new DAB pocket radio story

You're certainly dishonest enough not to admit it openly.

If that is truly your view why continue your crusade against all things DAB? Haven't you really got anything better to do?

Old DAB is still experimental in Sweden. There are only 4 transmitters running now, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Luleå. We need a more efficient digital radio system in Sweden before the population start buying receivers. Digital TV in Sweden using MPEG2 now, but from 1 january 2009 we are going to start using MPEG4 on the new channels and at year 2015 Sweden are not using MPEG2 any more. The swedes have to buy new digital TV boxes.

This is what I wrote, because you quoted me:

"Actually, that's THE reason why the quality is s*it on the BBC multiplex."

Where in that sentence does it say that I want stations to be removed from the BBC multiplex?

Because the BBC will not do the things I've described. For example, the BBC has got 231,000 kbps of capacity on satellite, yet they won't even increase the bit rates of the radio stations from 192 kbps to 256 kbps on satellite. The BBC digital radio people have spent the last 7 or 8 months trying to make up excuses to justify providing the live Internet radio streams at lower quality than the BBC listen again streams. And the BBC wants to continue pushing everybody on to DAB without informing the public that the quality is higher via the digital TV platforms and it will be higher via the Internet within the next few weeks.

I've got lots of better things to do. But if the BBC is going to mislead the pubilc about digital radio and deliberately mismanage BBC resources that the public pays for, I'm going to reveal this on my website, and I'm going to start complaining to the BBC Trust about the dishonest way the BBC is handling digital radio (something that I haven't done in the past, but it's about time I started).

You could try getting a life...

Awww. I'm hurt.

Indeed - a fairly well heeled consortium in the UK have just dropped plans to launch a new group of radio stations - mainly speech based, which would have to compete with BBC ones. For a fairly limited audience since the majority prefer music stations and the bands are awash with those. Many of which barely profitable.

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

Well back in the 70's we were selling the Philips K70 chassis TV's, and the pix and sound were excellent and thats what keep them selling or rather renting in those days..

We had a constant stream of referrals of new customers who wanted a set like the ones we were renting as the picture and sound was so much better then the majority of TV's around in those days which were more "colourful" than an accurate rendering of the original picture and sound for that matter..

Course this was before digital so it can't have been any good can it;!....

Many thanks to all. After learning for the first time about DAB+ in this group, I again rang Phillips to ask if this DA1103/5 would receive DAB+ when it came out. I was told that it would *not* receive it and that DAB+ and anyway would not be broadcast for another two years. The question I have to ask myself now is whether it's worth paying nearly twice as much for the pure 1500 pocket DAB radio? I email the Pure helpline to ask them is their Pure 1500 set would pick up the forthcoming DAB+, but they have not replied.

So which I'm wondering is the best pocket DAB radio to go for, either of the above or another one entirely ? Grateful for any further suggestions.

Did you buy a DAB radio out of need, or novelty?

The only receiver I know of which is upgradeable to DAB+ (in theory at any rate) is the Pure 'One Elite'. That is portable, but not 'hand-held' or 'pocket' size. The Revo iBlik RadioStation claims to handle DAB+ 'out of the box', but that's mains-powered only (and an iPod accessory too). As there are no DAB+ broadcasts in the UK at present, there is no convenient way to test those features.

If you want to listen to terrestrial broadcast digital radio in the UK right now, DAB is what there is. Future developments are just that - in the future. Waiting for the next improvement or new technology is a never-ending game; at some point one has to take the plunge and accept what's on offer right now (or be forever on the brink).

links to for 'Products and Retailers'. There you'll find which seems to be the 'official position' for now.

From earlier posts, it seems that DAB reception in your area is marginal for the time being. So a pocket DAB receiver of any brand is likely to struggle. A larger portable or 'table-top' model might work better, or you may need a roof aerial to get good results. The Digitalradionow site has a 'station finder' which can give some idea of likely reception for your postcode. New transmitters are gradually being added to the network.

Yup. And of course *if* DAB+ comes along, the two will run side by side for a long time. Probably 10 years.

$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.org...> A week ago I bought a Phillips pocket DAB = radio DA1103/05, =A0=A339 from a

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What a kerfuffle about a radio!!!!! What's the point? Trying to tell everyone that one can afford to pay the monthly fee 'to be allowed' to pick up satellite broadcasts? Or is the DAB land based transmitters? Fortunately we still have good old fashioned mono AM (Amplitude Modulated) Medium Wave (Broadcast Band in North America); in this immediate part of Canada five different stations. Plus the usual cacophony of some nine more on the FM band! And no radio or TV receiving licences. No trouble to pick up AM anywhere in this house even down in the below ground basement! Just about everyone has an old radio stuck up above the workbench. Also vehicle radio stays on one AM channel (local content) most of the time, turned down low so as to hear emergency sirens (and the occasional boom-box) in a temporarily adjacent juvenile vehicle! Also find it best to turn of any stereo effect (AM is mono anyway) so as to throw the sound over onto the speaker/s nearest the driver. Got a bedside radio with memory functions but don't use them, just tune quickly and digitally to whichever frequency/station one wants! OK that's so Luddite but everything works!

Roberts Stream 202 Wi-Fi radio with DAB is DAB+ upgradeable as well, and I think there's one or two more battery-powered portable radios that are DAB+ upgradeable..

Here we go - I can feel an out-of-his-depth gob-off coming.

DAB was relaunched in the UK in 2002. AAC was standardised in 1997. Don't try to suggest that they didn't have more than enough time to upgrade DAB prior to relaunching it.

If you don't understand what went on, why do you try to sound like you do know what you're talking about? Here's the lowdown on what happened:

The adoption of DAB was grossly incompetent.

Nope. See other post.

There is no if about it.

Pure has said that it will only sell DAB+ upgradeable receivers by next year, i.e. it's changing its receivers over to using DAB/DAB+ receiver modules. So if you wait a bit you can get a DAB+ upgradeable version instead.

The BBC started VHF/FM broadcasting in 1955; AM hasn't vanished yet, and the Beeb were still broadcasting their three main stations nationally on both AM and FM until quite recently (I forget when they dropped the MW versions of Radio 2 Radio 3 and Radio 4 - Radio 4 is still on LW nationally and MW in a few areas, and the World Service and Five Live are still on MW nationally). I doubt if DAB will run in parallel with another system for

It remains to be seen whether Britain will attempt to have DAB and DAB+ at the same time, or whether the existing MW and/or FM bands will be digitalised instead (DRM and DRM+ respectively), or as well - France seems to be going for DRM. So will we still be able to use the oldest receivers when they hit their 100th birthdays? We may know a little better when the govt working party report soon.

OK, so there is some movement in the directiom you want :))

Don't feel too bad about it, I'm getting used to your obsession now. My own obsessions are different, but an be just as inhibiting when they intrude.

Yes, of course, it's blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain that Ofcom should have insisted in 2002 (having failed to do so in 1980) that all digital radio broadcasts in the UK should henceforth be made to a standard that was going to come into existence in 2006, with the first commercial receivers not being on the market till 2007.

Such lack of hindsight before the event is quite appalling.

(AAC is not DAB+; one is a codec, the other is a radio broadcast standard).

I did ask you to read this:

But you clearly haven't bothered, so I'll briefly explain why you're wrong.

AAC was standardised in 1997. DAB was re-launched in 2002. That's a

On the day that the BBC dropped its bit rates, which if I remember correctly was on 18th or 21st December 2001, in the first couple of posts on the first thread about the BBC slashing their bit rates someone said that they should have used AAC, and that MP2 was not designed to be used at such low bit rates as 128 kbps.

So it is not me taking advantage of hindsight. The BBC screwed things up completely. That's all there is to it. Basically, the non-technical BBC execs simply over-ruled the engineers. For example, here's a brochure for a BBC R&D open day in 1999:

"Don't squeeze the bit-rate"

The BBC R&D department had also taken part in 2 listening tests that compared AAC with MP2 in 1996 and 1998, and both of those tests had confirmed that AAC was twice as efficient as MP2 (see links to these listening tests on my page about the incompetent adoption of DAB), hence why they said what they did about AAC above.

When non-technical execs make technical decisions at the BBC, they first take advice from the experts in R&D. So they will have heard what the R&D people were saying about AAC vs MP2, but they must have simply ignored them.

The BBC had been saying since the early 1990s that they were going to launch new radio stations on DAB, and by 1998 they were already saying they were going to launch 4 new stations:

That's in addition to Radios 1-5 and the World Service. They could have realised that the audio quality would be crap on DAB at any point from when they first said they were going to launch a load of new stations on DAB. But they didn't, and here we are.

So don't try to make out that I'm only saying this with the benefit of hindsight.

Don't try to lecture me about what DAB+ is. DAB+ was basically my idea. I was by far the first to point out on my website just how much more efficient (6x and 4x for DVB-H and DMB respectively) and therefore how much cheaper for the broadcasters the mobile TV systems were for carrying radio than DAB is, because they use AAC (and later AAC+) and stronger error correction. And DAB+ is simply the DMB mobile TV system but without the video. See:

The usual rubbish. Stations close - or fail to open - because they can't generate the income to cover their operating costs, wherever these arise from. Of course it's expensive to transmit. It's called market forces. Otherwise you just have a free for all.