[cma-l] Eddie on DAB v FM

[James Cridland]

Hi, Alex,

The UK market is a tiny and inconsequential one to most manufacturers. The
Digital Radio tickmark thing is actually deliberately set to mirror similar
accreditation systems in Europe and Australia. Further, the radio industry
is uninterested in how radio sets operate, and not big or united enough to
talk to most manufacturers in a coherent manner.

Really, we have a "North America vs rest-of-world" thing going on in radio
receivers. You are correct that AM is different - so is FM, in fact, with
different deemphasis values used as well as different frequency spacing.
Pedants: Japan's different still, with FM from 76 to 108MHz. And parts of
ex Soviet countries use something different again.

"Animated and dynamic RDS names do not break tuning by name" - I bow to
your obvious knowledge. I'd only observe that scrolling now-playing info,
in place in many parts of the world, means that you end up with station
names like "TY PERRY" or even "LE NOW O" which really isn't the sort of
user experience any one wants to give, and certainly isn't recognisable.

Tuning by station name doesn't work on AM - but I'd argue that AM isn't
part of radio's future anyway. (Pedants: it does, if you use AMSS, a kind
of RDS for AM. Nobody does).

Further, the ideal is tuning by station name irrespective of waveband - so
you'd get "BBC 6 Music" in the same list as "TwoLochs". (You want that,
right?) The issue here is that de-duping the list isn't simple; "BBC R
Scot" on FM in your part of the world could be different to "BBC Radio
Scotland" on an available local multiplex, because of local optouts. The
BBC have deliberately broken service-following between FM and DAB, which
has the side effect of also breaking any way that your radio can de-dupe
Radio 4 FM from Radio 4 DAB. And so on.

And you need to be continuously scanning the FM and DAB bands to populate
this station list name, otherwise when travelling you'll never find local
radio.

The "Radioplayer Car" unit, currently in test, does all you have asked for
and more - linking to IP as well (and more importantly linking back), and
letting you tune by station name and logo.
https://media.info/radio/stations/two-lochs-radio tells me that you are on
Radioplayer, so you'll benefit when that is available for sale later this
year.

Incidentally, I cannot comprehend why anyone wouldn't be on Radioplayer, I
must say: its the R&D department for the whole of UK radio.

James



On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 18:17 Two Lochs Radio <tlr at gairloch.co.uk> wrote:

> *The reason RDS names aren't used as a method of tuning is that RDS isn't
> ubiquitous in the US, and in Europe many stations use animated and dynamic
> RDS names, which breaks this stuff.*
>
>
> I can't see any great force in that as a reason for not using station name
> tuning by default. The RDS radio market is clearly big enough to support it
> as an option perfectly economically in the rest of world without needing to
> work in the US. More to the point, I don't think DAB is exactly ubiquitous
> in the US either is it? And yet we have a market full of DAB sets!
>
>
> Same sort of thing applies to push button tuning on AM - the US uses 10kHz
> channel spacing and we use 9kHz, so radio circuits/chipsets in portables
> have to support both. Anyway, a radio that can tune by station list can
> still be operated by frequency if it finds itself in a non-RDS region, so
> it can only be a gain or neutral, not negative.
>
>
> Animated and dynamic RDS names do not break tuning by name - as I said, my
> car can tune by station list, and it works perfectly well in continental
> countries that use more advanced techniques - the station list shows a
> static shot of the 8 character name which is usually perfectly
> recognizable. And again, if not, you can fall back to frequency tuning.
> Tuning by station name doesn't have to be the only mode available, but it
> should (IMO) be available and the default option for a radio to get the
> tick mark.
>
>
> The IP stuff is a further argument, and perfectly fine, but no bearing on
> my suggestion that for DAB/FM radios sold for the UK market should have
> been required to offer tuning by station name across FM & DAB.
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>
> On 05 September 2015 at 15:59 James Cridland <james at cridland.net> wrote:
>
> The reason RDS names aren't used as a method of tuning is that RDS isn't
> ubiquitous in the US, and in Europe many stations use animated and dynamic
> RDS names, which breaks this stuff.
>
> Neither RDS nor DAB offer handoff to IP, nor direct links to other
> IP-based resources either, so they're not, by themselves, future-proof.
>
> RadioDNS provides that mapping, which makes radio receivers significantly
> more user friendly.
>
> IP is four times smaller than DAB use here in the UK, and is growing
> slower as well. (Indeed, growth appears to have stagnated for most.)
>
> The future is multi-platform, and better sets. Sadly, existing
> broadcasters aren't entirely on-board.
>
> James
>
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