Re: Don't touch FM!!!!
The original DAB tech came out of Eureka 147 project and is based on MP2 technology.
This was in the early 1990's and DAB came to market with relatively expensive hifi tuners in 1995, when the BBC first started broadcasting on DAB and at high bit rates (192 kb for Radio 1,2 and 4 and upto 256kb for Radio 3).
4 years later, Digital One was given the licence to be the first national commercial operator on DAB and the 6 or 7 stations that they launched were either music or speech/news based and take up of DAB was stifled as no one produced a cost effective "portable-type" all in one radio (ie tuner with amplifier and speaker built-in) until about 2001 when the first £99 radio came out.
So, DAB was slow to roll out to the general population, was initially expensive to own the hardware, and was stifled by OFCOM limiting the number of stations.
The majority of the UK can receive DAB...but the issue with DAB is that you need plenty of transmitters to cover every nook and cranny....and Arqiva (who own the transmitters) have not broadcast at enough sites at the required power levels to make it easier for people to receive the signals.
And in the meantime (30 years !!), audio compression technology has evolved to give us MP3 and now AAC, which was never considered "possible" back in 1990 when MP2 was chosen for DAB.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
