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The digital rollout continues....

Wimmmex said:
Moving Forward to Digital Radio

http://www.radioworld.com/article/moving-forward-to-digital-radio/274885

"The rollout of digital radio in Europe currently offers an exciting panorama, with countries like Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom leading its development. These nations adopted digital terrestrial broadcasting many years ago and they are now seeing the results, with Norway planning to be the first country to switch off FM in 2017"
Click to expand...

I don't know about the rest of them but the UK has postponed the analog switch off indefinitely and I don't think that is because it has been such a smashing success over there.
 
The thing I don't understand about these ideas for switching off analog, is why bother? Why not enjoy the best of both worlds, with some broadcasters on analog and some on digital, to expand people's choices? There's nothing inherently harmful or bad about the analog broadcasts; they convey the information they were designed for. And there's no value in "refarming" the FM or AM dials for other (digital) uses. At least with the DAB systems on their own frequency bands, I see the digital as complimentary rather than competitive or as a replacement. The design of the national radio networks precludes most European countries' big cities from having a dial as crowded and complex as, say, New York or even Omaha. Digital is the solution to that. For them.
 
tomservo said:
The thing I don't understand about these ideas for switching off analog, is why bother? Why not enjoy the best of both worlds, with some broadcasters on analog and some on digital, to expand people's choices? There's nothing inherently harmful or bad about the analog broadcasts; they convey the information they were designed for. And there's no value in "refarming" the FM or AM dials for other (digital) uses. At least with the DAB systems on their own frequency bands, I see the digital as complimentary rather than competitive or as a replacement. The design of the national radio networks precludes most European countries' big cities from having a dial as crowded and complex as, say, New York or even Omaha. Digital is the solution to that. For them.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree, I would have liked to see the bottom TV channels given to digital radio. but unfortunately we know our FCC only cares about who has the most money and in the idea of "progress" it it were at all successful sooner or later they would have switched off the analog and sold the spectrum to the highest bidder.
 
At some point, the FCC is going to have to seriously take up the subject sunsetting analog broadcast radio. Aside from the issue of environmental noise for AM, it just isn't an efficient use of spectrum for FM. We know they're already thinking about it for AM and, of course, other countries are talking about it for FM.

Consider what the FCC is proposing for DTV; they are asking stations to channel share. In this case, stations share a transmitter and get a little less than 3 MHz of spectrum each. In return, the stations are considered as separate licensed FCC entities subject to the fees, rules and privileges accorded them. There is no reason why this proposal can't be used with FM. We already know that HD Radio can do side channels. Imagine the number of stations possible should FM go digital-only while all of these stations would enjoy the economic advantage of sharing a transmitter and facilities. The FCC would regulate shared-channel FM stations as if they're separate entities and they would be bought and sold as unique stations.

The matter of more FM stations not being financially sustainable is not the topic here. After all, we have people on this board who eagerly promote the notion of expanding the FM band into VHF channels 5 & 6, thereby creating more financially-challenged stations (plus the need for new radios). What I'm saying is that you don't need to do that if FM went all digital. There would be plenty of room for growth within the band.
 
The digital in Europe is NOT the same as IBOC......I would not expect IBOC in the US to make analog go away anytime soon.

As to growth within the current band, NO, the addition of translators and LPFMs has raised the noise floor and intermod levels in some areas....RF is a FINITE resource...you can only cram soooo many signals into one band....Going all digital will not solve anything...

The Telecom Act of 1996 needs to be repealed and the max number of stations that can be owned in one market needs to roll back....with the large groups like iHeart, Cumeless and CBS owning most markets, there is little competition and little incentive to try something new like the days of old top40 radio where EACH station gave away $$$ or a car or something of value...to its OWN local market...now we have nationwide contest where your chance of winning is greatly reduced....and instead of 800-1200 different prizes, its only one....period...
 
ContinuousWave said:
The digital in Europe is NOT the same as IBOC......I would not expect IBOC in the US to make analog go away anytime soon.

As to growth within the current band, NO, the addition of translators and LPFMs has raised the noise floor and intermod levels in some areas....RF is a FINITE resource...you can only cram soooo many signals into one band....Going all digital will not solve anything...
Click to expand...

I'm well aware that IBOC/HD Radio technology is not used in Europe. And I'm not talking about IBOC hybrid digital broadcasting anyway. I'm talking about digital-only FM.

You need to get your head out of the analog sandpit. All-digital HD Radio would use a pure OFDM modulation method. OFDM is far more spectrally efficient than a traditional single-carrier modulation method. As such, many more stations can be packed closer together with no adverse effect on the digital receiver. All digital FM will solve over-crowding in the short term.
 
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I think for the USA, as time marches on, unless you can receive on LTE, it won't exist. The smart phone or smart car is the future. I agree that digital radio is more efficient and many radio stations could share on a multicast transmitter but who would buy the radio? I don't like it but the cell phone wins.
 
WJPYFM said:
I think for the USA, as time marches on, unless you can receive on LTE, it won't exist. The smart phone or smart car is the future. I agree that digital radio is more efficient and many radio stations could share on a multicast transmitter but who would buy the radio? I don't like it but the cell phone wins.
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For what you envision as the future of digital radio to happen, the telcos are going to have to throw away their data plans with data caps and the CRB in cooperation with the music industry is going to have to set more reasonable royalty rates. These two things right now are stifling internet radio. Then we have the less than convenient method of receiving web broadcasts. Listeners have to look for the kind of music or content they want, download an app or an iTunes file or something and then launch it.

You still can't beat terrestrial radio for cost (as in nothing to the listener) and convenience. For now, there are too many hurdles to permit web radio to achieve parity with terrestrial radio. I hope that changes.
 
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