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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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB-A, USB-B or USB-C?

It honestly does not matter, since they're compatible. You're trying to make it controversial, but it's really not. My phone uses Lightning, but that doesn't make a bit of difference when I plug it into my car.

[deleted]

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

#233
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also believe this is primarily driven by money, but also a section of Norwegian society seems to believe that anything new and shiny simply must be bought and right away. In a country in which environmental concerns are marketed as paramount by the government and media there are some obvious dichotomies emerging. For one, the electric car market markets itself as green and while they are running on renewable energy…

> 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…

It's not 15% when you already have a gasoline vehicle that you propose to discard. It's 115%, because the alternative is to keep what you have. You can't unproduce what you have.

Keep old car: 0% the emissions of producing it

Buy new gasoline car: 100% the emissions to produce it

Buy new electric car: 115% the emissions to produce a gasoline car

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An aftermarket head unit with DAB+ costs about €150 with installation. Owners of older cars aren't stuck, but they will have to pay for the privilege of continuing to receive radio broadcasts.

Will that integrate into the car electronics, and be able to run e.g. the satnav UI if that is included in the previous one?

This is just another example of satnav being a terrible option to build into cars. Who wants to use a "custom" nav system kludged together by the lowest bidder ten years ago when we have much better on our phones?

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

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It honestly does not matter, since they're compatible. You're trying to make it controversial, but it's really not. My phone uses Lightning, but that doesn't make a bit of difference when I plug it into my car.

Well, they’re not entirely. I recently bought a Nexus 5X, and realised I don’t have a single compatible cable – and had to buy some adapters. Not everyone will have adapters easily available, nor will people want to deal with them.

Your phone didn't come with a USB-C to USB-A cable? I find that hard to believe.

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

#236
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but you didn't have to replace your TV, just add a cheap set-top box. (And not even that if you had cable or satellite TV.) Also, at the time, most people only had one or two TV sets. With DAB, you have to buy a new set, and most people have multiple FM radios: typically living room/hi-fi, kitchen, bedroom alarm clock/radio, car radio, boomboxes, and FM radios in smartphones and MP3 players. We have about a doz…

Actually getting my car to receive "digiTV" costs about $700 :) It's the only TV I have, too. Why can't there be a cheap set-top box for radios though?

UI for digital radio requires a more expensive hardware than for TV set top box (which will be happy with just the antenna in / signal out and power interfaces, and a remote control).

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital TV in the US flopped, as far as I can tell. Broadcasters were killed by their own greed. If a Roku is cheaper than an adapter box, and some of the channels on it are also free-with-commercials, as well as cheap paid content, broadcasters push people away with the transition.

What? Digital broadcasts did not flop in the US. I cant' imagine how you come to that conclusion. You only need an adapter box if you have a non-HD TV. If you have a HD TV all you have to do is plug in an antenna directly into the TV. The government subsided conversion boxes when the transaction happened, which was around 2008 IIRC. If you have a non-HD TV you aren't going to have an HDMI port to plug your Roku into,…

Oh, and if you were wondering what happened to the rest of the analog spectrum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_sp...

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they’re not entirely. I recently bought a Nexus 5X, and realised I don’t have a single compatible cable – and had to buy some adapters. Not everyone will have adapters easily available, nor will people want to deal with them.

Your phone didn't come with a USB-C to USB-A cable? I find that hard to believe.

The 5X only comes with a C-C cable. The 6P comes with both an A-C and a C-C cable.

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

#239
post #100

FM 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.

Problem is DAB coverage sucks compared to FM, it's not an improvement. In the Western Norway with hundreds of tunnels only the bigger ones are equipped with radio relays. Plenty of dead spots outside major highways too. I had to drive Bergen-Voss 4x last June around the time a landslide ruined E16, taking a different detour each time. Very spotty in the tunnels along Hardanger, which is a major route. Even worse out…

Interesting idea! There is cell broadcast for emergency text information, why wouldn't it be possible to broadcast a bunch of audio streams over 4G along with the telephone and internet service? Better than everyone listening to their own stream over 4G.

(Edit: the technology and protocols for this exist and are discussed elsewhere in this thread.)

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

#240
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…

> Or is even radio run by the state in Norway?

Radio and TV have been run by the state (in some way or other) in most European countries from the 1920s until the 1980s. There were exceptions, most notably Luxembourg, which transmitted commercial radio to all its surrounding countries.

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