• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

TV audio on radios after the loss of analog?

The challenge, I would think, comes in the fact that the audio for DTV signals isn't a separate signal from the video - it's embedded in the bitstream that's carrying the entire DTV signal, subchannels and all. So a radio that can pick up DTV audio would really be simply a DTV receiver without a display, as opposed to an analog TV-sound radio, which is just an FM radio that can pick up a narrower-deviation FM signal on a different frequency from broadcast FM radio. That, in turn, brings along new complications - you need a front end that can handle the 6 MHz bandwidth of a full TV channel, for one thing.

It's certainly not an impossible thing to do, but it's unlikely to show up in a $10 bargain-bin radio, either.

On the other hand, if such radios DID ever hit the market, they'd open up some really interesting possibilities. I'm already aware of (OK, I work at) a TV/radio combo that uses spare bandwidth on its DTV signal to feed audio to two remote radio transmitter sites. And when you consider that a DTV signal has more than 19 mb of bandwidth, while FM HD radio makes do with just 96 kb (121 kb in expanded hybrid mode), there's a LOT of room for audio signals there, potentially with much better quality than HD radio. Mobile reception would be a challenge, though - the 8VSB transmission standard used for DTV signals doesn't work very well in the mobile environment.
 
w9wi said:
That's a good question. For TV sets the extra cost of a DTV decoder seems to have disappeared - a DTV now sells for essentially the same price as an equivalent analog set sold for just before companies stopped making them.

From what I've been hearing power consumption (battery life) has been a bigger issue than cost.
Click to expand...

I think that you're right about power consumption -- I have a 7" portable DTV, and the rated battery life on it is only 90 minutes between recharges.

Aside from that, there is still a cost premium associated with digital tuners, although that premium is much smaller than it used to be. It's one reason why standalone VCRs completely disappeared this year -- the cost of including a digital tuner in a $39 VCR just didn't make sense. It's also why the cheaper DVD recorders now lack any tuner capability. While the cost of a digital tuner may be neglible in the overall cost of a 37" flat panel display, it isn't neglible for a portable TV or TV-band radio.
 
I see your point TexasTom but they cynic in me, would like to know the actual cost. I would just LOVE to see if it really ads to the cost or if it's just a way to avoid putting VCRs and forcing people to buy more expensive DVRs or go to TiVo or cable like devices.
 
Having no tuner included into a DVD recorder really makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER! There are some of us who have cable that don't use a conveerter (myself as on of those people). How are you supposed to use an antenna with it?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom