ICE scrappage scheme anyone?

stockhausen

stockhausen

stockhausen

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The government needs to put in place an FM radio scrappage scheme ... or face a public backlash over its plans for the national switchover in 2015, according to an influential committee of peers.
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Car manufacturers are still fitting vehicles with FM radios despite the fact that in a few years' time they will only be able to receive local and community radio.
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Millions of car owners will have to fit converters to receive a digital service.
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Almost two-thirds of listening takes place at home with 18% in cars – where the vast majority of listening is analogue and most of it is to FM stations.
... (The Guardian)
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Does anyone here have any practical experience of DAB usage in a car? I have heard that at the moment, add-on DAB receivers such as THIS are VERY unreliable, they require an additional aerial mounted on the screen or the roof and they certainly seem pretty clunky.
 
I use the Pure Highway and it works well most of the time, I only have the standard windscreen aerial bluetacked to my screen, I do get drop outs every now and then, but most of the time im fairly happy with it.

Sound quality isnt as good as FM, but I listen to 5live mainly, so I certainly a hear the difference.

Ive also had the DAB adaptor for my old JVC DVD unit, and that wasnt bad either,but I used to get very poor reception along the M1 past Notts/Derby.

You do need an extra aerial as in a car you are constantly on the move, but once analogue is switched off, the DAB station will get much stronger (ie increased BW)
 
I got Dad to spec DAB on his E60 LCI, and as it's factory fitted it's all integrated nicely into the iDrive and just has the one normal aerial for mobile/GPS/FM/DAB.

The quality is fine; but I'd say the coverage is a bit patchy round here with all the hills - for example the dealership (Wellsway) doesn't have coverage but, once your out in the open it's fine.
 
I used one in the M3 and TBH it was pretty rubbish, as said it is good where coverage is good but that was probably in less than 25% of places for me
 
I really cannot understand why they would discontinue the analogue signal. :confused:
I heard there is somewhere like 120 Million radios that will be binned if this happens. :eek:
About as Green as Red.

Also Digital sets use Much more power. < About as Green as Pink now a.
 
I don't get it either, when in a good signal quality area, analogue gives better sound quality. So whats the point?
 
Probably something to do with Control, I bet its harder to transmit digital radio therefore controlling the airways so they can rinse more money out of it.
 
I have a factory fitted Dab option on mine integrated into the radio setup on iDrive. The sound quality is fine and if the signal cannot be received it can automatically switch to FM reception and back again when it comes back.
 
malc30 said:
Probably something to do with Control, I bet its harder to transmit digital radio therefore controlling the airways so they can rinse more money out of it.
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It's to free up bandwidth as Muffin said. Can be used for other things, not sure what at the moment though :p
 
I use my iPhone with fstream, its free and works very well... unless you drop out of a 3g area in which case it doesnt work at all :D
 
Couldn't care less about the radio stations, but i could care about the TMC broadcasts, i needs those for the satnav traffic info, i just hope the addon DAB module will allow TMC otherwise sometime in the future its Nav upgrade time.
 
DAB could have been used for almost CD quality audio (which would probably have meant a better uptake in the long term), but it seems to be even more heavily compressed than a poor MP3 in a bid to fit more channels in. :(
 
malc30 said:
I really cannot understand why they would discontinue the analogue signal. :confused:
I heard there is somewhere like 120 Million radios that will be binned if this happens. :eek:
About as Green as Red.

Also Digital sets use Much more power. < About as Green as Pink now a.
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For money, the same reason why TV switched. They can make a packet from selling the frequencies.

They're lumping us with lower bitrate transmission so they can make money. So much for moving forward.
 
DiG said:
I don't get it either, when in a good signal quality area, analogue gives better sound quality. So what's the point?
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I believe that the reason is to do with increasing the number of "channels" available for sale in order to increase revenue. Having said that, I did hear some DAB exponent trying to justify the move to DAB to John Humphrys on the Today programme recently - he failed completely; John Humphrys almost apologised for asking the guy such a difficult question :D

Somebody is going to make a great deal of money out of DAB and then again later when they sell the upgrades to DAB+
If DAB was dropped in favour of DAB+, radios that can’t be upgraded to receive the DAB+ signal would become obsolete. (Which)
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Muffin` said:
Lack of available bandwidth? BBC have 5 of the 6 frequency's and Classic FM has the other.
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What :confused:

What six frequencies are you talking about?
 
Rotty said:
I used one in the M3 and TBH it was pretty rubbish, as said it is good where coverage is good but that was probably in less than 25% of places for me
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Looking at your location, it confirms my findings, mine just was terrible in and around Notts/Derby/South Sheff along the M1.

In terms of Dab+, all the radio's in my possesion are DAB and DAB+, its a strange one really, imo DAB doesnt really offer much more than FM on the whole, it offers an advantage for us AM listeners, but we surely cant be the target audience:confused:
 
In the OP article it states

Car manufacturers are still fitting vehicles with FM radios despite the fact that in a few years' time they will only be able to receive local and community radio
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So they are NOT turning off FM, so what's the issue??

National stations like BBC Radio 1 aren't broadcast from 1 location, they are transmitted on different frequencies in different areas on the same transmitters as "local" stations, so am i missing the point or is this a big fuss over nothing.
 
it's a big fuss over nothing, as usual. They're not 'killing' FM.

There are also conditions on it happening, if the issues with DAB in cars is not resolved - then they won't switch over.
 
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