FM station.

Please could you explain how it works, what the sound quality is like and whether or not it has ever been used in the UK or Europe?

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Given that DVB-T2 can be transmitted in 1.7MHz channels, that Freeview radio gives excellent sound reproduction, that DVB-T2 receivers are becoming cheaper and cheaper and that radio only receivers can be made for cars, why not phase out DAB in favour of DVB-T2 radio? Perhaps we could start by cutting channel 36 into 4, maybe by encroaching on channels 35 & 37 in places, 5 or 6 1.7MHz channels. Then give one to the BBC and one to Digital One to duplicate their DAB services. The others could be used for local radio multiplexes where they'll have the greatest impact without interfering with each other. Then, once the idea of DVB-T2 radio has caught on, replace all DAB with DVB-T2 services. I think that thins might work better in the UK than trying to switch to DAB+. Could it work?

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"But why not just listen to the existing audio services on DVB-T and have done with it?"

Because there are not enough of them and utilizing DVB-T2 for this purpose seems, at first glance, to be an efficient use of bandwidth, using a technology people already have. The big anti-DAB argument is that quality is sacrificed in order to provide quantity. DAB+ is one answer but it's not used in the UK. DVB-T2 is used in the UK and provides a possible means to provide quality and quantity. And, as Freeview has shown, radio over DVB is very good.

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@Trevor Harris and Nick Wilcock - I have had two cars with DAB to FM Transverters and, for my current car, I bought a DAB/FM radio to fit. There's no major surgery involved in fitting the DAB band III aerial. You do not need the windscreen aerial because you can get a magnetic roof antenna. However, I found the windscreen aerial that I had in one car no problem because it was so far away from the driver's line of sight that it wasn't an issue. It's far less dangerous than furry dice and it's far less of an obstruction than the average satnav. I like DAB because none of the stations I like broadcast on FM. I can't imagine the phone bill for using Internet radio incar on a regular basis. I only get 250Mb monthly data allowance on my mobile contract and I really don't think that would go far if I used it for good quality radio.

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"4 hours a day at 128kb/s is about 7 GB/month but there are plenty of unlimited plans out there."

And how much do they cost? My contract is about £21pm and I don't really wish to spend much more.

I'm not sure what you mean about invalidating the warranty regarding magnetic antennae on the car. Though that's not a problem for me because my car's an old banger, the antenna doesn't cut through any part of the car's fabric. The lead goes under the carpet in the passenger footwell, then up around the door seal and out onto the roof. There's no hole in the door seal, nor the carpet, nor the plastic thing into which the radio is inserted.

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Out of curiosity, how does DAB+ improve over DAB in numbers? Is it that the same bandwidth can carry a greater number of bits per second or is it that superior compression means that the same sound quality can be achieved with fewer bits per second per station? Or is it some of each?

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So a station transmitting at 128kbps in DAB+ will have a similar quality to one transmitting at 256kbps in DAB?

If correct, I think that we should adopt DAB+ as soon as possible. The policy makers in this country are very conservative when it comes to broadcasting. Some countries seem to be quite ruthless and prepared to go for the right system when it becomes available. I think that we should go half way towards them by announcing a reasonably ambitious switchover date to DAB+. I'd suggest 2021 and flick a switch nationwide on the same day. That would give people 8 years to invest in DAB+ compatible equipment.

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