[cma-l] by the way - Eddie on DAB vs FM

[Two Lochs Radio]

Exactly Glyn, but that isn't the situation unfortunately.

When the '50% of all listening digital' and the DAB 'tick mark' criteria were being consulted on, I submitted that it should also be a requirement that all radios tune by default using the names of available stations, regardless of whether they were on FM or DAB, but this has not been done, so there will an increasingly tilted playing field.

As you know, there is no reason any FM radio shouldn't tune by name just like DAB (using RDS to get the names). My old car radio does this by default as well as showing current show titles. 

There's also no technical reason, and only a tiny financial one, why pause/rewind/programme info, even 'playing now', shouldn't be supported on FM reception just as well as on DAB. I have a 12 year old pocket MP3 player with FM radio that offers record/pause/rewind on FM and the whole thing cost only $10 even then.

Given the extra production costs would be tiny compared with the larger profit margins on DAB sets compared to commodity FM sets, an obvious reason for why DAB set manufacturers don't generally do these things is that it would take some of the shine of the supposed benefits of DAB! The government should have mandated it if it was serious about a level playing field for FM and DAB.

Alex
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Associated Broadcast Consultants 
  To: The Community Media Association Discussion List 
  Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2015 11:16 AM
  Subject: Re: [cma-l] by the way - Eddie on DAB vs FM


  Eddie,  In a true multi-platform future that James envisages, the radios will tune independently of channel - ie: in theory all DAB and FM (and possibly internet) stations in one list.  The listener should not need to know about the underlying technology delivering the services.


  Big "IF" - IF the manufacturers implement multi-platform properly.


  Glyn






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