10 replies to this topic

[matt1]

as most of you probably know, fm radio will no longer be available from 2015, so just in preparation was thinking of buying a dab radio for my mini soon, i have been told that i also need to change the ariel, does anyone know anymore about this?

[charie t]

thats the first i heard its going
the tv signal is ******* now its gone to digital, so i'll no longer be able to listen to the radio now as well as watch tv

[leroy26]

course ya will argos do dab home radio for £20

[daddy2coull]

what about the millions of car stereo's that will be redundant? we have three cars and two household radio's which all get used a lot, it'll cost a damned fortune, especially when you consider most car radio's these days are integral to the car

[mini-luke]

I don't think the switch over will happen any time soon as there are still many cars sold with FM radio's, even some high end cars don't come with them as standard.

[matt1]

yeah i think its in the pipeline for 2015,
but the bit i don't like is the fact that you need a special ariel, so the standard one that is on our mini's will be redundant unless someone devises a way of using it.

[matt1]

oh and that is the reason why the likes of halfords have cut prices of fm radios by a third... because they know that in three years you'll need another new one!

[tiger99]

Who told you that you need another aerial? If it works on FM, it will likely work to a useful extent on DAB. Admittedly, it will not be quite as good as the proper thing, but I would suggest trying it to see what happens.

There are going to be a lot of very annoyed people, as DAB has totally failed to live up to the initial expections. It is supposed to be robust in the reception conditions in moving vehicles, but in actual fact it is very unreliable. Apparently the initial trials, which seemed to be successful, were bogus. I have DAB in my daily driver, and it is useless.

[charie t]

course ya will argos do dab home radio for £20

I've got a £400 tv and can only get about 3 1/2 channels, the signal is poor here in narnia. Im not sure if i shot the ariel though.....

Edited by charie t, 27 May 2012 - 10:59 PM.

[Dan]

You're a bit out of date there. Around 2 years ago switchover was put back to 'at least 2017', with no firm plans currently in place at all. Technology firms are announcing they doubt there will be a DAB switchover within our lifetimes. The simple fact is that the DAB system as launched in the UK is terrible. It was well out of date before it was switched on. DAB+ is better, but still not great. DAB radio sales are not good, they are not selling enough to justify switchover nomatter how many millions you might hear they have shifted. A regular radio costs around 1/5 as much as even the cheapest DAB set and actually works better most of the time. High end home stereos are now phasing out DAB in favour of internet radio, which has effectively made a good start on killing the public radio system already, broadcast radio audience figures are in decline. The stage that the government are at as far as a DAB switchover goes is to make a plan for how it might be done. Since that's all they can do at the moment, the plan was just overhauled again to version 5 at huge expense. They have pledged there will be no switch until at least 50% of radio listening is DAB and the DAB network covers as much of the country as the FM does to the same signal quality or more. Right now the DAB figures are about 22% of the total I think, so nowhere near what is needed. And the coverage is patchy to say the least. Given that it has taken 17 years to get that far, it's not going to get to 50% in 3 more years. In all liklihood DAB will be switched off rather than FM I would say personally.

See the Department of Culture website for info.

[daddy2coull]

thanks dan, that put my mind at ease