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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 21 2015, @03:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the digital-killed-the-fm-star dept.

The Government of Norway announces

[April 16], the Ministry of Culture announced a national FM-switch off, to complete the transition to digital radio. Norway is making [a] historical move into a new radio era, being the first country in the world to decide upon an analogue switch-off for all major radio channels. With DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and digital radio, listeners will be provided with more radio channels and greater diversity in content.

[...]The DAB-coverage in Norway now exceeds FM-coverage. DAB provides Norway with 22 national channels, as opposed to five channels transmitting nationwide on FM.

[...]Switch-off starts in Nordland county 11th January 2017 and ends with the northernmost counties Troms and Finnmark [13th December] 2017.

Official announcement in Norwegian. Also covered at Ars Technica.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday April 21 2015, @04:08PM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @04:08PM (#173571)

    I've never had DAB so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't DAB all or nothing? With regular FM, as you get further away from the transmitter the noise floor rises (e.g. more static). Eventually you get to the point where you decide there's too much static and change channels. But you get to make that choice.

    With DAB, if there are too many bit errors in a packet then the packet is discarded, and you hear nothing. Maybe every second or two you'll get burst of sound, but nothing like FM.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @04:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @04:19PM (#173574)

    I've never had DAB so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't DAB all or nothing?

    Yes. Digital broadcast is only good for sufficiently good reception.

    Note that another advantage of FM broadcast is that you can reduce static noise considerably if you switch to mono.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Alfred on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:47PM

      by Alfred (4006) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:47PM (#173593) Journal
      This is why I hate digital TV. Dropouts and artifacts abound.

      With analog you could at least mostly hear and see what was going on if it got bad. Especially useful when a bad weather system or tornado was in the area when it was better to have something raspy than nothing.
      • (Score: 2) by danomac on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:54PM

        by danomac (979) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:54PM (#173628)
        FWIW, I noticed the opposite: I had channels that were always fuzzy in analog, and now in digital they are crystal clear. The signal didn't get any stronger, it's still half of what other channels are. On the weaker channels, I have seen artifacts, but I've only noticed an occasional artifact (every ~20 hours of programming I notice one), and it's never dropped out completely. For me, personally, the occasional artifact is much better than a fuzzy picture.

        I've also been in really heavy downpour and haven't noticed artifacts. I'm about 40 miles from the tower, and I don't have line of sight to it.
        • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:45PM

          by Alfred (4006) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:45PM (#173962) Journal
          Wish I had that kind of reception here. I have one real channel that doesn't have some issue in the once a minute timeframe. I guess if I included the odd channels like the all black and white westerns all day channel it would bring the quality average up.
      • (Score: 2) by francois.barbier on Wednesday April 22 2015, @12:26PM

        by francois.barbier (651) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @12:26PM (#173924)

        Same here. Digital TV has been a downgrade here.

        1) analog TV just turn on. No wait for that stupid decoder to load all its crap.
        II) digital TV decoders eat a lot of energy, even when the TV is off... You can shut it down but see point 4.
        C) digital TV is slow when zapping. Analog TV just zaps.
        Four) digital TV decoders can crash. Then you have to wait about 10 minutes for it to cold boot.
        V) Signal quality. Yeah they advertise HD but reduce quality so much (to cram more channels on the line) that it's worse than SD.

        Overall, a waste of time, money and energy.

        • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:53PM

          by Alfred (4006) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:53PM (#173964) Journal
          1) Yup
          2) Really? Though not much concern to me.
          3) Please expound on "zapping" I am not sure what you mean.
          4) Not an issue for me. yet.
          5) Lower quality-> more channels -> more ads -> more money. That is all.

          I suspect that you like myself are not addicted to the tube so much that you will put up with that crap just to get your fix. My tv turns on faster than the computer hooked to it and that signal doesn't have artifacts, so I'm good ~95% of the time.
          • (Score: 2) by francois.barbier on Wednesday April 22 2015, @03:32PM

            by francois.barbier (651) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @03:32PM (#174009)

            2) Yup, a digital TV decoder can record shows when the TV is off. Basically, it's a computer that is powered on all the time. You can unplug it, but next time you want to watch TV, you have to wait for the bloody thing to cold boot.
            3) Sorry, "zapping" is French for changing channels quickly.
            4) You're lucky!
            5) Exactly. So why should I pay more for equivalent or lesser service? Don't forget the decoder is rental too!

            I've had the decoder crash multiple times in the middle of a movie, and having to wait for it to cold boot again. At one point, I got bored and resorted to "illegally" downloading the same movie. The download literally finished before the decoder rebooted. After complaining several times to the company unsuccessfully, I just sent them their crap back and never got to watch normal TV again at home.

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @05:55PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @05:55PM (#174064)

              3) Sorry, "zapping" is French for changing channels quickly.

              It's also used in Germany with that meaning.

            • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 23 2015, @01:50PM

              by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday April 23 2015, @01:50PM (#174290) Journal

              2) Yup, a digital TV decoder can record shows when the TV is off. Basically, it's a computer that is powered on all the time. You can unplug it, but next time you want to watch TV, you have to wait for the bloody thing to cold boot.
              3) Sorry, "zapping" is French for changing channels quickly.
              4) You're lucky!
              5) Exactly. So why should I pay more for equivalent or lesser service? Don't forget the decoder is rental too!

              I've had the decoder crash multiple times in the middle of a movie, and having to wait for it to cold boot again. At one point, I got bored and resorted to "illegally" downloading the same movie. The download literally finished before the decoder rebooted. After complaining several times to the company unsuccessfully, I just sent them their crap back and never got to watch normal TV again at home.

              That doesn't sound like the problem is the digital signal. It sounds like the stupid "cable boxes" we have over here in the states, which universally suck and which they'll try to force you to rent even though you don't always need them. They're not there to convert digital to analog -- any remotely modern TV has a built-in digital receiver already. The boxes exist solely to handle DRM that the cable/satellite provider uses to control which channels you can receive. They're not necessary for broadcast signals like TFA is discussing.

              Some boxes are better than others though -- my parents had a few different types, some were tiny little units powered by a 6V wall adapter with only coax in, coax out...and those worked pretty well -- low power, quick boot, never crashed. Others were these massive boxes with component/composite/coax/HDMI outputs and all this other garbage which worked pretty much as poorly as what you've described. So you might be able to get a better box. Although I think the little ones couldn't do HD or something. Sounds like yours also had a DVR included, which is just more crap to go wrong...

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by soylentsandor on Tuesday April 21 2015, @04:56PM

    by soylentsandor (309) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @04:56PM (#173582)

    I've never had DAB so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't DAB all or nothing?

    Neither have I but I've a read about it, first time when it was still new about 20 years ago. Despite its age it is pretty sophisticated and therefore the answer cannot be straightforward.

    It's not all or nothing, there are error correction bits in the signal. The number of which can be chosen by the broadcaster. Also, receivers can combine the signals of multiple transmitters resulting in a better signal than FM probably could given the same distribution of transmitters. That said, at the edge of the coverage area of a certain station, it is not unlikely that the audio quality will be less than it would have been with FM.

    There's a long page on DAB at wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:01PM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:01PM (#173600) Journal

      Another Wikipedia page explains this a little bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio [wikipedia.org]

      I didn't find it very clear. BUT :Apparently there are a multitude of different standards involved around the world.

      So we are in for the same clusterfuck we went through with CDMA, TDMA and FDMA cdmaOne CDMA2000 WCDMA, on Cell phones/ Radio manufacturers are going to face a geographically fragmented market.

      Also DAB can be carried on top of AM or FM channels, and on the few stations that carry DAB, the DAB portion might only be available over 10% of the range. So that presents another hurdle for manufacturers and another delay for adoption.

      As for combining signals from multiple repeater towers, I've read that doesn't work very well, because a broadcaster's various repeaters sites often have too much delay, and not all (or even most) of the repeaters are DAB capable, and too widely spaced.

      TFA point out that this is only for Norway's national radio system. (I don't know if anything else exists in Norway). So they are in a unique position to impose this cut-over.

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      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:03PM (#173648)

        Sounds like the GGP is thinking of ATSC in the USA.

        Back when the switchover from NTSC happened, in sci.electronics.design we had a guy that lived in the mountains who noted that if a plane flew over he would lose 5 minutes of his movie.
        (ATSC has essentially zero tolerance for multipath.)
        If clouds rolled in, he would lose the rest of the evening's broadcasts.

        Other folks in remote areas that could previously get snowy reception now got nothing.
        Ones and zeros are great--as long as your ones are all above the logic threshold.

        The protocol the USA adopted seems to have been chosen by the cable TV industry.

        Now, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if digital radio in the USA has been done just as badly as TV was.

        -- gewg_

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:09PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:09PM (#174070)

        Apparently there are a multitude of different standards involved around the world.

        Not just around the world, also along in time, at least in Germany: Not too long ago I was glad that I didn't yet buy a DAB radio. That's because the radio station announced that it would update to the newer and bettter DAB+, which of course is incompatible with the old DAB radios.

        I think it's all about planned obsolescence. After all, in the past, they could take a TV standard designed for black/white transmission, and then add colour, then add text information (Teletext), then add 16:9 broadcast, and all that in a way that the decades-old B/W TVs could still receive the broadcast and perfectly display it in 4:3 black and white, with black bars on top and bottom. Similarly, they could add stereo to radio broadcasts without making all the mono radios obsolete.

        Now I understand that the change from analog to digital is necessarily disruptive. However updating a digital format? That should be easier than improving an analog format without breaking backwards compatibility. Actually, I've heard in some broadcast the claim that they didn't make it backwards compatible because they would have had to compromise on quality if they had. I don't believe it; even if breaking backwards compatibility should indeed have enabled a slight quality improvement (which 99.9% of all listeners won't hear anyway), I strongly doubt that was the reason.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:41PM

    by isostatic (365) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:41PM (#173591) Journal

    The broadcasters killed dab in the UK by pushing out far too low a bitrate. This meant the technology was ridiculed and never caught on.

    Of course DRM makes DAB look like DTT in comparison.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:24PM (#173613)

      I regularly use DAB in the the UK. Yes bit rate is low, but my experience is that you get better quality than FM. Although this is a slight apple to oranges situation as with FM you end up with audible white noise on the track where as with DAB you get digital compression artefacts. There is also alot more space for broadcast channels.

      It probably is worth saying that I am not overly worried about audio quality as I mainly listen to talk radio and mostly from the BBC (R4/R5/R5SX). Most of my music comes from CD or the Internet and I will only occasionally listen to R6.

      As for all or nothing, my experience of this is that its true, if the signal is losing slightly more than the ECC technology can handle then you have a horrible garbled noise (similar to the noise you get when you mpg123 at a directory containing cover art). If the signal is much to low then you really do get nothing. The other issue is that the covered areas are quite small and that rescanning in a new area takes a long period of time (maybe due to old hardware), this to me makes it not really practical for usage in cars. But then if you want to listen to Music why not use your own collection in the car.

      For my purposes I think I would be happy with just AM (LW) and DAB. Yes FM sounds better than AM and is more robust than DAB. But as a medium point it does not really service my needs. Plus in a post apocalyptic situation I could build a LW receiver from things I find lying around, from memory ;-).

    • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:48PM

      by GungnirSniper (1671) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:48PM (#173624) Journal

      Similar greediness hurt satellite radio in the US.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:40PM

        by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:40PM (#173640) Journal

        Was it really greed?

        XM and Sirius were both going bankrupt until they merged.

        They now have essentially a captured market, many receivers in the field in homes and cars, and a joint satellite platform. As of October 2012, there are nine satellites in orbit: four XM and five Sirius satellites. That shit is expensive. The prospect of any other players getting into this market is slim to none.

        They now have a near monopoly, and have slowly been raising prices. But signal quality seems the same to me.

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        • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:12PM

          by GungnirSniper (1671) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:12PM (#173652) Journal

          Greed isn't only a financial term. In this case their greed was stuffing as many channels as possible on their services, reducing the quality of the streams to do so.

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:33PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:33PM (#173682)

            Yet its the only differentiator of the product.

            If all you want is "adult hot contemporary" unfortunately there are about three stations shoveling that locally.

            If you want continuous techno then your only choice is buying a satellite HOWEVER the problem is every 0.1% of the listening audience wants a DIFFERENT weird corner.

            The other (related) problem satellite has is their window has already passed. I can't find a place where I can't stream on my phone, assuming I'd want to (I'm more an audiobook/podcast guy). Its very hard to sell a piece of hardware and a monthly subscription when the competition is a free app on the cell phone the user already has.

            Imagine for a minute what listening to unusual music was like, say, 25 years ago. So I'd order old fashioned optical disks of industrial music, kids, we called them CDs as in compact diskettes, and then I'd listen to these disks, only one album per disk, too. Crazy old person stuff. People will look at satellite radio the same way in just a few years, if they don't already. Like those people still paying for AOL in 2015.

            • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:45PM

              by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:45PM (#173688) Journal

              The other (related) problem satellite has is their window has already passed. I can't find a place where I can't stream on my phone

              That's funny, because the only place I have sat radio is in my car precisely because of the long gaps in cell coverage in the Western US. There are parts of Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona where data is not available, or drops down to GPRS speeds.

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              • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:58PM

                by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:58PM (#173701)

                Hmm good point I bet tunnels are interesting too. The stuff I listen to is downloaded, usually over wifi when the phones on a charger, so I don't care much, but some folks like to stream or like live sports or live shows. So that is a good point.

                Still eventually, theoretically the whole world's gonna get wired up, every square foot, and its cheaper to plop a tower down in the desert than to launch a satellite.

                From a purely financial standpoint those satellites aren't going to last forever and investors would be pretty crazy to launch another...

            • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:30PM

              by GungnirSniper (1671) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:30PM (#173741) Journal

              Yet [the number of streams] the only differentiator of the product.

              They also sold themselves as commercial-free, and could have also sold on sound quality as well.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:17PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:17PM (#174073)

              So I'd order old fashioned optical disks of industrial music, kids, we called them CDs as in compact diskettes,

              CDs are old-fashioned? Get off my lawn!
              Old-fashioned music came on vinyl or on magnetic tape in a compact cassette.