Truly an impressive feat:
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." - Futurama
The NICAM Codec replacement project
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#52Very nice work. What is the rationale behind doing a bespoke design rather than sharing the development cost with all the European broadcasters, is NICAM unique to the UK? What do other broadcasters use for similar services?
Cool to see that there are still companies that can and will make devices like this in-house, but yes it just seems like something that a radio station would normally just do with an off the shelf solution.
I guess the combination of weird-codec, along with other functionality like sending out info to electricity metres is a pretty bespoke one.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#53Honest question -- why are they using PATA ribbon cables in the new NICAM codec box? Surely SATA would be more reliable and easier to administer.
They most likely aren't ATA cables, as in, they aren't used to connect hard drives -- so it's not obvious that whatever purpose they serve could be served by a serial alternative. If you look at the photo of the back of the unit, you see a lot of very wide D-Sub sockets that these ribbon cables seem to connect to, so the unit is meant to connect to a bunch of other things. Actually, the need for these sockets seem to…
If you're designing your own boards with ribbon cables connecting them, I imagine that you could save a lot of money on parts by using 40-pin connectors with PATA cables--we're talking entire cents, for each of the 2 units.
Also, I'm willing to bet a place like the BBC has boxes filled with spare PATA cables and 16MB SIMMs and 8 GB internal hard drives, and maybe even a room with a bunch of dusty 17" CRT monitors in it. And sometimes, rather than fill out a purchase order, one of the engineers descends into the hoard, returns with a cobbled-together frankenserver, and installs NetBSD on it.
So they might actually be PATA cables using PATA connectors, but the signal between cards is not ATA.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#54Earlier 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?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477726/BBC-face-cut...
That's a small example of what I mean, not the full totality of the threat space.
Building more readership makes them that much more difficult to cut funding to, in a variety of ways (more people to get outraged if the government tries, more evidence to show the government that they are worth the money, etc.). Clickbait headlines create more readership. We may prefer that to be false, but it's obviously not. From there the logic is simple, almost inexorable.
Being government funded does not mean you get to ignore funding issues, it just changes how you play the game. There is no source of unconditional funding in the world.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#55Very nice work. What is the rationale behind doing a bespoke design rather than sharing the development cost with all the European broadcasters, is NICAM unique to the UK? What do other broadcasters use for similar services?
I think NICAM as a distribution system to FM transmitters is a BBC invention, and presumably all the hardware, physical interfaces etc were designed in-house. So unless they managed to sell it to other countries they're probably the only ones using it. It later found another use for transmitting stereo audio to household with analog TV but that's basically dead along with analog TV and isn't quite the same anyway.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#56I read the article with interest, waiting with anticipation for them to announce the resulting hardware and software had all been open sourced. And then...nothing.
I'm surprised, I thought in the UK these kinds of taxpayer-funded projects were required to be open source.
In any case, it's too bad. I was not familiar with the NICAM codec up to now, but I'm sure that software and hardware plans would have been very useful to some developing countries, many of whom apparently also use NICAM in their state-owned broadcast companies.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#57Really 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…
The truth is that 7 billion people didn't notice.
Why didn't they use that title?
BTW, I agree with your edit. An R&D blog shouldn't be held to the same standard of journalistic excellence as a reputable news source, even if it's the BBC's blog.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#58Really 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…
It's interesting you classified it as click bait. Too many attempts to raise interest quickly, in a large number of people with low quality content, results in a small segment of those people "hitting" on the fact it's raising interest quickly and should be flagged. In your case, you "unflagged" it because we started talking about it, which implies some of us shouldn't (or won't) filter long term.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#59Really 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…
I used to think the BBC news was definitive 5-10 years ago. I'm not sure what has changed? Have the recent governments and their pressure on the license fee really made the difference or is it just my perception?
When I was young the BBC was always seen as pretty left wing (it certainly wasn't at it's inception though) it seems pretty conservative (and sensationalist) right now.
Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project
#60Really 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…
Where do you read news? I'm looking to find a source other than the BBC