is RDS and all fine and dandy, but it doesn't get much use since I=20 scored a broken (but now fixed) DAB radio off FreeCycle .
Trouble is, the DAB thing is bulky and hideous.
Before I give up and rebuild it into a suitable box to sling under the=20 cupboard, can anyone find an underhung DAB that isn't a silly price?=20 Mainstream ones are around =A330 now, but kitchen flavour seem to be over= =20 =A3100.
Before I give up and rebuild it into a suitable box to sling under the cupboard, can anyone find an underhung DAB that isn't a silly price? Mainstream ones are around £30 now, but kitchen flavour seem to be over £100.
Ah - I thought of that and held the horrid thing under the shelf and it was fine.
Why on earth are DAB radios so bloody ugly? And what's with the "retro" look that half of them seem to have? Designers are like TV producers - slaves to fashion.
And the general public are slaves to 'fads' and the latest 'must-have' gadget, even if they - like DAB radio - are crap. Sound quality on DAB is crap. It could be great, but the way 'the powers that be' have decided to implement it, ie, squeeze as much cash out of every possible useable part of the spectrum and then keep on squeezing more channels in to get even more cash, mean that bit rate and bandwidth available is so low that quality suffers.
The answer is in the public's own hands - *don't use DAB radios.* If nobody bought (or repaired) DAB radios they couldn't get rid of FM. But the public see a shiny new toy and think 'Ooh I need one of those' and they are sleepwalking into a huge con.
Just think of all the millions of car radios and old radio/cassette players that builders, mechanics and just 'guys in their sheds' use - all working perfectly and still plenty of life in them - they will have to be ditched come FM switch-off time.
Just had fond memories of and all those vintage radios with glowing valves that had me mesmerised as a kid (seeing the dials with those magical place names like Luxembourg, Athlone, Hilversum et al, set me on the road to become the licenced radio ham that I am today :-) Biccie and brewtime I think.
I've bought two DAB radios but only because the sets with other features I wanted just happened to have DAB. The fact that there is no useable DAB signal here nakes that part of them useless but it's still two sales for the figures, grrrr.
No they will still work perfectly they just won't get the national stations as they will have become DAB only. All the non-national stations and the new micro local (ha ha) stations will still be on FM.
I'm a big fan and avid listner of Planet Rock but I listen to it via Sky channel 0110 rather than a DAB radio.
Staying with the Freeview audio thing though, how can anyone use Freeview for radio/audio in respect of screen burn? It's not like the screen goes black/blank/screensaver, at least not on our Panasonic TH42PSX (or whatever) plasma with built-in Freeview tuner; you get text that doesn't change, therefore almost guaranteeing screen burn.
So basically, TVs with inbuilt Freeview tuners just can't use the radio channels then because of the screen burn problem. Surely, it's not rocket science to make radio channels available without screen display - but then I suppose manufacturers wouldn't sell as many replacement sets then!
I might be wrong, but I think some TVs actually do allow you to kill the screen. [Does my Sony 23"?]
And regarding a STB needing a channel display for audio only, with a little practice, you can select radio channels 'blind'. Just press the required buttons in sequence. If you make a mistake, wait about ten seconds, press (say) '1' (to take it to BBC1), wait until BBC1 comes on, then try again.
Screen? What screen? Freeview box + amplifier is all you need. Preferably a Freeview box with a channel number display - I'm not sure how common they are nowadays, but they weren't hard to find when I bought mine.
It also allows me to listen to things at the wrong time without bothering with the internet, just like for TV - we record rather more radio than TV these days :-)
I think the BBC radio stations display a sort of screensaver (moving logo) after a while - but I don't have the screen on when I listen to the radio for long enough to check.
Who has said anything about selling off any of Band II for uses other than broadcasting? They hope to have lots of regional/local/micro stations in the space freed up by shifting the nationals, perosnally I don't ever see that happening there just isn't the money about to run that number of decent stations. There might be enough for a central play out system with automated local ads for each station but not much else.
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