Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The NICAM Codec replacement project

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 107 posts

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#41

Post by jon-wood »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #32
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you only need the rogue transmitter to be stronger at the receiver (your electric meter?) than the signal from the transmitter. That doesn't seem like a strong enough signal to easily locate you? Seems a complicated way to do something - doesn't Economy7 operate between fixed times overnight? I wonder if they can cut power using the transmissions - seems like something that could be used for emergency control…

Hm, that's probably the point: there is no threat (to the utility provider) in that model. Worst thing you could do is make someone's appliances run with a more expensive rate; hardly a likely event or one worth preventing. (As for power cutting, that seems unlikely - the system is in place to provide larger power consumption when base production exceeds the load. Around here, the basic low/high rate info is provided…

The smart metres that are being rolled out at the moment have a remote kill switch, although it couldn't really be used to implement rolling blackouts as you have to physically hit a button to reactivate it.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#42

Post by kokey »

linker3000 wrote: post #6

That's some decent BBC engineering from a team that works away quietly in the background and just makes things happen, or keep happening. I don't work in that field, but like many people in my profession (Systems and networking), I also tend to be invisible until something breaks, and then I am the fall guy if it's not fixed within a heartbeat. /I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s techno…

I would hope so with a £5.1 billion budget. That's more than half the FTSE 100 companies.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#43

Post by Joeri »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #34
jerf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being government funded does not mean you don't have to sell yourself. It just means the target audience for the sales job is different.

Because if they don't have clickbaity headlines the UK government will scrap the license fee?

It could reduce it, arguing there is a lot of waste at the bbc. As long as the public perceives the value in the bbc's offerings the odds of that happening are reduced.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#44

Post by SixSigma »

jmtd wrote: post #29
acheron wrote: post #17

Really interesting article, but terrible clickbaity title. I wouldn't have read it if there weren't so many positive comments on HN already. It could work if there were a subtitle. "35 million people didn’t notice a thing: BBC Radio's NICAM Codec replacement project". I dunno. But it is (or should be) very important that the title actually informs you as to what the article is about. "35M people didn't notice a thing…

Perhaps the title-writer has been infected by the BBC news editorial policy. They seem to be turning clickbait titles into a fine art, combined with renaming articles so you think it's a new piece on the same story, but turns out you've already read it. (If you read BBC News at all that is: my wife still does, I gave it up years ago and haven't looked back.) I love many aspects of the BBC but sadly not their news out…

Agreed. The science section has a fine selection of rehashed press releases.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#45

Post by jhallenworld »

doc_holliday wrote: post #40
jhallenworld wrote: post #35

I can see from the photos that it's using this board: http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard I'm surprised BBC is not only willing to make custom hardware, but custom RTL design as well. I'm curious what the failure rate of the FPGA will be, I mean they are more susceptible to soft errors than CPUs or ASICs. Maybe BBC will fund making a custom ASIC :-) Well I see two systems, maybe they are redundant that way. Why not…

I would doubt an ASIC would be worth it, giving the number of organisations needing this CODEC would be relatively low. An ASIC run is expensive and even more expensive if there is subsequent error in the design. FPGA makes sense for this application. It can always be re-flashed.

They should at least enable the SEU mitigation circuit, which repeatedly performs CRC of the configuration data. Have it reboot if it detects an error. Maybe they already do this.

I checked, Zynq-7000 has this capability: http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-property/sem.htm...

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#46

Post by drzaiusapelord »

acheron wrote: post #17

Really interesting article, but terrible clickbaity title. I wouldn't have read it if there weren't so many positive comments on HN already. It could work if there were a subtitle. "35 million people didn’t notice a thing: BBC Radio's NICAM Codec replacement project". I dunno. But it is (or should be) very important that the title actually informs you as to what the article is about. "35M people didn't notice a thing…

Maybe people did notice but didn't care enough to complain? Or we're all used to various sound quality depending on what we're doing (cell, skype, voip, etc) that we've just internalized quality changes as not a big deal.

It reminds me how satellite radio was supposed to be "mp3 quality" whatever that meant. Everytime I rent a car with SiriusXM, my god, the sound quality is horrible. Its like they're using those early postage-stamp sized quicktime videos from the dial-ups days. Yet people still subscribe in vast numbers.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#47

Post by mmosta »

pjc50 wrote: post #36

I've always been impressed by the BBC tech people I met, doing a high-quality job in an extremely bureaucratic neophobic environment. As part of making the unit, we had to ensure it complied with all the relevant European directives so that it could be CE marked. We had the Codec tested for both safety and EMC. Interesting, I thought this wasn't required for internal use; probably the BBC corporate structure means it…

CE carries a number of subclasses that can be self-certified.

With respect to EMC and safety it is absolutely in their best interest to conform, not merely out of a bureaucratic obligation but out of a need to minimize any interference from or to other equipment housed nearby.

Radio Teleswitch stuff is cool.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#49

Post by bitwize »

jerf wrote: post #26
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC seem to have moved to this sort of title with the recent updates to their web properties. They do these things seemingly confusing themselves with a commercial enterprise rather than a publicly funded provider.

Being government funded does not mean you don't have to sell yourself. It just means the target audience for the sales job is different.

But this is the Beeb, mate, no need to try and trick people into reading like a contemptible American news service.
Post reply on HN