All posts by Anthony
Below are all of Anthony's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.bbc radio lancashire covers a fair old area from Winter Hill on 103.9 mhz vhf stereo and far beyond because of the transmitters high location and huge omnidirectional transmission beam;it can be heard quite clearly on that frequency in east lancs in addition to 95.5mhz vhf stereo from hameldon hill near Burnley.
BBC R Lancs on Freeview should replicate the same coverage area offered by the vhf-fm stereo transmissions currently broadcast from Winter Hill tx.
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I enjoy my local Northwest Tonight programme;it keeps me informed about the days news and events in a style that's friendlier and more concise than ITV regional news and it occasionally raises a smile to an ordinary programme with delightful presenters that warm to the hearts of the region.
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All this is gonna be a total disaster;if bbc is slightly tacky now (and it IS), think what it would be like as a private broadcaster, constant rubbish, mediocre standards, poor service and flat dire programming! Bit like current ITV plc which relies less on publicservice unlike it used to do under 17 separate companies under their own agendas schedules and local programmes and quite rightfully kept an eye on by the IBA who set decent standards, knew best and took poor standards to book seriously and brought broadcasters to heel if anything fell out of line. It's unfocussed chaos today!
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Mark Agius: world service should never have abandoned shortwave as it is only way to reach million of listeners worldwide;not everybody has internet/broadband/satellite dish or smartphone especially poor countries where such technology is expensive. Omnidirectional shortwave transmitters for europe asia america africa the middle east asia the pacific oceania and other places than directional beams would ensure wherever you are you can hear it on an affordable decent quality shortwave portable that costs less to run than a powerhungry drm dab dab+ fm portable that gobbles alkaline and lithium batteries.
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A
More digital radio stations. Ofcom - finally - proposes DAB+Tuesday 22 April 2014 9:17AM
Accrington
DAB is poor quality and not very robust in built up areas or hilly mountaineous zones.
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A
More digital radio stations. Ofcom - finally - proposes DAB+Tuesday 22 April 2014 9:20AM
Accrington
I would like to see DRM+ on FM and DRM on MW/LW/SW to complement DAB+ and kick it into gear. WDR Langenburg sounded excellent in NW England on MW after dark with stereo sound and good quality.
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A
More digital radio stations. Ofcom - finally - proposes DAB+Tuesday 22 April 2014 2:02PM
Accrington
MikeB: I have heard DRM transmissions on MW LW and SW and listened to some DRM+ trials on VHF/FM at consumer electronic fairs and many sounded pretty excellent provided the transmission parameters, bit rates etc are right.
DRM and DRM+ provides big area coverage using existing transmission infrastructure and can work in tandem with DAB+ providing additional services and extend coverage to transmission areas where reception is likely to be poor ie built up areas, hilly regions and mountaineous parts of the country where DAB+ is unlikely to function well.
AM and FM DRM/DRM+ transmissions can get further than a low power DAB/DAB+ transmission can and should be used as fillers to counteract this;DAB+/DRM/DRM+ radios would carry an autotune flag in the signals to retune to the same service on any of the platforms should one platform prove poor reception, this would also make for easier in-car reception too.
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A
More digital radio stations. Ofcom - finally - proposes DAB+Wednesday 30 April 2014 1:42PM
Accrington
I used to have a DAB radio a few years ago but gave it up when I couldn't get decent reception even with with the aerial fully extended and even near a window (I live in a built up area which hinders DAB reception). When I get it right I still get bubbling mud and break up and when cars go past it descends to a bubbling mess!!! I won't touch the technology ever again and will stick with good quality FM and reasonable medium wave on my 80's midi hifi system.
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The problem with DAB is that it's expensive to go on and broadcast as a medium which is why not all stations are keen. To get lots of the existing AM and FM broadcasters to go onto DAB is fraught with problems-
most would have to broadcast at very low bit rate quality mono to fit them in to the multiplexes' limited bandwidth,
where a broadcaster gets the capacity to go stereo it will be a fair to poor quality joint stereo and bitrate,
and the cost goes up and up depending on what the station wants;
poor quality bit rate mono on a multiplex is just about acceptable (for speech broadcasting), then the cost goes up for a joint stereo slot even further (joint stereo is fair but can make some instruments vocals and sounds appear odd sounding), and a full quality 20kHz per channel stereo slot on a DAB multiplex is MEGAEXPENSIVE STILL.
To get maximum stereo quality on DAB multiplexes you can only have 6 stations in high quality stereo at 192kbps, which would obviously limit how many stations you could carry at good quality.
DAB+ has more bandwidth and can more comfortably carry more stations in better quality and stereo too for those that want it-it's about time DAB+ was implemented than the half baked rubbish the BBC would have us go with.
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Sunday 2 March 2014 5:19PM
Accrington
Briantist: this is an interesting concept, and something Freeview could benefit greatly from in a big way. From winter hill all three bbc local radio stations lancs merseyside and merseyside would have big audiences on the omnidirectional beam mode. Lancaster Haslingden and Pendle Forest transmitters and smaller sub-relays can carry just BBC Radio Lancashire on its own.