Don't most smartphones have emergency broadcasts built-in these days? Who doesn't have their phone on them when they're driving in a car?
Anyone who doesn't own a mobile/cell phone?
Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
31–40 of 289 posts
Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#32What do we do with more channels that we can't listen? If you really need a little bit of bandwidth around 100 MHz for other use, you could cut the spectrum from FM radio and still keep it running. The place where I usually listen to radio is the car. Car radios don't have DAB receivers. They all have FM receivers. And these days most cars have radio units that are integrated to the car electronics, steering wheel co…
Most newish cars in the UK come with DAB as standard now.
Around here (Finland, neighbouring Norway), the average car on the road is 12 years old, so if we start to get DAB radios now, almost half of them will have it by 2025.
Many more cars have right now Bluetooth connectivity in the audio system, so it'll be streaming from the phone then.
Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#33Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#34Sweden narrowly avoided this, there was a very strong drive, but in the end the responsibie minister halted it. One of the few pieces of happy news in later years.
Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#35DAB+ sounds terrible to me compared to a (tuned) FM station - AFAICT it's 48kbit AAC.
It can be set independently per station. As an example, in Norway the NRK Jazz channel transmits at 64 kbit/s, while NRK Klassisk (classical music) transmits at 96 kbit/s.
Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#36Over 60% against ... but "more channels". OK solely money driven then. I have somewhere around 12 FM radios, ranging in price from £10 to £lots and 40 years old or newer. They all still work and often give LW and SW too. In the UK at least DAB is mp2 and an excuse to put out thousands of channels at horrible bit rates. Like down to 64k streams. OK for a noisy car, terrble for at home or headphones. They all work and…
> They degrade in poor signal "nicer" than DAB and remain listenable longer
Yes, despite all the propaganda that DAB was 'interference-free' it quickly degraded into a bubbling, clicking ear-splitting cacophony when something affected the signal. Often something as simple as a person standing in front of the antenna or the bus that I was on passing some trees.
We had two DAB radios for a few years but when they eventually failed we just stopped listening to radio intead of replacing them.
Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe it. That's not nearly enough bits.
It seems that to achieve the same perceived quality as FM you need about 160kbit/s (when using DAB). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting
The bitrate requirement should be lower for DAB+, although this article seems to contradict that: http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/2013/11/what-bitrate-is-...
Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#38I visited my hometown over the holidays, and the first thing I did after getting into the rental car was tune into the local Alt Rock FM station. The playlists (and most of the DJs) haven't change in the 10 years since high school. I kinda loved it.
Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#39Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
#40FM radio in Norway sucked so much because of mountains. Every fjord had its own tiny repeater, but only if there was at least one inhabitant, otherwise you heard nothing. The cell-phone digital network is much more advanced, the antennas are on mountain tops and there is always coverage within few hundred meters.
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