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Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

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Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#141

Post by winter_blue »

krkoch wrote: post #129
askvictor wrote: post #121

The article didn't talk about why? It's not as if the FM bandwidth is particularly valuable, being quite a low frequency. Unlike digital tv, there doesn't seem to be a particularly pressing reason to do this; if broadcasters are happy to keep broadcasting on FM, why stop them?

It's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run. Because of all the fjords and valleys, you need many weak transmitters to avoid reflections. Also, because it's FM, they can't overlap in frequency. With DAB, two time-delayed signals (either reflections or multiple towers transmitting the same data-fountain) will enhance the signal. This means that you can have fewer towers.

> It's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run.

Won't the free market decide if it's too expensive to run? Or is even radio run by the state in Norway? Otherwise, why prohibit private companies from licensing & broadcasting FM radio? I mean the free market would decide stop to broadcasting when it's not profitable for them anymore.

Or is everything state-run in Norway? When I read "one member of the ruling coalition was scathing" and "MP from the Progress Party", I'm thinking, the state (and these MPs) shouldn't even be involved and thinking about this, and should leave it to the free market.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#142

Post by XorNot »

henrikschroder wrote: post #96
audunw wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Probably the next generation will be good enough to handle it. But this still ignores other benefits of DAB over mobile data. One is emergency broadcasts, the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. But what if you want built-…

> For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Yes, but that's a problem for the telco's to solve, if they want to continue selling mobile internet. So they have strong incentives to solve it. > One is emergency broadcasts How is having to buy an expensive device to listen to emergency broadcasts a benefit? One of the reasons DAB was scrapped in Sweden was this. Everyone and their grandmother ha…

Emergency broadcasts should run on AM radio if we're worried about reliability. AM is brain dead simple to demodulate to the point you can do it accidentally with the right length of wire really.

Kill FM, reserve AM for an emergency band.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#143

Post by Matthias247 »

greglindahl wrote: post #7
userbinator wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet FM still can't beat AM for simplicity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio

Don't worry, there's a new digital standard for AM radio too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio#AM

Isn't HD Radio a proprietary thing and not a real standard that anybody can use?

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#144

Post by taway_1212 »

kagamine wrote: post #115
varjag wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one, the electric car market markets itself as green and while they are running on renewable energy, the costs and sources of power for building them are reportedly a lot less environmentally friendly. This is the kind of made up on spot arguments you hear from ICE vehicle owners. Until they switch to EV :) "Manufacturing a mid-sized EV with an 84-mile range results in about 15 percent more emissions than manuf…

Sort of just what I said. I did state "reportedly" and not provide any sources. I don't think I was being unfair to the EV market. However, buying a new car and junking the old one has to be less energy efficient than owning an old car and trying to use it less while utilizing public transport. Public transport is something I could have mentioned in my original post as it is not prioritized enough here in Norway and…

> However, buying a new car and junking the old one has to be less energy efficient than owning an old car and trying to use it less while utilizing public transport.

I don't know about Norway specifically, but in Western Europe in general (Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland etc.) old cars are sold to less well-off EU countries, where they're still in operation for (typically) many more years. So, the Western consumer changing cars every 5 years isn't actually affecting the environment, and is actually helping out folks in poorer economies.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#145

Post by Matthias247 »

mrweasel wrote: post #74
ptaipale wrote: post #24

What 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…

The whole car radio situation hasn't be handled correctly by politicians, at least not here in Denmark. When regular service began, in 2002 in the case of Denmark, politicians should have parsed regulation that required all new cars to be delivered with DAB radio within a certain time frame. You can get a DAB/DAB+ radio in your new car, but you'll have to pay extra. At this point is should simply be the default, othe…

I agree. Here in germany it was also planned to shutdown FM in favor for DAB already for 2010. It was then canceled and postponed due to the fact that nobody has a DAB receiver.

But of course nobody wants to get a DAB receiver as long as they cost 200€ extra, and therefore FM is still the standard in cars. As cars have a super long lifetime that means every car that is now sold with FM works against a FM->DAB switch in 10 years. So even the new plans like "we switch FM off in 2025 if the majority has a DAB radio then" won't work. There should now (or even multiple years ago) have some regulations that car manufacturers have to offer DAB for the same price as FM to get more traction. In the meantime building DAB receivers is often even not more expensive than FM if both are build on top of a software defined radio. However car manufacturers still sell DAB extra for maximising profit.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#146

Post by mikebay »

Yep, all what we need is government controlled news, no alternative possibilities. Welldone norway! We need to keep radio waves clean from bad russian hackers!

I wonder without pirate stations would there be even any alternative opinions/ music / lifestyle existing ?

In future we all have to listen government proven news and music.

I wonder why UK is not following ?

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#147

Post by EamonnMR »

rtpg wrote: post #16
frozenport wrote: post #15

The NPR One radio app costs me an extra $20 dollars a month due to high data usage. And NPR gets none of that cash. If my phone had user facing FM tuning I could probably contribute directly to content creators. I wonder if shutting down FM and replacing it with much more expensive mobile data is a conspiracy by cellular carriers?

Are you sure your phone doesn't have an FM radio? A lot of phones have it built-in (just need to have headphones plugged in for the antenna), but don't advertise it much.

That's the one thing I miss on my old Xiaomi - it came with a ROM that enabled FM and even had a nice app for it.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#148

Post by cuchoi »

winter_blue wrote: post #141
krkoch wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run. Because of all the fjords and valleys, you need many weak transmitters to avoid reflections. Also, because it's FM, they can't overlap in frequency. With DAB, two time-delayed signals (either reflections or multiple towers transmitting the same data-fountain) will enhance the signal. This means that you can have fewer towers.

> It's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run. Won't the free market decide if it's too expensive to run? Or is even radio run by the state in Norway? Otherwise, why prohibit private companies from licensing & broadcasting FM radio? I mean the free market would decide stop to broadcasting when it's not profitable for them anymore. Or is everything state-run in Norway? When I read "one member of t…

Probably they have State infrastructure, maybe it was never profitable for businesses to invest in FM radios in that geography. They still CAN do it, but they won't.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#149

Post by sevensor »

arethuza wrote: post #104
anexprogrammer wrote: post #5

Over 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…

I agree the delay is annoying (especially for live events that you are watching - e.g. fireworks) but overall I've found DAB to be far preferable to FM. Admittedly I pretty much only listen to BBC Radio 4 which is mainly voice rather than music.

And for that matter, AM degrades even better than FM -- at least to my ear I prefer AM static to FM fading.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#150

Post by jasonlingx »

kagamine wrote: post #115
varjag wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one, the electric car market markets itself as green and while they are running on renewable energy, the costs and sources of power for building them are reportedly a lot less environmentally friendly. This is the kind of made up on spot arguments you hear from ICE vehicle owners. Until they switch to EV :) "Manufacturing a mid-sized EV with an 84-mile range results in about 15 percent more emissions than manuf…

Sort of just what I said. I did state "reportedly" and not provide any sources. I don't think I was being unfair to the EV market. However, buying a new car and junking the old one has to be less energy efficient than owning an old car and trying to use it less while utilizing public transport. Public transport is something I could have mentioned in my original post as it is not prioritized enough here in Norway and…

> even though a diesel engine run on veg oil is emissions free

Nonsense.

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