Indeed I mentioned that. The point is that when FM is cancelled, DAB listeners will still experience analog artifacts while at the same time having the other disadvantages of DAB (e.g. slow decoding when channel surfing, no sound at all on degraded but otherwise acceptable signals).

Hopefully whoever goes to bat for preserving FM will find this thread when building their case.

I’m not sure what the bubbling mud is.. I guess I have not experienced that.

That must be before encoding as DAB doesn't suffer from interference in that way (instead it's "bubbling mud" on standard DAB)

ah, thanks! I tried several dates and all had the same problem apart from the latest capture which just redirects to a dead end. But apparently you found a good one. I was not going to try all of them. Would be nice if the WB calendar showed sizes.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220719143648/http://www.magic-systech.com/doc/M6.pdf <-- try this link from a different capture. The link you put in the post is to a PDF that is truncated at 1MB -- I can see the file stop in the middle of the PDF "Height" metadata field.

That's a bit odd.

Fun, but €60 is a bit steep. I recently got a 2nd-hand USB DAB stick for <1/10th of that price. If the Raspiaudio were integrated with MythTV and complete with schedules and recording, then I’d pay €60. But I guess we aren’t there yet.

Took me a while to parse that. Random spaces have been added, and Nation 80s and Shine 879 have changed to DAB+, along with Nation 90s being added.

Should read:

Nation 80s added to Herts Beds Bucks (DAB 80 Kbps; Pop Music)

@Chris@feddit.uk - not sure if you will see this. I saw your reply but only when not viewing via fedia.io -- which means I cannot reply to you directly.

I appreciate the link. But I must say, that list shows only 18 stations in Brussels, when there is more like 75. I can only find partial lists of stations in Brussels. Which is bizarre, because I would expect radio broadcast to be tightly regulated and for the gov to be aware of all stations, which I would expect them to be required to share with the public.

This is generally a good starting point: https://www.wohnort.org/dab/belgium.html

I don't see why you'd be able to receive BBC R4 in Brussels, especially if you can't see it when rescanned!

I did have an old Perstel radio which had a manual tune on it.

It should only need an SDR and a USB-OTG cable.

The SDR would be just software, so what would OTG cable lead to? Or if you mean it needs hardware to support the SDR, then that would defeat the purpose of recycling obsolete hardware. AFAICT, the only way to receive radio on a smartphone without buying hardware is if the phone comes with a radio from the factory. My phones have FM radio, which I think is a bit rare.

RIP

Honestly I don't know, but I think there is SDR software for Android and therefore potentially DAB decoding software. It should only need an SDR and a USB-OTG cable.

If we throw away old smartphones and we also produce radios that will be wasted by consumers after realising their radio lacks some metadata like album art that can be upgraded with another radio purchase, there is an e-waste problem that SDR does not fully solve. You seem to imply that a typical smartphone that comes stock without radio hardware could run an SDR. Is that correct? Wouldn’t the phone at least need some hardware to use the headphone jack as antenna input? Looks like additional hardware is needed.

If a radioless smartphone can do the job without additional hardware, then it would mostly render my idea useless; but we’d have to neglect the fact that radios also have speakers that are better than that of a smartphone.

The BBC is funded by the TV licence in the UK. If you are a UK resident and watch any live TV or the BBC Iplayer streaming service then you are legally obliged to pay for the licence - £175pa so about the same as a Netflix subscription.

The advantage of broadcasting elsewhere globally is soft power. Spreading UK centric viewpoints and some jolly good propaganda the former colonies, what what? Also for psychical media and merchandising income. Dr Who, for example, is very popular globally for some reason and so they make a lot of money selling plastic crap relating to that.

Interesting idea, but it sounds like it's increasing complexity for little benefit. What you might want is an SDR, which I believe you can get working on a phone.

Shortwave radio stations used by countries to send coded messages to spies. It's basically impossible to figure out someone checked for a message unless you catch them red handed, as opposed to the internet where your phone will send a GET request to totallynotthecia.gov

Not quite sure what you mean. What are numbers stations? Do you mean FM where the frequency is a memorable number?

I get the impression they would rather you listened via them then broadcast.

Yeah it’s a bit annoying how BBC keeps mentioning their digital services. They want you to have their content and they want to track you. But I think their top priority is just that you tune in one way or another. Offgriders give them the advantage of undivided attention. They don’t have to compete very hard for the attention of those without Internet.

OTOH, BBC is a special case because they get nothing from broadcast ads. I don’t even know how they are funded. Sure they get tax funded in the UK, but what’s their incentive to broadcast in continental Europe which apparently does not fund them?

(edit) a lot of FM and DAB stations have no digital resources that would track you (extremely basic websites without even a schedule). Some stations seem to have no web presence at all. So in those cases it would be interesting for them to emphasise their privacy alignment.

Actually that wasn't the one I was thinking of, but you have a point.

Most radio stations are doing this.

vvvVVVREEEWWWW- BBC Sounds: Music, Radio, Podcasts.

That's why numbers stations are still a thing

I don't think they'd do this because it's to their benefit to track you. There are certain radio stations here (common owner) that are constantly promoting their app and streams. I get the impression they would rather you listened via them then broadcast.

Personally I stick to broadcast for my radio, especially in the car where it's much more reliable.

GB News Radio - Removed

Good.

Those are probably things I should look into. Considering those free-to-air networks are TV networks, MythTV would likely work for them. But then I have no idea the absence of video would cause any issues, considering a Satellite tuner device for a PC might just receive TV signals.