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The NICAM Codec replacement project

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#91

Post by MistahKoala »

delinka wrote: post #14
king_magic wrote: post #8

This is one of the most interesting things I've read on HN in weeks. Awesome to see this kind of success story, and it's super fascinating to get insight into how radio works behind the scenes. I'll be honest, I had no idea all of this goes into radio. I thought there were just, err, towers?, that broadcast... radio waves, and that was kind of it? I mean, I knew on some level it had to be a tad bit more complex than…

Compared to U.S. radio in my area, this is indeed fairly complex. In my "market" we have mostly local stations and the complexity is minimal: rent office space for offices and DJ booths, send mix to a directional transmitter on the roof pointed at the tower site, tower decodes and blasts a 100K watt signal. Of course, Clear Channel also has lots of robot stations in many markets in the country, which seems like it mi…

That's pretty much how it works in UK independent local radio (ILR).

There's been a fair bit of change over the past decade, resulting in a lot more network programming and automation amongst stations established prior to 2000 or so. Core programming hours can be 7am-6pm, with local presenters, news, sport, traffic and weather, but that's it. Post-2000 stations seem to be a lot more local, they only appear to serve larger cities - smaller towns are stuck with carbon copy stations. Specialist and talk radio stations are virtually non-existent.

It sounds like Clear Channel's problem is with automation and production. It's really not that hard to automate a station such that it sounds like it's being produced live. I would take a guess that they're using some early 90s - maybe even 80s - tech to drive their automation.

One thing you've got going for you in the US is local TV. It's something that's only just started to be done in the UK and it's pretty amateurish stuff. I can't see it succeeding - wrong era and stations exist on their own channels, rather than as network affiliates.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#92

Post by MistahKoala »

silicon_wally wrote: post #60
jmtd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Although it's foreign, I've found Christian Science Monitor to be fairly diligent and insightful. If nothing else, I've found it difficult to identify an institutional bias in their coverage and outlook.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#93

Post by junto »

jacquesm wrote: post #4

Very 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?

There seems to be something uniquely British in its engineering culture which allows for the left-field hack-it-simply-together-and-hope-it-works approach.

I'm guessing that the initial build was exactly this. Maybe the equipment is highly specialised for the UK, and other countries have their own standards?I imagine these custom standards are hard to just rip out and replace. It is also hard to convince a bunch of engineers who know a set of tools, and proprietary formats and hardware to change to something they don't know, with something that is so critical to a nations infrastructure.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#94

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

duskwuff wrote: post #71
flurpitude wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s technology had been replaced with a Raspberry Pi!" The Parallella computer, which looks a lot like a Raspberry Pi, has a Xilinx Zynq chip similar to the one in the BBC's new codec. So it's almost true.

Here's the exact board that's in there: http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc...

It is a bit odd that they shoehorned in an existing commercial board rather than just put the FPGA on the main board or even designed a custom daughter card if upgradability was a concern. As it is, they are now tied to the availability of boards with the same board-to-board connector and a similar form factor.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#95

Post by philjohn »

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…

AFAIK the Droitwich transmitter isn't run by the BBC, but bu another company, so it could have been a requirement of that.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#96

Post by pbhjpbhj »

SapphireSun wrote: post #78
jerf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Also, one might argue, funding aside, that increasing readership (without sacrificing quality below some threshold) is the whole point of the enterprise. Click-bait headlines are annoying, but they aren't the actual body of the report themselves.

The BBC serves a charter which is managed by the BBC Trust. The Trust effectively interprets the charter. Their interpretation of the goals of the enterprise are (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/):

    "Make the most creative and distinctive output;
    Innovate online to create a more personal BBC;
    Serve all audiences; and
    Improve value for money through a simpler, more efficient, and more open BBC.    "
Increasing readership by reducing quality of headlines to match junk media clickbait doesn't appear to fit in there.

The actual Royal Charter, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/h..., at Section 4 puts quite succinctly what the aims are:

    "The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—
    (a)  sustaining citizenship and civil society;
    (b)  promoting education and learning;
    (c)  stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
    (d)  representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
    (e)  bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
    (f)   in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television."
I'd argue that this sort of change goes against the stimulation of cultural excellence, the tail is wagging the dog.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#97

Post by IanCal »

kokey wrote: post #70
nekopa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering team has a budget that big? Do you know what the budgets are for the other aspects of the BBC? Like TV and radio broadcasting, production of TV and radio shows, administration, HR and other areas? Edit: found an old breakdown here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Expenditure Seems like their whole technology department has a budget of £175m

Europe average R&D spend cross industry is just above 4%, but that's mostly pulled up by R&D on healthcare (which is closer to 18%). Without healthcare I think it's around 2%. I would hope to see them spend at least £100m on R&D, but that's obviously not just on broadcast technology.

> In 2011/12 BBC R&D’s budget was approximately £14 million

Page 32:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwewor...

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#98

Post by Sanddancer »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #94
duskwuff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the exact board that's in there: http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc...

It is a bit odd that they shoehorned in an existing commercial board rather than just put the FPGA on the main board or even designed a custom daughter card if upgradability was a concern. As it is, they are now tied to the availability of boards with the same board-to-board connector and a similar form factor.

They used a commercial board that implements the Vita 57 bus, which is the standard way to interface with an FPGA [1]. So if they need replacements down the road, they just have to get one that implements the same standard, and standards for industrial equipment tend to stick around for a considerable amount of time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#99

Post by Sanddancer »

logfromblammo wrote: post #53
mseebach wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If it was a scavenged system, I'd be apt to believe you, but a new build like this, you almost certainly would use new ribbon cables. In bulk, the ribbon is about fifty cents a foot, so reusing old parts wouldn't be worth the trouble of having to troubleshoot problems down the road.

Re: The NICAM Codec replacement project

#100

Post by roywiggins »

vidarh wrote: post #74
thorin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Both sides of the political spectrum regularly complains about the BBC being biased towards the other side. It's the best evidence that whatever bias there is either is minor or short-lived. In my eyes, the biggest problem with the BBC isn't bias, but that they're terrified of seeming too biased, and as a result they're wishy-washy in ways that ironically makes them seem biased. E.g. the left will accuse them of bein…

Notably, they've taken flack for being wishy-washy on climate change, and eventually had to put out a directive to stop giving equal time to deniers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/0...

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