271–280 of 289 posts
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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?
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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...
Norwegian governments have decades of history of extensive interference in the markets (and today control ~1/3 of the value of the companies on the Oslo Stock Exchange)
Again, I'm not saying this is necessarily bad - it's generally worked well, and it's worked well probably largely because there certainly is tradition to stay hands off when possible. And during crises give them enough rope to either save themselves or hang themselves first - no politician wants to step into the middle of a scandal and risk being tainted...
At the same time influence can be subtle - because Telenor knows what is politically acceptable, they'd be highly unlikely to do anything that'd create political pressure to interfere. That can be as effective as direct control.
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.
> 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. Doesn't that imply that there wasn't anyone to hear anything in the first place?
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?
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This makes a lot more sense. The article came off as a ban on FM. It's actually only that the state will no longer put money into FM radio and infrastructure.
> The article came off as a ban on FM. Interesting cultural difference; I would never have it interpreted it like that. I did wonder whether the commercial stations would also leave FM. A large country like Norway is likely to have only state broadcasting in its more remote areas, but additionally commercial broadcasters in the more populated regions.
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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,…
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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.
In Norways case I wonder if AM does not work due to the hilly terrain or something. Don't think there are any stations, I never listened to AM at least and just barely heard about it.
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The worst thing about DAB for me is that any signal interruption causes complete lack of sound, and then my car takes at least 5 seconds to tune back in. It's extremely infuriating - I much prefer FM radio which gets noisy, but at least you can continue listening, even when driving through poor signal area.
Only with cheap radios. Any advanced receiver will be constantly hunting for the best backup channel so the change over is undetectable.
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It's not clear that there are any good alternative uses for the FM spectrum. The UK plan is to move the national stations to DAB and use the old FM bandwidth for community and local radio. My personal expectation is that the FM spectrum will be taken over by pirate stations.
It will be immediately used with for long-distance Wireless Internet. Testing has already started.