On 2008-10-16, DAB sounds worse than FM dab.is@dead wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message

In article ,
DAB sounds worse than FM dab.is@dead wrote:
Not so. You're assuming that DAB+ could only be launched on new
multiplexes. But DAB+ stations could fit onto existing multiplexes,
and DAB and DAB+ stations only pay for the capacity they use, and
that's why DAB+ stations are 2-3 times cheaper to transmit, because
they use 2-3 times less capacity.

FFS. Transmitter rental is a figure plucked out of the air - based
on what
'they' think the market can stand. There's absolutely no reason to
believe
a more efficient transmission method will alter this.


Bull****. The multiplex transmission costs are already known (and
contracts have been signed), and the transmitter networks don't need
to change at all to carry DAB+, so the transmission providers can't
turn round and just increase costs. The broadcasters all know this, so
the multiplex operators (which are all owned by the broadcasters
anyway) can hardly just bump the price up.

See:

http://www.worlddab.org/public_docum...ure_200803.pdf

"The benefits of DAB+ include:

Lower transmission costs for digital stations"

Page 4 of 12:

[...]

WorldDMB created a Task Force of its Technical Committee to develop the
additional standard. After examining the options, DAB+ using MPEG-4
HEAAC v2 was adopted. DAB+ was published in February 2007 as ETSI TS
102 563 €œDigital Audio Broadcasting (DAB);Transport of Advanced Audio
Coding (AAC) audio€�.

[...]

Which could just be a clue as to why Ofcom didn't insist on DAB+ being
immplemented five years earlier. Don't you think?

Page 8 (Graphics omitted, for obvious reasons):

Possible scenarios with DAB+

The following figures show how the bit rate of a DAB ensemble may be
assigned to:

Multiplex with MPEG Audio Layer II (DAB)
9 radio services using MPEG Audio Layer II at 128 kbps

Multiplex with HE-AAC v2 (DAB+)
28 radio services using HE-AAC v2 at 40 kbps and 1
audio service using HE-AAC v2 at 32 kbps.

Multiplex with MPEG Audio Layer II and HE-AAC v2 (DAB and DAB+)
5 radio services using MPEG Audio Layer II at 128 kbps
and 12 radio services using HE-AAC v2 at 40 kbps and
1 radio service using HE-AAC v2 at 32 kbps

A 40 kbps subchannel with HE-AAC v2 provides a similar audio quality
(even slightly better in most cases) to MPEG Audio Layer II at 128
kbps.

Technology is the easy bit, content is the hard part.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~