All posts by Trevor Harris
Below are all of Trevor Harris's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Even more evidence that the BBC sees DRM as the future of radio:
Lindsay Cornell, DRM Technical Committee Chairman
Lindsay Cornell has worked for the BBC for more than 20 years, and has concentrated on radio since 1993, working with FM-RDS, DAB and DRM. He is currently leading the work on The Future of Radio which aims to provide technical leadership to the development of radio technologies that will maintain and extend the reach of the BBCs radio services, both in the UK and across the globe. The work is highly collaborative with emphasis on leveraging the BBCs reputation for technical excellence and diversity of content distribution.
Lindsay represents the BBC in various national and international fora and is chairman of both the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) Technical Committee and the World DMB Technical Committee. Lindsay is special rapporteur for digital radio at the EBU/ETSI/CENELEC JTC Broadcast and is an authority on digital radio standardisation.
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Anything can happen between now and 2018 as technology is moving very quickly. Mimo, High Efficiency Video Coding, 4k, and maybe new transmission technology like "photon angular momentum". Hopefully "Fibre To The Premises" with gigabit internet speeds will be established.
Ofcom should be very careful about committing too early as they did with DAB. Ofcom didn't seem to see HD coming there are only 5 HD channels on Freeview and yet we have 70 on satellite including a 3D channel.
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@MikeB
I wondered why you think fibre internet is awfull. I had FTTC installed a few months ago from Sky and I get a very good service. There is a limitaion with FTTC in that the link speed decreases with distance from the Cabinet. The are various new technologies being introduced to lessen the effect of line length. FTTP is already delivering gigabit speeds in some areas.
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@MikeP
Some time ago the BBC tried to carry out some test to find out how low they could lower the bitrate on HD. For this they used BBC staff. They had to scrap thier first results because a large number of the participents needed to go to specsavers. If you get my drift.
I would hate to go back to a CRT with all its distortions. Although professional CRTs can give very good pictures I don't think many would be willing to pay tens of thousands of pounds for one.
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@Charles Stuart
I have had buffering problems with Iplayer but to be honest I dont use it very much on my PC. The internet has a drawback in that there is no guarentee of a quality of service. Most connections share bandwidth with other users which may limit your bandwidth for short periods.
Sky has Iplayer but do it in a slightly different way. They copy the stream to the hard disc but you don't have to wait for the download to complete before viewing. It waits until sufficient data is buffered and the tells you it is available to view.
Sky Go has a system where you can select your picture quality. Some people prefer this to the auto option.
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@David
Don't we all. The BBC is commited to this expendature even if no one listens. DAB listeneing is still only at 23.9% after 18 years!
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Interesting I wonder if the BBC is actually having second thoughts at last. We now have a new Director General and he might have a different view about DAB. The Government is commited to make a statement by the end of the year but what on earth are they going to say. They certainly will not be able to commit to a definite switchover date. After all 2015 was meant to be a definite date. Every prediction of DAB listening has been very wrong. DAB has failed and the quicker the authorities realise this the better.
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@Mark
Wow do you know Ed Vaizey or the script writer for his speach. How did you get hold of this info. Everyone else has been speculating on what he is going to do. In one way it does not matter what he says because he is likely to be out of office soon.
As for Helen Boaden like all BBC managers probably does not have a clue what is going on in the BBC. It's a bit like the computer project that was steaming ahead until someone pulled the plug. Commitments don't matter either to the Government or the BBC just look at the number of u-turns last year.
Its a bit odd that that Helen Boaden is going to give a speach on an obsolete radio system at a conference for the future of radio.
@David
Unfortunatly DAB+ cannot save DAB because it is still not fit for purpose.
As for the Government paying for local DAB is a complete waist of public money. Local DAB radio will fail like regional DAB did.
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@Briantist
Actually they will not have to switch to DAB. If they switch off Radio 4 will loose a large proportion of it's audience. Some will switch to the internet.
Nobody will switch off any FM stations while it is the most listened to platform. Don't be bullied by the bullies and keep your money in your pocket. What ever happed to "consumer lead".
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Tuesday 1 October 2013 11:26AM
From drm.org
Ruxandra Obreja is Head of Digital Radio Development in the BBC World Service concentrating her efforts on DRM.
In March 2008 Ruxandra was first elected Chairman of the DRM Consortium with the avowed aim of ensuring that the various stakeholders work towards the same goal: the global and mass scale take up of the DRM standard. Ruxandra was unanimously re-elected to this top position in March 2012.
So the BBC is leading the way in DRM development at least in the World Service. The BBC is already using DRM for the world service.
It is my view that the BBC has been holding off from DRM+ until DAB has been firmly established. The failure of DAB is a bitter blow to the BBC. It makes it difficult for the BBC to introduce a new technology after the spectacular failure of DAB. I don't see how the BBC can hold off from DRM and DRM+ for very much longer.