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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

#251

Post by scholia »

skrause wrote: post #225
scholia wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DAB sound quality can be as good as you like, but as implemented, it's generally very low. (Stations use low bit-rates to reduce costs.) On average, in fact, DAB sound quality is much lower than FM, assuming you're in a good signal area and/or have a decent FM aerial. You also need a lot more expensive masts to provide DAB coverage. In many places where you get poor FM reception, you get "bubbling mud" or no DAB rece…

You must be from the UK. The "bubbling mud" is a property of the old DAB which also uses MP2 for the audio (an 80s technology codec). Here in Germany it's all DAB+ which has better error correction with a more robust signal (and no bubbling). Radio stations in Germany also tend to use 96-128 kbit AAC/HE-AAC which sounds way better than FM radio.

Yes, I've already mentioned that.

See some of my other comments, including: "Some countries have stations at 48kbps. The UK is leading the drive to lower sound quality with DAB+ stations on the SDL multiplex at 32kbps."

> Radio stations in Germany also tend to use 96-128 kbit AAC/HE-AAC which sounds way better than FM radio.

Lucky you. Most UK stations are on 80kbps with MP2, and we have music stations broadcasting at 64kbps in mono. The BBC often manages 112-128kbps but only ONE station does better than that: BBC classical music station Radio 3 is at 160-192kbps. No DAB+ station broadcasts at more than 32kbps.

In other words, there isn't a single UK radio station that reaches FM quality. None of them sounds way better.

If you want to feel my pain, see http://www.wohnort.org/DAB/uknat.html

Look at London 3, which I get at home, and weep....

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

#252

Post by dagss »

audunw wrote: post #82
dagss wrote: post #55

Consensus from a lunch table in Norway: It was stupid to spend money on DAB now, it happens right as people move from radio to streaming. Many will move to streaming on 4G instead of DAB (which seems to have as good coverage or better, at least for me...then consider if the money spent on DAB had been spent on cellular instead). The populist party that kicked it off in the first place is now the only party to oppose…

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-…

I wasn't really talking about "replacing 1:1 now". The point is radio is about to die the same way broadcast TV is about to die. (The radio and TV stations may do just fine, you can listen/watch shows from them online too...it is just not being able to hit the pause button that will seem queer in some years). Perhaps it may take as long as 10 more years, but we could have kept FM alive just fine for that long. This just accelerates the process.

I sure hope the DAB investment was meant for a lot longer than 10 years.

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

#253

Post by gozur88 »

Roboprog wrote: post #205
aluhut wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and Cars are not there yet. We have strong campaign for DAB once a year here in Germany to remind people that there is something like DAB+. We had one this year again. Thats when I realized that despite using so many rental cars, I haven't seen one with DAB. So I guess it's an extra you have to pay for more then for FM. I don't know anyone having a DAB radio. I guess people remember the DVBT debacle from a few yea…

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.

In my social circle a lot of people have canceled their cable service and gone back to broadcast since since the digital switchover. There are dozens more channels than there used to be, and with better quality. If digital TV has flopped you wouldn't know it here.

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

#254

Post by gozur88 »

scholia wrote: post #181
Already__Taken wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't we be better using this spectrum for even more data to stream anything, including DAB?

FM is amazingly cheap, and green. You can reach millions of listeners with high quality sound. In many cases, you can reach tens of millions for exactly the same cost. Until you need another mast, the extra cost per user is $0. Smartphone chips already include FM so there's no extra cost to reaching mobile users, with no extra bandwidth consumption. (Not FM's fault if some smartphone makers don't use the FM capabilit…

Broadcast is fine and will always have a place, but there's no reason to use analog any more. It's too inefficient from a spectrum perspective.

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

#255

Post by jschwartzi »

dest wrote: post #107
kalleboo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audio is surprisingly low-bandwidth compared to what today's networks are designed for. I'm not sure what the total bandwidth of a site is, but I've gotten 130 Mbps speed test results over 4G - right there you have up to 2000 typical DAB+ streams, and I'm certain a site can handle multiples of that. And if people are listening to something like Spotify, a lot of the data will be cached.

Still, listen a lot to the radio on 4G and you will most likely hit you mobile data cap (1GB ~ 1h of 64kbit audio a day for a month)

T-Mobile in the US doesn't limit data usage for many streaming services, including Spotify.

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

#256

Post by vidarh »

digi_owl wrote: post #199
vidarh wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the caveat that Telenor is 54% owned by the Norwegian government (as of September 2016) [1], with a further 5% owned by Folketrygdfondet (government run social security fund), and a further 0.8% by DNB Asset Management, a subsidiary of the bank DNB ASA, which is again 34% owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry... [1] https://www.telenor.com/investors/share-information/major-sh...

And? The government has declared itself to be a hands off shareholder...

The government declares itself a lot of things until it declares itself something else. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying that implying it's entirely privately owned is a bit misleading.

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

#257

Post by sundvor »

kagamine wrote: post #116
sundvor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New cars were still going to be built though so it's better that they are electrical, especially when you have 100% clean energy to source it (dam hydro). The 24 month upgrade cycle is hardly unique to Norway; Australia being another where everyone and his dog gets a new phone biannually.

1. Tax breaks and other incentives boost new sales, so the number of new cars is higher than if the market had continued as before. There is an argument for that having an impact. 2. Not 24 months, 12. And it encourages people who would not have upgraded for years to upgrade every year, year on year.Do you really need a new phone every 12 months?

1. As it's only the electric cars that receive your incentives, it's a very worthwhile push to clean energy. Also the first generation of these cars will make it to the 2nd hand market about now, further increasing the penetration. Number of new cars might have been lower without, but the percentage of electric cars would have been a mere fraction. (Edit: And filthy diesel cars would likely be the ersatz).

2. Oh, right, 12 months - me bad. Yep that is pretty awful. I'm coming up on 24 months on my own but could really stretch it longer with my S6 Edge being a great phone.

(As a PS my Rotel / Infinity hi-fi system is 21 years old now, and going strong.)

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

#258

Post by winter_blue »

wodenokoto wrote: post #182
winter_blue wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? As a Scandinavian, that is kinda fun to read. Of course Radio is state run. I still get surprised when I hear commercials on the privately owned stations. Private radio stations pretty much became a thing after I grew up and stopped listening to Radio. When I was a kid, there were maybe one commercial station and they didn't air in my city. Commercial TV-station were sti…

> Commercial TV-station were still mostly broadcasting from England, due to the former state monopoly. To many Scandinavians this is the most natural thing in the world

A state monopoly is a restriction on freedom.

I'm fairly libertarian-leaning (on some issues), and what you're saying sounds to me like: "our lack of freedom is the most natural thing in the world".

It's like a slave who's lived in slavery all his life saying that "slavery is the most natural thing in the world". Doesn't matter if the slave master has treated the slave well and given him/her a comfortable life.

A law that prevents private television broadcasters from existing is a violation of the people's freedom to organize and form their own broadcast networks.

I find your acceptance and nonchalance at this honestly quite disturbing.

There's nothing natural in a state monopoly. It's a restriction on individual freedom, and it's as simple as that.

The thing I find unnatural is people not caring about their freedom, and willingly (and happily) surrendering it over to the state.

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

#259

Post by digi_owl »

vidarh wrote: post #256
digi_owl wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? The government has declared itself to be a hands off shareholder...

The government declares itself a lot of things until it declares itself something else. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying that implying it's entirely privately owned is a bit misleading.

Given the number of debacles involving both Telenor and DNB mismanagement in recent years, one would have thought there would have been plenty of opportunities for the government as shareholder to take action. But so far none of that has materialized...

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

#260

Post by Johnythree »

gravypod wrote: post #64
timonoko wrote: post #23

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.

What is a fjord?

Something that Parrots pine for..

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pining%20for%...

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