DAB in Ireland: RTE multiplex closed

Cuttlefish

The Oort Cloud wrote: »

I blame not only RTE, I blame all radio stations that are trying to keep a monopoly, especially RTE. It was made abundantly clear recently that Irish radio stations will never be shut down from using FM. You cannot fit much more radio stations onto the FM band as it is full already, so that kills competition for other new stations coming on the scene.

So with a full FM spectrum there can't be any more Irish radio stations BUT with DAB there could have been more??

I always thought going digital as in DAB was the way forward, hell what do I know!

Charles Slane

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Not behind a Sky paywall like the present channels I would hope.

Of course if they were to go on the Astra Satellites as FTA that would be a different matter ..... but I would not expect them to do so.

RTE's radio services (Radio 1, 2FM, Lyric FM and R na G) are NOT behind a paywall on Sky. They are broadcast free-to air on Astra 2E from 11914H (27500 5/6).

The Oort Cloud

This list is just for any-one that is interested in what audio Bit Rate quality to expect while receiving the DAB stations on Internet radio. RTE will be broadcasting all of their DAB stations on Internet radio and TV, these will not be taken down.

RTE Lyric: - 160 kbps Reasonably decent audio quality... 160 kbps on DAB
RTE Gold: - 96 kbps Very low audio quality... 128 kbps on DAB
RTE 2xm: - 96 kbps Very low audio quality... 128 kbps on DAB
RTE 2fm: - 160 kbps Reasonably decent audio quality... 128 kbps on DAB
RTE Pulse: - 96 kbps Very low audio quality... 128 kbps on DAB
RTE Radio 1 - 96 kbps Very low audio quality... 128 kbps on DAB
RTE Radio 1 Extra - 96 kbps... 80 kbps on DAB

96 kbps just doesn't cut it as the audio quality is worse than using Frequency Modulation (FM) Surely if RTE can stream 160 kbps over internet then you would think they would stream all of their radio stations at 160 kbps.

watty

Even 160 kbps is worse than FM. You need 192 and ideally 256.
What about Dab+? Simply used to double the number of channels and 64k dab+ is not quite as good as 128K DAB, but 128K DAB+ is as good as 256 K.

If you have poor hearing the artefacts sound worse because the compression is relying on properties of hearing. It's lossy compression.

Ergonomics: Most DAB sets use x4 electricity and don't have enough FM channel memories, no AM and awkward menus. Onten no real volume control.

What about the spectrum saving of a SFN? It needs the entire mux to be national stations only. Places where FM is turned off or depreciated are due to favouring big national networks with loads of channels. It's useless for local radio.

Also if it's a niche station the internet streaming makes more sense. Broadcast only makes sense for mass market. Really DAB was ill designed and now duplicated by DVB-T. You can get a DVB-T stick under €10 for a laptop. They can work in theory on a phone or tablet. Many phones and tablets have the FM tuner built-in on the BT-WiFi chip. Apple disables it because the 3.5mm jack cable is usually the aerial.

160 kbps is NOT reasonably decent. It's a poor minimum. It's penny-pinching.

Also coverage is an issue with DAB. For car and portable use the UK experience shows that DAB TX plan was too optimistic. To have FM coverage (which still isn't as good as Five Live MW or R4 LW) they would need hundreds of low power fill-in transmitters.

The entire concept of Digital radio for Broadcast compared to AM and FM is an inherent failure. The FM band could easily have been extended down to 65MHz (add OIRT and Japan bands). A €10 converter for existing sets and also many sets made since the 1980s to now cover at least 76 MHz to 108 MHz (and some in the past down to 45 MHz for USA TV sound). Virtually all current FM Chips cover from 76 MHz.

Also 20 MHz of Band III could have been added for local/community stations instead of DAB. Again some sets actually cover 175 MHz to 195MHz and a converter/adaptor could retail under €10.


For home use you can add a €45 DVB-T box (or satellite box) and one of the €6 to €15 legal FM transmitters intended to connect a phone or MP3 player to a car radio to have the Digital Radio on any FM set. Or a 12V powered DVB-T box in a car.

So DAB was a pointless RTE ego trip. The Norwegian adoption is political.

The Oort Cloud

Using the lower band of FM radio might be an issue especially in the 84 to 85Mhz band as this is where the emergency frequencies are used ambulance/fire/river rescue. Even though these frequencies used are in 12.5 khz narrow band, a high powered radio station transmitting at 50/100 khz could cause bleed-over onto the emergency frequencies. So unless they cut out the 84Mhz band only then they could have used the lower FM band I would think.

The Norwegian adoption is political.

Can you explain this one Watty?.

Johnboy1951

watty wrote:

For home use you can add a €45 DVB-T box (or satellite box) and one of the €6 to €15 legal FM transmitters intended to connect a phone or MP3 player to a car radio to have the Digital Radio on any FM set. Or a 12V powered DVB-T box in a car.

But DVB-T or DVB-S, at 128 kb/s, is well below your stated minimum.

160 kbps is NOT reasonably decent. It's a poor minimum. It's penny-pinching.

I guess there is no 'decent' or 'good' Irish radio transmission at all?
BBC Radio 1 on DVB-S is 192 kb/s.

1huge1

The Oort Cloud wrote: »

The reason why there was low usage numbers was obviously because there was no competition or other stations on DAB and all we had was rte channels only. If we had much more music channels on the DAB+ system I think it would have had more usage numbers. RTE again using excuses to shut the whole system down. Ireland is the only country to shut down DAB while the rest of the E.U continues to roll out DAB+.

Legislation has been in place since 2009 to enable commercial broadcasters to engage with DAB but the broadcasting regulator has not addressed the issue of establishing a regulatory framework to date.

I blame not only RTE, I blame all radio stations that are trying to keep a monopoly, especially RTE. It was made abundantly clear recently that Irish radio stations will never be shut down from using FM. You cannot fit much more radio stations onto the FM band as it is full already, so that kills competition for other new stations coming on the scene.

https://about.rte.ie/2021/03/02/rte-to-cease-dab-transmission-digital-radio-services-to-remain/

I think everything you said above is fair and on point.

But just to take another view for a second, a significant proportion of new cars are coming with android auto/apple carplay and others that integrate their smart phones into their dashboard. Similarly, many people have access to internet radio in multiple rooms in their houses due to the advent of smart speakers. let alone the likes of laptops, smartphones, tv's etc.

I think the future of FM/DAB is likely under a much larger threat from the above to be honest as the range of stations/podcasts/music streaming will be far beyond what could be offered through FM/DAB.

Glaceon

The Oort Cloud wrote: »

Using the lower band of FM radio might be an issue especially in the 84 to 85Mhz band as this is where the emergency frequencies are used ambulance/fire/river rescue. Even though these frequencies used are in 12.5 khz narrow band, a high powered radio station transmitting at 50/100 khz could cause bleed-over onto the emergency frequencies. So unless they cut out the 84Mhz band only then they could have used the lower FM band I would think.

There certainly would need to be a reshuffle. I personally have found several taxi radios around 78-84 MHz around these parts.

Antenna

The Oort Cloud wrote: »

Using the lower band of FM radio might be an issue especially in the 84 to 85Mhz band as this is where the emergency frequencies are used ambulance/fire/river rescue. Even though these frequencies used are in 12.5 khz narrow band, a high powered radio station transmitting at 50/100 khz could cause bleed-over onto the emergency frequencies. So unless they cut out the 84Mhz band only then they could have used the lower FM band I would think.



Can you explain this one Watty?.

Emergency services migrating to TETRA so those low-VHF frequencies are made idle.

Notice the long aerials that used to be on fire brigades etc are now removed (in most areas of the country)

It is the case that the low-band VHF spectrum has become more and more disused over the past several years, businesses that used to have long-range 2-way radio abandoned them as using mobile phones instead, and emergency services migrating to TETRA. Other former users of low-VHF such as one example the ESB have all stopped using this spectrum ages ago.

The Oort Cloud

Antenna wrote: »

Emergency services migrating to TETRA so those low-VHF frequencies are made idle.

Notice the long aerials that used to be on fire brigades etc are now removed (in most areas of the country)

It is the case that the low-band VHF spectrum has become more and more disused over the past several years, businesses that used to have long-range 2-way radio abandoned them as using mobile phones instead, and emergency services migrating to TETRA. Other former users of low-VHF such as one example the ESB have all stopped using this spectrum ages ago.

The above is incorrect Antenna. There was a meeting recently in regard to moving Dublin city emergency frequencies to the Tetra platform and NAS (National Ambulance Service) wanted this to happen but the regulators decided that Dublin city emergency transmissions were to continue using the 84Mhz band for the future, so they will not be removing these frequencies. In saying this, the Dublin emergency frequencies using the 84Mhz band also use the Tetra network also, they use both. The National ambulance service out-side of Dublin uses only Tetra while the greater Dublin area will continue to use the 84Mhz band for the forseeable future.

reslfj

The Oort Cloud wrote: »

watty wrote: »

The Norwegian adoption is political.

Can you explain this one Watty?.

Norway and NRK and DR, SR and Swiss radio were among the early adaptors of DAB following the BBC.
There was and is the very wrong idea that all 'digital is digital' and the same ' zero or one' among many not technically orientated politicians and artist so DAB was the way forward. Many wanted more radio stations, and FM bandwidth is limited, so any digital system was believed to be fine.

DAB and even DAB+ do - as Watty points out - provide rather limited extra capacity with a somewhat dubious audio quality.

But Norway is a very large and difficult area to cover with radio. It has high mountain (fjell) with long deep and narrow valleys where the signal is often reflected and e.g. the FM signal could be very unstable.

The SFN (Single Frequency Network) that DAB uses can be received with reflected echoes and this was (at least officially) a major factor in Norway for closing FM and expand DAB.

The use of a newer SFN system is very likely the way to go if broadcasting is needed. 4G/5G phones uses a SFN enabled encoding/modulation.

The DAB/DAB+ system is, however, very much a generation 0 (zero) system, that it shouldn't have been used in the real world. It should had been developed much, much more before being considered for any broadcast use.

Lars

For the BBC there was an additional incentive to promote DAB. The VHF band III was no longer used by TV, so the BBC wanted to preserver this band for broadcasting. The original DAB chips and DAB radios were from the UK and this gave much initial UK government support for DAB.

watty

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

But DVB-T or DVB-S, at 128 kb/s, is well below your stated minimum.


I guess there is no 'decent' or 'good' Irish radio transmission at all?
BBC Radio 1 on DVB-S is 192 kb/s.

My point there is that DAB is a duplication. Not that DVB-T is better. Obviously the Irish DVB-T is poorer than FM on radio or Analogue TV FM sound was. I don't know enough about Nicam, but it sounded OK, unlike Irish DAB / DTT

watty

Cuttlefish wrote: »

Can someone tell me why DAB never really took off here in Ireland?

Is DAB still popular in the UK? Is see cars online being sold with DAB radio

It is a pity as I did like using my DAB radios of which I have three as well as my Evoke and Roberts internet radios

I wouldn't be surprised if RTE eventually pull their services elsewhere too!!

DAB has NEVER been popular in the UK. The listening figures lump DTT, DVB-s, streaming and anyone that has DAB/FM set even if mostly used for FM.

I know some UK people that now don't use DAB on the car because inter-mux tuning is slow and there is too much drop out. Also the bit-rates there are too low.

In Ireland the rollout stalled at about 45% Geographic. Coverage is optimistic and only a few places have non-RTE services. Most local and all community radio isn't interested in the extra cost. In the UK, Ofcom bribed/blackmailed non-BBC into launching on DAB.

watty

The Oort Cloud wrote: »

Using the lower band of FM radio might be an issue especially in the 84 to 85Mhz band as this is where the emergency frequencies are used ambulance/fire/river rescue. Even though these frequencies used are in 12.5 khz narrow band, a high powered radio station transmitting at 50/100 khz could cause bleed-over onto the emergency frequencies. So unless they cut out the 84Mhz band only then they could have used the lower FM band I would think.



Can you explain this one Watty?.

Look at how many channels the State broadcaster has. DAB benefits national channels and broadcasters with many channels.

watty

reslfj wrote: »

The SFN (Single Frequency Network) that DAB uses can be received with reflected echoes and this was (at least officially) a major factor in Norway for closing FM and expand DAB.

The use of a newer SFN system is very likely the way to go if broadcasting is needed. 4G/5G phones uses a SFN enabled encoding/modulation.

The DAB/DAB+ system is, however, very much a generation 0 (zero) system, that it shouldn't have been used in the real world. It should had been developed much, much more before being considered for any broadcast use.

A SFN can only be sensibly deployed for PAN-National Stations. It's no use at all for Local radio, regional radio, opt outs or community radio.

Basically DVB-T could use it in Ireland as Regional TV has been abandoned. But for various reasons there is little use of SFN on DVB-T, though it's possible. It was a hyped aspect of DAB that only suited the BBC national channels.

lgs 4

Two main reasons why Dab in Ireland didn't take off. We didn't have a national commercial DAB network. To set its own broadcasting fees and licences. The commercial radio station didn't promote or embrace digital broadcasting.

Sam Russell

lgs 4 wrote: »

Two main reasons why Dab in Ireland didn't take off. We didn't have a national commercial DAB network. To set its own broadcasting fees and licences. The commercial radio station didn't promote or embrace digital broadcasting.

The BAI did not push it, nor did RTE. There was no national network. No choice on the DAB stations, and it was no suitable for car use, and needed an aerial for domestic use.

Gerry Wicklow

Sam Russell wrote: »

The BAI did not push it, nor did RTE. There was no national network. No choice on the DAB stations, and it was no suitable for car use, and needed an aerial for domestic use.

Plus expensive energy hungry receivers many of which were mono and difficult to operate compared to a 'normal' portable.

Cube98

March 31 wss also the date that RTE closed their Medium Wave transmission on 567 & 729, although the final program was broadcast on March 24 2008, a loop tape run until March 31 with a helpline number for people who needed help to retune their radio, So is this just a coincidence or do RTE's contract with 2rn come up for renewal at the end of March?

TAFKAlawhec

Slightly disappointing that RTE are discontinuing their DAB network, but I guess that if they haven't got the cash to expand network coverage beyond a partial network that hasn't been improved upon in over a decade, and that the BAI & commercial stations/networks are just not interested, combined with a low receiver penetration rate of listeners/receivers, then it perhaps makes sense to at least mothball things when maybe in the future a different plan might be put in place.

Up here in Tyrone, I'm able to receive 3 ensembles (BBC National, Digital One & Bauer NI) with about 44 stations in total - my father has a car with DAB+ built in to the head unit and likes listening to Downtown Country & Gold (UK) on his travels. The main letdown for me is that Absolute is transmitting in mono only - maybe when Bauer start pivoting towards DAB+, like Global have been doing, then this will change.

Cube98

Can anyone estimate how much the 5? dab transmitters would be costing ?

watty

TAFKAlawhec wrote: »

Slightly disappointing that RTE are discontinuing their DAB network, but I guess that if they haven't got the cash to expand network coverage beyond a partial network that hasn't been improved upon in over a decade, and that the BAI & commercial stations/networks are just not interested, combined with a low receiver penetration rate of listeners/receivers, then it perhaps makes sense to at least mothball things when maybe in the future a different plan might be put in place.

It's a poor duplication of existing DVB-T and Satellite. DVB-T on band III would make more sense in the future.

TAFKAlawhec

watty wrote: »

It's a poor duplication of existing DVB-T and Satellite. DVB-T on band III would make more sense in the future.

Where can I find a DVB-T or DVB-S receiver that has audio speakers for portable use, or for in-car reception?

Sam Russell

In the last few weeks, Three Rock RTE Radio One has closed down for service during the day. I can shift to DAB at the moment, but it will not be possible next month.

Currently I am finding 88.5 FM signal is very poor on several radios - is it working at low power? Combined with the shutdowns, do they have problems at Three Rock, and is this related to the DAB shutdown?

dxhound2005

I have two portable radios with signal meters. 88.5 is a strong signal in Dundalk. 89.1 from Kippure is a bit stronger. It would be impossible to know the difference just by ear.

KildareP

Cube98 wrote: »

Can anyone estimate how much the 5? dab transmitters would be costing ?

2rn

a little over €175k as an indicative cost for the current fully managed 5 site/52% population (not geographic!) coverage solution with a 10-year minimum term and rolling 5-year terms after that.

Considering that national FM coverage requires over 40 sites (~20 "main" high power and ~20 "filler" low power) to achieve 95% population (again, not geographic) coverage then in order to extend DAB nationally, you probably won't be far off €1m/year for an FM-equivalent national DAB mux.

Johnboy1951

watty wrote: »

It's a poor duplication of existing DVB-T and Satellite. DVB-T on band III would make more sense in the future.

I have not heard about the results of this 10 year old attempt to use DVB-T for radio.

https://dvb.org/news/on-the-radio-with-dvb-t2-lite/

Capt'n Midnight

KildareP wrote: »

2rn

a little over €175k as an indicative cost for the current fully managed 5 site/52% population (not geographic!)

In December 5G rollout already covered 53% population.

Jpmarn

DAB transmitter at Woodcock Hill serving the Limerick area was turned off at 11 AM today 31st March.

Cuttlefish

Sad day