As soon as there's a DAB tuner for it, I'll be buying one.

My current headunit I bought because the manufacturer confirmed they would be providing a DAB tuner addon for it in the future - they then promptly brought out a new headunit to control the DAB unit, which is incompatible with my current one!

I'm not throwing away 1K on a headunit again until I know it has DAB support.

Jon

I don't think it likely that we'll have DAB before Q3, maybe later. There isn't enough demand to make it a priority, and the technology is still very expensive.

Rob

Excuse me for being naive, but what is DAB?


--Orion

Excuse me for being naive, but what is DAB?

It's...

- The proper amount of barbeque sauce to put on your chicken when you're grilling it.
- The method used to apply antiseptic to a cut with a cotton swab.
- A popular Micheal Jackson tune played backwards.
- The way a child addresses his father when he has a stuffed-up nose.
- An acronym for Digital Audio Broadcast.

Not really sure about that last one, though.



Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

DAB is Digital Audio Broadcasting - digital radio in other words. It is becoming well established in Europe (in the UK the BBC are starting to market the technology rather agressively to developers).

In the USA, an alternative DAB standard has been drawn up (quelle surprise). It sidebands onto existing AM and FM stations, making it cheaper to implement - but at the cost of a significantly reduced bitrate. I had a chat with the US DAB people who are still awaiting final approvals from the FCC, and anticipate the first consumer broadcasts in around 12 months. Widespread uptake is expected in within 24 months, which I think may prove to be optimistic.

If we implement a DAB module (and there is certainly some interest in our doing so) we will go for the European standard. There's no point supporting the US system for some considerable time to come.

Rob

This is a bit UK-centric I'm afraid - I tried to find some more European stuff but failed. Take a look at:

http://www.dab.org/
http://www.ukdigitalradio.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalradio/

...and just to prove it's not all BBC the independent radio group GWR (_____'s better music mix + Classic FM) has a page on it too (digital probably makes it much easier for them to transmit exactly the same programme on supposedly local radio across the whole country):

http://www.musicradio.com/digital.html

(I tried to mark up those URLs but they got all confused in the preview window so I gave up. It's back to cut & Paste I'm afraid).



--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

tried to mark up those URLs but they got all confused in the preview window so I gave up.

What, Mike, giving up on coding?
Or is it just that it's week-end now?

Henno
# 00120

What, Mike, giving up on coding? Or is it just that it's week-end now?

Nah, he just ran into a limitation of the BBS's markup code. I've had it happen, too. I seem to recall that if you try to use the BBS markup language for more than one link, it messes up. At least I know for sure it happens with image links, I'm not so sure about plain links.

The solution is to insert real-live HTML "a href=" tags into your post, rather than trying to use the BBS's markup language for that purpose. Then all is well. Try it sometime, it's fun and festive.


Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

I don't know if anyone here has looked into DAB, but I can get around 14 stations in Essex. Kiss 100, Classic FM, Radio 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, BBC Parliament, Virgin FM, Talk FM to name but a few.

If you phone the BBC DAB line with your postcode, they'll tell you all the stations you can receive. There's quite a lot of them.

Congratulations on resurrecting a 6 years dead thread.
:P

DAB?