I had a DAB in my car
Yes I bought a DAB radio for my car - because it's an old vauxhall and so the stereo in it sounds like an angry bluebottle in a biscuit tin. Some observations:
- The reception is crap. Really crap. The stick on aerials are about £30 and only work in towns. That makes it even worse than Freeview! If they're waiting for 50% take up before switchover, it'll never, ever happen.
+ The sound quality is actually a big improvement over FM. I know there are loads of hi-fi prats that go on about how awful it is but they're idiots who spend a grand on a cd player because "it's got a lower bit error rate"...
- BBC broadcast different stations at different volume levels! So you have to set 1xtra to 6 on the dial, then if you want to listen to Radio 3 you have to crank it up to 25. Which is annoying, plus it makes you jump when you switch back.
- All the commercial stations on DAB are a) impossible to pick up because they're on a low-power mutliplex b) crap anyway.
- The kit is bloody stupidly expensive and really chunky. How comes I can buy a freeview box for the the fluff in my pocket whereas a mono dab radio that does nothing else costs £50??? Where are the personal DAB receivers?
So when I sold my car I let the dude have the DAB radio, not that he wanted it particularly.
Just go DAB+ or come up with some sort of standard that is low bandwidth enough to piggyback on the FM signal.