This is going to outcast many radio listeners

[jodevizes]

I thought that the big FM switch off was going to be delayed but according to this news item www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1292531/Motorists-face-300-digital-radio-ministers-press-ahe ad-FM-switch-off.html?ITO=1708&referrer=yahoo

the coalition government is racing ahead in going digital. Many motorists are srtuggling to petrol in their cars without having to put up with the extra expense, not that I think three hundred pounds is an accurate figure.

Certainly, for me who has several radios areound the house plus the one in my car, will a signifiacant outlay.

I will have to brush up on my French so I can listen on Medium wave.

Freeview boxes can be had cheaply (15 to 20 quid new) which could go some way to avoiding the need for any DAB sets (25? to )

If you put the output of a Freeview box into a stereo amp, in rooms where you have a TV, then you're easily able to have films, drama, and music on TV with stereo sound, or turn the TV off and just have phono plugs from Freeview box to the amp and voila, digital radio on the cheap

I think it is a backward move to have the change from FM to digital for national radio stations, but FM was meant (in the Labour plans at least) to have 'local' stations. The ones which get a 4 week RSL (restricted service licence) for religious and other types of local festival, giving mostly students and volunteers a chance to try their skills with talk shows and music shows.

There was a piece on PM (R4, 5pm) with comments from a few people unhappy about DAB ideas (discussed FM vs DAB yesterday with a pioneer of FM radio in the UK - someone involved with setting up Capital Radio {?} a long time back, and the first stereo service in the UK).

Anyway, Friday show is when they have a roundup of listener feedback, and Eddie Mair said they should be able to have a definitive answer to "why are digital radios never 'in sync'" (you know, the problem of having a station on in two rooms and them being a couple of seconds different, where FM has them in sync so the audio is easy to follow if you have to be going room to room and back.

The bit I dislike most is the way the BBC has been 'used' to push DAB. For 2+ ? years they have been offering DAB radios as competition prizes, and the attempts to 'push' DAB

The audio quality isn't anything close to 'CD-quality' and there have been comparisons of the sampling rates showing Sky / FreeSat and Freeview generally give much better sampling rates than DAB, yet what will motorists, or walkers use, but rubbishy (by comparison) DAB.

Ed Vaizey (Communications Minister) says the switchover "will only happen when the vast majority of listeners have voluntarily adopted digital radio over analogue."

See the article - and there's a link to a blog entry by James Cridland (employed by BBC now, Capital and others before) where he suggests that forcing commercial stations to close AM or FM is bad news - they should be allowed to do so depending on market conditions not force from Government.

On PM on Wednesday, (check out the PM Blog for more info the former Capital Radio boss Michael Bukht suggested people may have switched to using mobile phones with internet connections to listen to stations, since there is such wide choice. There are a number of Internet Radios (none cheap, however) which allow for listening to lots of stations. I suppose one reason for him commenting in that way was because he was somewhere near Canterbury, and unable to use a DAB radio, where his trusty old FM radio works very well!

I put together a little web page just to let me listen to various Windows Media streams for Radio 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 1Xtra from my own 'smart' mobile (gift from a friend using an iPhone) but it seems a poor method for listening to UK national services (extra web traffic) even if it does offer some opportunities for listening to a wide range of other stations, from the West Coast of the USA to the Far East and Australia / NZ.

Incidentally, if anyone is a real "old radio enthusiast" that PM Blog has lots of photos from listeners of various old valve and transistor sets. I don't have any photos but I used an old valve set back in the early 70s when I was nearly a teenager. Don't laugh, but I was a 'security guard' in a charity shop in Brighton where my Mum volunteered.

We paid 2 pounds for the radio, a 4 band set, and that started me listening on Short Wave as well as FM (VHF !) and got me interested in becoming a ships Radio Officer in the Merchant Navy. Had a really long wire aerial (120 feet) from the bedroom going up to the chimney and then over the front garden into a tree in a neighbour's garden. Happy memories!

I listen to the radio at home through freeview but would be very pissd off about the car radio.

Well, it's certainly not being 'forced' on us.

The BBC seems to be backing DAB (unfortunately), whereas most countries have set up DAB+ which will mean the cost of new DAB+ radios will go down because of the size of the market, while DAB is now out of date and only UK (+1 other) are using it.

BBC has confirmed 61 new DAB transmitters will be deployed.

The Government has been reported as 'pressing ahead' but if they really mean the bit about 'only when the public are supportive' it could be 2030 before we (the public) hit the magic 50%.

Something which might help combat the push towards moving national stations off FM would be support of the 'Scrap the Digital Economy Bill' suggestion in the "get rid of bad laws" aspect of the coalition government.

While the majority of complaints about DEA are to do with the rules against piracy of music, video and games and the 'guilty on the say-so of a copyright owner' rather than 'innocent until proved' aspect, the DEA went through in the dying days of the last government (one reading was the day the announcement of the election date was made - Tuesday 6 (?) April.

I think if the FM users (and particularly those who listen on FM in cars) were to also push for this idea to be scrapped, it would be hard for the government to ignore.

Although it seems a bit political, I wonder if Mumsnet could have a campaign - think how many thousands of mobile phones and other low cost FM radios there are which would become less useful (and remember the "pips" are never at the right time with a digital path because of the delays to encode and decode, so while three FM radios would "pip" in harmony, three digital receivers would definitely not.

yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/restoring-civil-liberties/repeal-the-digital-economy-bill

A quick PS - if anyone uses the BBC website, it might be possible to add that link into the PM Blog, as there are lots of happy FM listeners, and PM generally accepts views from listeners!

Obviously the BBC might be rather negative about it but the listeners are also paying the cost of the BBC, and if there were a couple of million car drivers who don't want to buy some DAB radio just to get Radios 1, 2, 3, 4 in future, I think even the BBC might acknowledge that there should be no switch from FM until DAB+ is in use in the UK and coverage (especially for drivers) is better than at present.

Glad to see that the Govt has seemed to have reigned back on the proposals a bit.

One thing is I have noticed that when driving around with the radio on, the signal gets interupted a lot which is very annoying. The FM never used to do this much and I am getting paranoid that 'they' are doing it to make people want to go digital. Nobody has been able to explain this phenomena.