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Norway to be First Nation to Switch Off National Analog FM Stations

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

"gewg_" writes:

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: 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...

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