All posts by Anthony
Below are all of Anthony's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
This will mean more sub 128k mono or joint stereo radio stations and even more poorer reception quality and robustness-that's the way isn't it? quantity over quality! DAB is so inefficient with it's outdated musicam compression and MP2 codecs that you cannot have quality and quantity at the same time. If you as broadcaster want stereo quality good bit rate transmissions then you HAVE to pay for it AND dearly, on the other hand if you are happy to accept RUBBISH low bit rates and poor sound then it will be OK for you.
If you think I am going to DAB think again-as long as the quality and reception remain dire across the UK as they currently are then I don't see why I should change, Freeview/Freesat/Sky and online offers much better quality over DAB, also the other problem with DAB is the powerhungryness of the sets-a set of good high power alkaline batteries in a DAB radio barely last a fortnight and the setmakers will have to improve on this AS WELL before I EVER invest in a DAB set EVER AGAIN, I had DAB set a fair few years ago but I threw it against the wall and smashed it up because I couldn't get good reception where I lived out of it. Unless DAB gets better than it currently is I WILL NOT HAVE IT.
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DAB is an incredibly poor system for UK local and national digital radio-it has outdated MP2 coding and codecs, extremely harsh digital MUSICAM compression (which doesn't do good for dynamics and fidelity), poor robustness and error correction, and bubbling mud/unpleasant audio if you don't get good reception, and you can't have a high number of stations in decent quality stereo in a mux (something has to give;you can either have a high number of stations at low bit rates and mono in a DAB mux;which a lot of stations have gone for, OR a maximum of 6 stations of high quality stereo sound/bit rates in a DAB mux, it's EITHER quality OR quantity BUT YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH).
DRM and DRM+ should have been used for AM and FM services and has some good advantages-
an improvement of the audio quality on AM (which CAN be almost as good as FM provided the broadcasters and transmitter operators get the bit rates and transmission/propagation modes right) and a much bigger reach for local and national AM services;a 75kW omnidirectional 360degree beam shortwave transmitter transmitting in DRM mode from the Midlands on a 49m band shortwave frequency would adequately cover the WHOLE of the United Kingdom and maybe part of Western Europe as well for example, while on the FM band DRM+ can carry up to four stations on a single FM frequency at CD quality stereo (and if the FM band in the UK was COMPLETELY covered with DRM+ services in this method of four radio stations at CD quality stereo per frequency, then there'd be plenty of choice with lots of high quality radio for all), also with the DRM+ test in Edinburgh that the DRM consortium carried out with transmissions of BBC Radio Nan Gaidheal's Gaelic service, it was also found that, at a much reduced transmitting power over a difficult transmission terrain like the hills buildings trees and structures of Edinburgh, DRM+ coped very well with this providing excellent audio fidelity and much better robustness to the challenging transmission area that it was presented with,
A nice EPG which makes finding your favourite radio station EASY PEASY,
Automatic frequency retuning should the broadcaster change frequency during the programme to suit propagation conditions and it would also do the same if what the radio is tuned to isn't picking the chosen frequency up well (and it would do this automatically saving you having to do it so a nice bit of convenience there for the listener),
OK with DRM you do get digital dropouts if propagation is severe on MW after dark and SW at various times of the day and night (but there are ways around it by different propagation and robustness modes being deployed to the DRM system on SW and MW), and LW isn't quite as prone to digital dropouts posed to DRM-SW transmissions and DRM-MW transmissions and maybe this could have been trialled and used in the UK for this in lieu of the variable SW/MW bands. RTE Radio One did some overnight tests on 252kHz LW in DRM mode at 120kW erp into Great Britain and Western Europe and this proved that it could be done and they received some good reception reports from the UK and various parts of Western Europe from listeners to the transmissions.
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Problem is-relay transmitters and ultra low powered sub-relay transmitters do not have capacity to carry a lot of HD channels, to do this you either;
-convert all transmitters main/relay and sub-relay to dvb-t2 format,
OR -totally switch to MPEG4 transmission for all services, this will ultimately give much better quality and space for more channels with DD5.1 surround sound audio bit streams available to all services sd and hd.
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DVB-T2 will be a better alternative for all high power tx sites, low power relays then and ultra low-power less than a Kw sub-relays for urban, rural and difficult to reach areas that can't pick up relays and high power transmitters. If Freeview did go full MPEG4 you just bring out MPEG4 capable Freeview HD boxes and televisions to suit it. MPEG4 has more capacity, more bandwidth and can carry more channels at much better quality, MPEG4 SD is better quality over MPEG2 SD, can in more more channels with no quality loss, and can support SD and HD channels in the same MUX slots at the same time, along with Dolby Digital Plus stereo multilingual surround and mono bitstreams-flexibility quality and broadcaster friendliness all in one, and more people get to see more irrespective of transmitters they are tuned to-sub relay/relay and main high power tx sites.
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By bringing ALL I player content under the licence fee, this would also mean that if all you do is access BBC radio content YOU would also have to pay a licence fee too which to me is unfair indeed. It reminds me of the old scheme where you had to have a BBC Radio licence, which was scrapped years ago. This is basically expanding it into a catch-all system where radio would fall back under a licence scheme that was scrapped years ago. Seems very backwards thinking to me.
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UHD on Freeview would be an interesting concept but would the existing transmitter and broadcast chain from studio to receiver handle it?
You'd need-
Complete studio refurbishment with full UHD 4K cameras, 5 channel surround sound boom microphones for surround sound programme making ie game shows comedy and music programmes,
Outside broadcast vehicles with the same equipment,
Fibre optic lines capable of handling the extra bandwidth and multichannel sound capability of the new broadcasts,
and UHD4K Freeview TVs and PVR's on sale to pick up and receive the new broadcasts.
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MikeB what about people with DAB radio sets? They can still access BBC Radio without a licence, plus don't forget, there WILL eventually come a time when all BBC and commercial radio will leave MW and FM wavebands for good once the 100% DAB covered right across the whole of the United Kingdom. In that instance would licenceless DAB radio owners be needlessly chased and hounded for TVL payments even though they haven't got a TVL? Only way you can make BBC Radio available to licence free payers on the DAB radio platform is to introduce sets with a Conditional Access Module card reader unit built-in and use of an encryption system-a remember a system years ago for such digital pay-radio that was devised by the deceased Radio Nova genius Chris Cary that was based on such a scheme called Radio Exidy which never took off.
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MikeB Ordinary HD tuners in Freeview and Freesat HD are NOT capable of handling 4k UHD transmissions so only external UHD 4k set top boxes, in that regard, will provide a satisfactory source for 4k ready sets BUT these sets will NOT receive such transmissions internally in their in-built tuners;there be pressure brought to bear on the owners of Freeview and Freesat to deliver satellite and terrestrial UHD 4k services on a free-to-air basis terrestrially and via satellite because that is consumers will EXPECT and that is what broadcasters and transmission providers will WANT, and set manufacturers HAVE to respond to the call by bringing out sets with in-built UHD 4k tuners, it'll happen, it just has to.
Also broadband is still not available around the UK widely as you think it is;there are still areas that don't have it and will take years to get it to everybody also broadband speeds are not the greatest to deliver 4k UHD down phonelines with mediocre speeds in many areas even with promises of fast speeds in rural areas a pipedream.
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MikeB satellite has tonnes of bandwidth and can easily carry lots of fta and pay-tv UHD 4K services as for Freeview that will requires a bit more engineering ingenuity and technical jiggery-pokery to accommodate UHD 4K services due to the more limited bandwidth.
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Wednesday 17 December 2014 10:55AM
Well said John!