DAB in Ireland: RTE multiplex closed

lgs 4

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

No.
I have repurposed a cheap receiver (SD) that was bought from Lidl or Aldi years ago to do this for satellite radio.
I don't use it now, as any device that can connect to my LAN can play radio and TV from Satellite and terrestrial.

VLC player will record radio programs. You will need the Url of the radio station.

Sam Russell

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

No.
I have repurposed a cheap receiver (SD) that was bought from Lidl or Aldi years ago to do this for satellite radio.
I don't use it now, as any device that can connect to my LAN can play radio and TV from Satellite and terrestrial.

I think you are missing my point.

Can anyone go into a shop and purchase a normal radio that can receive Saorview or satellite radio, and better still be set to record a future programme?

If it requires hacking, then it does not qualify.

Johnboy1951

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think you are missing my point.

Can anyone go into a shop and purchase a normal radio that can receive Saorview or satellite radio, and better still be set to record a future programme?

If it requires hacking, then it does not qualify.

hehehehe a 'normal' radio to me would include LW, MW, SW and FM.

How would a 'stand-alone' radio receive signals from a satellite?

Terrestrial might be manageable in high signal areas ...... but not reliable enough for consumer sales.

So, what you term 'hacking' is necessary ..... to connect to an external aerial/dish, and then in addition to an amplifier and speaker system ....... just like all the other receivers and tape players and dvd players I bought over the years.


So the only option for 'stand-alone' radio to get those stations is an IR.

It appears you have had bad experience because of bad device, rather than bad service from streams. Of course they have to be 'hacked' too, needing to connect to the internet.

Mearings

My internet radio is in the bedroom. It acts as any alarm clock radio eg sleep timer, snooze etc. It also has a remote control. The difference between it and FM radio is that there is a huge choice of stations most with high quality sound. It has 6 presets, I bought it in 2007, later models have more presets.

Johnboy1951

Mearings wrote: »

My internet radio is in the bedroom. It acts as any alarm clock radio eg sleep timer, snooze etc. It also has a remote control. The difference between it and FM radio is that there is a huge choice of stations most with high quality sound. It has 6 presets, I bought it in 2007, later models have more presets.

One of mine also ....... but I have never used the alarm clock or the remote (think it is long since lost ).
Both mine being old gear also have only 6 presets each, but that is sufficient for my use.

doughnut2000

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think you are missing my point.

Can anyone go into a shop and purchase a normal radio that can receive Saorview or satellite radio, and better still be set to record a future programme?

If it requires hacking, then it does not qualify.

I like the idea but as others point out could be a commercial nightmare due to weak signal.

Copenhagen trialled an interesting spin on this - https://dvb.org/news/on-the-radio-with-dvb-t2-lite/

kazoo106

Why the hacks

This is exactly what DAB is for

doughnut2000

kazoo106 wrote: »

Why the hacks

This is exactly what DAB is for

I think because DAB is the UHT milk of radio.

lgs 4

doughnut2000 wrote: »

I think because DAB is the UHT milk of radio.

Also the Dolby Digital of sound at the high-end bit rate of 256kbps.If the transmission network has the bandwidth. Like German Klassik Radio
(Classical Music )
PS, the transmission fees.

Even if RTE had been given their long sought after increase in public funding, I doubt rolling out DAB nationwide would ever have passed any feasibility study.

I'd imagine whatever RTE saved on closing the dab sites has been dwarfed by the increased expenditure on contractors broadcasting on RTE Gold.

dxhound2005

Give the actual figures instead of vague stuff like dwarfed.

marclt

All this investment in GOLD, and it’s online or saorview(saorsat) only. The audience is not yhe internet generation!

Andy From Sligo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120307733#Comment_120307733

I'm 58 ... and Internet Generation ... and like the songs they play on Gold 🙂

EdmondShiels3

They need to put gold on FM and put a few ads on it, not much and make it pay for itself. I like it having presenters but they cost money.

The Spare Bowler

I bought my first dab radio in Dublin in 2006 when RTÉ started their dab service. I then bought several dab radios for several rooms in my house, and upgraded them for dab+ when RTÉ said that when dab is available throughout the country it would be DAB+. Several years ago I updated my car radio to DAB+ and all new cars must have DAB+ Now by law, my car radio only had FM and MW it does not have LW. Two years ago RTÉ closed down its DAB transmitters saying very few people were listening to DAB. But RTÉ were only broadcasting the signal to about 50% of the population of the country, there was no DAB from Galway to Donegal or the sunny south east of the country. RTÉ have been spending a lot of money on its long wave Transmitter when it’s not easy to buy a radio in the country with long wave, I think the politicians have forced RTÉ do this for the few Irish people living in England, they should be focused on our population here at home. If you check out the “World DAB” web site and see how most countries in Europe are forging ahead with DAB+ and giving their people a real choice in radio stations. When I go to play golf in Deer Park on Howth head and do a scan on my DAB+ car radio I usually can get between 30 and 40 DAB radio stations from Northern Ireland and some from Wales, they have a real choice of stations. I used to listen to RTÉ GOLD a lot in my car, but now I listen to Sunshine radio, I am sure radio Sunshine were very happy with all the new listeners tuned in.

When Roman Collins started his new programme on RTÉ GOLD this week I contacted RTÉ, I asked them how can I find the programme on my radio they told me that I can get it on my mobile phone or my tv or on the internet but not on my radio, this means that I must pay a third party if I want to listen to RTÉ GOLD, nobody should have to pay a fee to listen to any radio station from our National Broadcasting service here in Ireland. I wonder how many are now tuning into RTE’s digital station now after the closed their DAB transmitters.

Hotblack Desiato

DAB is shite technology which was obsolete before it was rolled out. The only 'benefit' is cramming ever more stations with poor quality low-bitrate sound into the airwaves, but in Ireland the licence fee money and commercial income isn't there to sustain more stations than are already there on FM. So no wonder RTE was less than enthusiastic about it and the commercial stations simply didn't want to know. Even in the biggest radio market on the island, Dublin, there are unused FM slots which aren't commercially viable.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120308287#Comment_120308287

They would need ministerial approval to do both of those things and there isn't a hope in hell that they'd get it. They couldn't even get ministerial approval to carry reruns of Grounded for life and Friends Weekdays 10am to 2pm on RTE two due to lobbying from TV3.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311902#Comment_120311902

standard dab is shite technology yes as it uses mp2 which is an old standard and requires extremely high bitrates to allow reasonable quality unlike dab+ and it's mp4.

we actually don't know for definite that the commercial income isn't there to sustain more stations, as ireland operates a very high cost, very high regulatory model which artificially inflates costs meaning it is ridiculously expensive to operate radio in this country, meaning that outside the existing operators generally backed by reasonable sized to big operators, nobody else can get a look in because they won't get a full license, or the costs are so out of wack that they eventually fail like phantom/tx.

the unused fm frequencies in dublin may be commercially viable with a low cost model by where the station and it's operator decides for themselves what type of business model to operate, and what they think their market wants from them, rather then out of touch lifer civil servants telling commercial operators how to operate and what the listener wants.

but given those frequencies will never be licensed and the out of date current model will continue, looks like we won't find out.

Hotblack Desiato

At least 105.2 gets a bit of use for Christmas FM but another commercial station in Dublin isn't viable as things stand.

Radio regulation in Ireland is ridiculous - what on earth is wrong with having pure music / entertainment stations? But no they are forced to have news (even though we have news stations), Irish language (even though we have Irish language stations), token 'current affairs' (crappy phone-ins) etc. All rubbish. If people want those things they're far better off listening to a station that is set up to provide them instead of a music station forced to provide lip service to certain topics because of stupid regulators.

There's no point to DAB / DAB+ unless there are far more viable station operators seeking spectrum than can be accommodated on FM. That's true in the UK (in the large radio markets anyway) but isn't true anywhere in Ireland.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120313711#Comment_120313711

the thing is we don't know for sure that it is true in ireland, as anyone who might be interested in providing a radio service on a full time basis can't as they will not be granted a license to do so no matter what.

the most one can hope for is a temp license or possibly a community license if that is what they want to operate but a full time license forget it, no matter what one will not be given it.

in the UK as mentioned, the market decides what is and isn't viable or wanted, in ireland lifer civil servants decide what is viable and what will be provided whether one wants it or not.

reslfj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120313147#Comment_120313147

DAB+ is very outdated too. DAB+ still uses a very inefficient transmission technology even though an extra layer of RS error correction has been added. The reception is very much less robust, than more modern transmission modes provides.

Compared to e.g. the DVB-T2 in a 1.7 MHz channel DAB+ require almost 5 times higher transmitted power to obtain the same robustness. But even then DAB+ is in many receiving 'special cases' significant less robust.

Again the DVB-T2 (or a newer sub-variant) can make some radio streams many times more robust (at a higher cost in total bitrate) than others in the very same multiplex (using less multiplex capacity). This could have been very important in emergency situations.

Lars 😀

PS! The MP2 is just the payload. It's very integrated into the transmission protocol itself (very bad), while DAB+ created more independence between transmission and payload (better, but still not good).

Andy From Sligo

DAB service would be great for cars - a plethora of stations for hardware that just simply cannot connect to 802.11xx wifi signal but can get DAB through a normal car aerial - nearly every car manufacturer will have DAB along with FM radio on their car's head unit .. but may not necessarily have android auto or apple car play facility to hook your phone up to listen to internet radio station s or local and nationwide radio stations by internet ... and if you did you would need a good data package with your mobile phone provider - no data contract needed with DAB . FM such old technology , terrible interference in places at least if you have a good nationwide DAB signal the sound is pretty damn good (I dont know what people are going on about bad bitrates on DAB radio I have always heard it very clear, much clearer than FM)

So, I am basing this on the fact that whenever I have travelled to UK and hired a car there , every car has had a FM/DAB radio built into the dash and I immediately put on the DAB radio stations, I dont even bother with using the FM radio stations and the DAB is ideal over there for that situation for use in cars .

I wonder what the rest of europ is like on DAB service and if visitors to Ireland are very surprised when they visit and hire a car over here and can pick nothing up nationwide on the car radio apart from FM stations?

Hotblack Desiato

You'd need hundreds of transmitters to guarantee a "bubbling mud"-free DAB signal everywhere.

Face it, it's dead, and mourned by very few.

TAFKAlawhec

As a few others have mentioned above, the regulatory structure for radio broadcasting in the Republic pretty much inhibits any (legal) progressive reintroduction of DAB/+ in the country from foreseeable future. RTÉ tried to make a go of it but they were never able to make it go national, and when cuts needed to be made it was an easy one to suggest, while on the commercial side all current operators prefer to keep the status quo (and can you blame them?). RTÉ are never going to be able to fill a DAB+ ensemble on their own, and there's been no serious talk of any national digital radio plan in the country - so for now the radio industry is still based mainly on legislation introduced in the late 1980's, which was fine (or at least workable given the experience of the years before it) for its time mandating certain content when no other "live" audio platform existed, but is rather dated these days IMO. Opinions on that will vary.

Up here in Tyrone, DAB/+ gives me around 45-50 stations across three ensembles, though most of the time it's stuck on Absolute Radio.

Andy From Sligo

so , a couple of questions . RTE 'could not make a go of it' and had to make cuts - would that stop a third party company trying to get the licence for DAB (DAB+) and broadcasting DAB nationwide in Ireland even if they were only carrying the RTE stations and independent stations and relaying them?

Do existing FM transmitters around Ireland already capable of broadcasting DAB (DAB+) along with the FM existing hardware or would all new transmitters have to be put in place on main transmitters and relays?

reslfj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120316904#Comment_120316904

DAB/DAB+ uses

1. A different frequency band (174-240 MHz) to FM (87.5-108),
2. Single Frequency Network (SFN) which needs strict adherence to rules for locating transmitters.
3. Strict rules for distance between transmitters
4. Well coordinated transmission power between transmitters.
5. Many more transmitters each with lower power
6. Very strictly coordinated timing between transmitters

It requires different TX-antennas and very different transmitters and many more transmitters.

Lars 😀

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120316701#Comment_120316701

There is an argument that we are very lucky in this country to still have in 2023 very broad format local radio stations (at least outside Dublin). You have stations like Galway bay FM and Midwest radio with 3 hours of local current affairs each day and a broad range of specialist music shows in the evening while the equivalent licence in the UK is relaying Greatest Hits Radio.

TAFKAlawhec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120317266#Comment_120317266

That's not really luck as such - that's what the regulatory system in the Republic has been designed for with what is essentially local & regional monopolies. The UK has its own issues regarding local & regional radio essentially becoming pseudo-national networks with minimal (if any) local content, but it was becoming clear that at least in Britain, in a lot of cases, having a station that was being produced from a studio in a local town was not a priority for many as to why people listened to it. As Ofcom allowed such stations to erase by piecemeal certain licence conditions, often what's left now is local adverts and maybe an odd bit of local news at the TOTH. Q Radio is a good example of this in Northern Ireland, where separate local stations outside of Belfast now just rebroadcast whatever's being produced in Belfast - tough it could be argued that some of the TSA's of some of those stations were unlikely to be viable in the long term. But overall what's happened in the UK is not hugely different to what's happened in much of continental Europe, as well as Australia & New Zealand, when such countries had introduced commercial radio themselves. In this sense, the Republic of Ireland sticks out for having such a radio regulatory & broadcast system in place, one that was back in the 1980's largely modeled on the UK's then Independent Local Radio system but modified an Irish audience.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120316904#Comment_120316904

the answer to your first question is theoretically no.

however, realistically any third party who would try and apply for a licennse to operate a dab mux or station full time won't get one, as the regulator won't give it no matter what.

i don't know if operators would even be able to get a trial license from comreg now as they used to be able to do, at a very high cost upfront.