[cma-l] Eddie on DAB v FM new discussion DAB & FM

Sun Sep 6 13:08:46 BST 2015

Chaps

All this technical Radio jargon is very interesting indeed and very
educational 
. I have to confess I don’t understand all of it but I’m
getting to learn about 40% of it with a couple of our tecky chaps hovering
around 70% 
.you guys are clearly experts   (re :- James / Ian / Alex /
Glynn et al)      however chaps, we never seem to manage to get to the nitty
gritty, and I would imagine at least half of the folk on the message board
are slightly more interested in how much money does each Community Radio
Station need to save in its Piggy Bank to get itself on small scale DAB &
FM, as opposed to learning about algorithms  
.. (this is a tongue in-cheek
joke chaps merely asking what I feel the more important question, so don’t
shoot the messenger)

I have already asked the question and I would imagine that the likes of Ian
being in his field of work (for example) would be able to come up with a
ball-park figure)     I know DAB trials are taking place but surely whether
successful or not the end result is can it be afforded ?     if it can’t be
afforded then the whole exercise is pointless anyway    isn’t it ???

I am merely picking up on James’s observations and Glynn (I think)   who
pointed out that possibly this DAB malarkey is one of those situations
whereby we some of us may end being dragged kicking and screaming as failure
to hook into it would mean the big boys clear up completely.

We all understand what Community Radio is about, but regardless of the whys,
whats and wherefores we still have to compete at some kind of level or we
wither and die    (unless of course we win the lottery or receive grants
that don’t exist)(re my post earlier this week)

Would you gentlemen of great Community Radio loveliness please flop a ball
park figure on this message board for all to see re the cost of medium
priced equipment, set up and running for DAB 

 on top of what I have
roughly worked out to be and ongoing cost of around = £5000 quid for those
already broadcasting  (new additions of course would have their initial set
up – transmitters / aerials / installation etc)

This five grand figure allows for maintainance and includes
PPL/PRS/Canstream/other licences/Internet/Ofcom licence 
.. I have kept it
top side as opposed to lower end.

Assuming that PPL/PRS will be hovering, circling and then charging
additionally for something that technically is already covered, would the
figure be roughly the same? as I have to admit reading all the posts we seem
to have gone from DAB being really expensive to it not being quite as
expensive as we first thought, to it being rather cheap and then back to
reasonably expensive again and for us to do it we would be doing it because
we simply ‘had to’ ’or else’  as opposed to wanting to do it     in
otherwords the ‘getting left behind discussion.

I hope you have followed my thread and got the gist of it, apologies if it
is in laymans terms. 

Let’s us call the discussion not ‘’’versus’’’   but DAB & FM

Thank you

Regards

Nick

  _____  

From: cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk
[mailto:cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk] On Behalf Of James Cridland
Sent: 05 September 2015 20:47
To: Two Lochs Radio; cma-l
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Eddie on DAB v FM

I use TuneIn's app too.

Radioplayer provides:

1. A web player that actually works, and that lets people find your station
from BBC Radio 2!

2. A capable app that surfaces your station - first - for people in your
transmission area on iOS and Android, Amazon and Windows.

3. Logos, schedules and broadcast details for your station for a variety of
uses including Radioplayer Car, RadioDNS-enabled tuners, and other things

4. A Chrome app (which I wrote <- disclosure) that puts your station onto
everyone's desktop

5. An app that puts your station onto Ford Sync, Apple CarPlay and Android
Auto (and lets you control it from Apple Watch and Android Wear)

6. Liason on behalf of the entire radio industry to set-top box
manufacturers, car manufacturers and other organisations that you don't talk
to nor have the clout to

7. Usage data

....and is run on behalf of the radio industry with your goals in mind.

Even for #1 on that list, it's worth the £99. I appreciate it isn't free;
but then, it isn't slotting ads in front of your streams or making you
compete with 100,000 other stations, either.

//j

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 8:32 PM Two Lochs Radio <tlr at gairloch.co.uk> wrote:

Your fee for Radioplayer is £99. “A more proportionate fee”?!

Just so, but Michael originally asked £300, which we negotiated down to £90
(that was at launch, it has increased 10% since).

TuneIn's app provides more advanced facilities than Radioplayer and the
service is entirely free to originating stations. They also provide a
schedule and 'On now' without us having to lift a finger - they scrape our
own published schedule periodically (I must ask them to update it as it
seems to be slightly out of date).

Alex

On 05 September 2015 at 20:03 James Cridland <james at cridland.net> wrote:

Your fee for Radioplayer is £99. "A more proportionate fee"?!

On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 19:47 Two Lochs Radio <tlr at gairloch.co.uk> wrote:

Yes, of course I'm aware of the other variants of FM, my point was that
there seems ot be alarge enough market for RDS for set makers, even
portables and some phones, such as HTC, to judge it worthwhile supporting
RDS. 

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 radio does that for itself unbidden. I routinely use the radio's station
list to see what stations are in range.

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.

The main reason for not being on RadioPlayer would be the cost and the fact
that ithey won't allow you to be on mobiles if you don't provide a low-rate
bitstream. We joined it when the BBC was on it and didn't have its own
radioplayer which rather undermined  UK Radioplayer's proposition. But we
did first have to negotiate a more proportionate fee!

As a user, I still prefer to use TuneIn. It has far more facilities.

Alex

On 05 September 2015 at 18:45 James Cridland <james at cridland.net> wrote:

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

_______________________________________________

Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk

The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community Media
Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
_______________________________________________

Mailing list guidelines:
http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
_______________________________________________

To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l

-- 

http://james.cridland.net - get my weekly newsletter
https://media.info - the media information website

Tel: +44 7941 251474 | @jamescridland

-- 

http://james.cridland.net - get my weekly newsletter
https://media.info - the media information website

Tel: +44 7941 251474 | @jamescridland

-- 

http://james.cridland.net - get my weekly newsletter
https://media.info - the media information website

Tel: +44 7941 251474 | @jamescridland

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/pipermail/cma-l/attachments/20150906/1700aa32/attachment.html>