All posts by Willie Bone
Below are all of Willie Bone's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
The map for local DAB in Ayrshire is now months out of date. The step 1 relay extension in Girvan was switched on last spring! Check out the information about Arqiva Ayr: Ayr multiplex and DAB radio coverage Arqiva
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Folks, before we all make wild predictions, bear in mind the BBC is still struggling with listeners to turn off Radio 4 long wave and to date, the listeners are winning! Even in Ireland, RTE are struggling with priests who want to disallow RTE to switch off the 252 kHz transmitter! All this happening in Ireland while the pope can listen to DAB+ Radio in his popemobile!
We live in a strange world where some people want to hang on to the steam age of broadcast reception!
P.S.I am not one of them...
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'Why do less than one in five people with an HD set watch in HD?'
The short answer is some people cannot perceive it, irrespective of academic ability or how good their sight is!
Some people are deceived that UK DAB radio is in good quality sound, but yet others perceive DAB as nothing more than a mid fidelity system and have since moved platforms to get their acoustic pleasing fix, either by streaming online radio or plugging satellite radio (on tv) into a hifi system for selected services!
Back to HD, it is a perception issue shared with widescreen transmission, some people are actually blind to picture enhancements!
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MikeB: The long wave transmitter for RTE Radio 1 including opt outs was DRM enabled some years ago for overnight testing! Unfortunately, DRM broadcasting did not cut the mustard in Europe with Bluetooth/WiFi enabled digital radio stealing the DRM buttered scone and jam!
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The BBC and the NHS have two things in common, both services are free at point of delivery. Secondly, public financial support both for NHS and the BBC is currently not negotiable! The BBC Royal Charter will run until Hogmanay 2027 with a change to the tv licence arrangement very unlikely to happen before then.
I think everyone realises that ultimately, there is no such thing as a free lunch! Good tv and radio content does cost a lot of money!
The tv licence arrangement is not universally supported, some people favour a subscription service for accessing BBC programmes. The major obstacle to a BBC subscription service is, the BBC would no longer be a public service broadcaster behind a pay wall because it would not be available to all!
Commercial tv & radio advertising costs are passed on to the consumer, so we do pay for well known brands in the end.
I strongly believe in a duopoly service with the BBC and commercial broadcasters! The latter now suffering some content quality issues as a result of over-deregulation of the communications act!
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Thought For The Day is a bit like the Sea Area Weather Forecast For Fishing, you don't have to be a church goer or a fisherman/woman to either enjoy or respect these short intermissions, running through the years and causing more good than harm to everyone!
Let's face it, Thought For The Day is a lot less boring than some of the current political topics argued over on the Today programme & other morning current affairs morning programme in the BBC regions!
Retain some charm on BBC Radio 4, keep Thought For The Day, along with Choral Evensong over on BBC Radio 3...
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I live in the sticks within Dumfries & Galloway region and rely mostly on 4G delivery for radio services with decent choice! The coverage cutback of Absolute Radio AM will not affect me, nor most Absolute Radio fans who were early converts to digital!
I even need 4G to receive my local community radio service, Alive Radio 107.3 from Dumfries..
4G signal rception in Dumfries & Galloway region has greatly improved since December 2017..
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It's doubtful whether the radio industry will ever invoke 'step 2' of the local DAB expansion plan to Cumbria (requiring 13 transmitters), Dumfries & Galloway (requiring 8 transmitters to serve less than 150,000 people), not to mention the highlands and islands of Scotland!
With 4G and the advent of better 5G to carry all types of services, why rely on a sound only DAB digital radio platform for rural service delivery?
Why not swap the BBC National DAB frequency block in exchange for Digital One's two frequency blocks! Run a separate frequency for BBC National DAB over Scotland and convert (initially) BBC Radio 3, BBC Asian Network and BBC World Service to DAB+, allowing space and real national carriage for the two BBC Scottish regional services!
Time for the BBC to challenge "conventional thinking" on how to deliver digital radio services..
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Troopers, Some viewers cannot PERCEIVE High Definition imagery which has nothing to do with attitude of mind, wearing the wrong spectacles, aptitude of an individual or how standard vision channels are prioritised on an electronic programme guide!
It's like somone who cannot tell the general difference between mid-fidelity DAB and the same channel outlets on higher audio quality online radio! You either get the drift or you don't!
There is a rate of diminishing returns verses cost when viewers are invited to leap from 1080i/1080p video quality to UHD television content! I suspect UHD will be a back burner revolution as a result! Time will tell..
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Thursday 31 August 2017 8:26AM
David Finnie: I live outside Thornhill village in Dumfries & Galloway (D&G) and currently rely on WiFi digital radio sets for digital reception on commercial radio & BBC Radio Scotland.
Local DAB including BBC Radio Scotland's regional opt-out for D&G news will not become a reality until after a digital radio switchover announcement in 2018/19, giving listeners a two year notice to convert! According to the current OFCOM plan, a multiplex identified as 'Glasgow South' will then bring signal coverage for local DAB throughout most of D&G which may require up to eight transmitter relay sites! Glasgow North on the other hand will be a merged Ayrshire & Glasgow multiplex for local DAB..
Personally, I am not expecting local DAB in D&G until 2020/21!!