All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Craig: What do you mean by 'problems'. If you mean signal breakup, look at signal strength - your only 24km from the transmitter. If they are both suffering low signal strength, check the common factor - bad connection from aerial perhaps?
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I suspect that the press will make a big a deal of this as they did of digital switchover and then 4G. Of course, in neither case did the worst case scenarios (which they themselves pushed) come to pass.
As the article above says, most aerials will be fine anyway, and by the time comes, there may actually very few of the older aerials around anyway.
Any word on the expected date for switchover from DVB to DVB-T2? Might as well kill two birds with one stone!
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Classic FM's playlist tends towards the 'Worlds Greatest Classical CD', which is fine for a while, but challenging its not, and its film music tends to be a bit from John Barry (I'm a huge Barry fan, but there are only so many times you can hear 'Out of Africa'), the really boring Howard Shore music from one of the Rings films (they tend to blend into one), and Ladies in Lavender.
R3 isn't easy listening, but there is a lot of good stuff you just wont hear on Classic FM, even though its (small) audience complains of 'dumbing down'. And there is no way that Classic FM would cover the Proms - far too obscure.
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nicholas: And yet:
'In the UK, 45.3% of all radio listening hours by the second quarter of 2016 were through digital platforms, with DAB making up for the majority of digital radio listening (71%),[4] and 55.7% of UK households claim to have access to a DAB radio set.'
Digital radio in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
According to Rajar, for Q2 2016, DAB has 32.2% of listening (with a 44.8% reach), plus 8% for online/apps (with a 19.3% reach). FM is on 54.7%, with a 74.9% reach.
http://www.rajar.co.uk/do….pdf
We are still listening to FM a lot (and why is it perfection?), but digital, in one form or another, is gaining, with all digital only 10% behind FM. Considering just how many FM receivers there are, we evidently do want DAB or other digital.
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Juliette: Check the box by plugging it into another tv - if its not working, then its the box, but check first if its your aerial system at fault.
However, if itsa sky box (you mentioned the remote), then thats skys problem.
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StevensOnln1: I'm fairly sure this topic comes up about every two months, and we all say the same thing:
a) There is no way current internet capacity or coverage would allow a switch away from Freeview/Freesat, and thats not likely for quite a while yet either
b) In terms of cost effectiveness, terrestial transmissions work well, and it would require a huge shift for people to use other means - and we are really bad at huge shifts when it comes to broadcastign technology
c) The low provsion of DAB equipment in cars has been probably the single biggest barrier to digital radio takeup, but hopefully this will improve. FM isn't going away any time soon, but with both the churn rate of new DAB equiped cars on the market, upgrades to existing cars with cheaper DAB units and mobile streaming, it will loose even more market share.
d) We all use more mobile phones, more often. The vast majority of phone numbers I processed yesterday at work were mobile numbers, and those were the ones customers gave immediately (yes, mobile numbers are far better when setting up a delivery, but they generally just gave a mobile number anyway). And so that capacity has to come from somewhere.
e) DVB-T2 will allow much more efficient use of the existing/remaining TV spectrum, so we can have our cake and eat it. And the cost of a DVB-T2 box is less than fifty quid, and in most cases, people will already have all the equipment they need anyway.
Lets see if anything changes in the next two months....
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steve P: DAB radios are not that expensive - you can pick one up from Argos for twenty quid, and all DAB radios have FM as well. Yes, the current DAB radios use a lot of power, relatively speaking, but the next generation will have more efficient chips, and most people use their radios plugged into the mains, or can of course stream via a phone. Its not a dealbreaker.
You might plan to use an FM radio for the rest of your lives, but no technology lasts forever, or at least is supported. Music companies no longer release albums on 8 track or C60 cassettes, laser discs are for collectors only, and you wont find VHS tapes in HMV any more. There are those upset that their Amstrad computer takes 3.5in floppies, and neither are sold any more. I'm sure people are angry that the device they once bought which uses these technologies cannot play the latest content, but thats the way it is.
At some point, FM will disappear (although LW is still hanging on), but until digital has critical mass, thats not going to be for a while.
People who worry about this, the possible end of Freeview, etc are a bit like people who write angry letters to the press about the visible lack of preparation by authorities for a coming zombie apocalypse - its very unlikely to happen, and if it does, we'll probably able to deal with it.
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Friday 9 September 2016 9:58PM
B.Mason: Could you define what you mean by 'interference'? If the picture is pixallating and breaking up, check signal strength - your 36km from the transmitter, so if its a bit high then that can happen. or is its something else?