All posts by Stephen Phillips
Below are all of Stephen Phillips's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
As no-one more expert has responded; I know nothing about the location and frequencies involved but as a general rule the weather and what are known as "propagation conditions" ( the behavior of radio waves as they travel, or are propagated, from one point to another) both change with the conditions of the atmosphere.
Radio propagation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Radio propagation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia #Sporadic-E_propagation
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FM radio will continue to be needed for decades. My family has literally dozens of things which include an FM radio; most of which we plan to continue to use for the rest of our lives.
And digital radios are expensive and hugely hungry for batteries. The trannie** in our bathroom lasts 9 months on a set of batteries.
** I first types "tranny" but I think that is something different that we do not (often) have in our bathroom.
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"no technology lasts forever" is an exaggeration. The wheel remains very popular despite maglev and sewing of clothes remains popular despite alternatives.
Technologies do of course get made redundant when better technologies appear, but this should happen by natural economic forces not by government intervention. I have seen no convincing argument why DAB is BETTER than FM and can present many why it is not. NB I have no wish to ban DAB; I just object to my preferred transmission method being banned. If broadcasters choose not to provide transmissions so be it, but don't ban them.
I am not worried about the end of Freeview as nobody could conceive of relying on Satellite TV which is prone to fail when there are storms and is a monopoly with inadequate back-up if Earth hits a thick patch of asteroids.
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There should be no thought of stopping FM until it represents well under 10% of listening.
ACTUAL listening. Not that 90% of households have A DAB reception set.
Another possibility is to compensate people whose equipment is rendered useless by paying for equivalent new kit.
My B&O Radiogram for example.
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Richard, Your Grace
I hate to trouble a DAB fan with mere facts, but here they are
The share of all radio listening via a digital platform now stands at 44.1%.
The digital share is comprised of
DAB share 30.9%
DTV 5.4%
and listening Online or App 7.8%.
So 30% is very close to 50%?
I would not be surprised if DTV and Online grow faster than DAB.
Why are FM only radios still sold with no warning of imminent uselessness?
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"The share of all radio listening via a digital platform now stands at 41.7%, up from 37.9% for the corresponding period last year.
The share of listening hours to DAB has increased by 9% year on year, with share now at 27.7% from 25.2%
in Q4, 2014"
http://www.rajar.co.uk/do….pdf
Interesting to note that DAB is only a quarter of listening HOURS - surely the true metric?
And even more interesting that that statistic is no longer provided.
The inconvenient truth?
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MikeB it's not just the radiogram, it's the clock radios in every bedroom, the FM radio in my smartphones and tablets which uses no digital signal outdoors (often there is none round our way) , the battery radios in bathrooms that currently last 9 months on a set.
I shall of course simply set up a FM rebroadcaster - doubtless illegally.
I will willingly move to DAB when it presents an advantage. But I will need a dozen sets, not one.
Re DTV I have an insight for you. You don't have to "sit in front of it". There is no need to read the on screen message, and the sound from TV speakers works without line-of-sight. In one room we only have TV radio!
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Two of my FM Clock Radios are also telephones - economical bedside table use!
At the moment I have backup supplies from my late parents' house - Including a 60 year old Ferranti valve set.
Another point is that all the FM sets are synchronised.
Also, digital time signals are wrong. They should not broadcast deceptive pips.
I am greatly amused that when you spend hundreds on a large TV they try to sell you a separate sound system. We have one with built in forward facing speakers either side of the screen. Decent sound and sometimes excellent stereo effects when they bother to have a suitable signal. How do I hear something well to the left of the left speaker?
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Wednesday 29 June 2016 12:38PM
neil - If you mean
Vintage TV (TV channel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- which I have never heard of - it is there on Ch 369 of my Freesat from Sky.