Digital milestones and millstones

Michael Hedges September 3, 2007

As summer began digital broadcasting passed a significant milestone. The UK’s last analogue FM license was issued in May. When the license for GCap’s XFM in South Wales expires in 2019 digital radio broadcasting in the UK will be the dominant broadcast platform.
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Analogue broadcasting will, certainly, continue long after 2019. No national regulator has been willing – or forced – to commit radio broadcasters to definite schedules for analogue shut-off. Television, it seems, is easier to convert.

The UK has set most of digital radio’s milestones. Since inaugurated by the BBC and commercial broadcasters DAB in the UK has grown, slow but steady, to reach a significant portion of households. Digital radio in the UK exists on the platform commonly known as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). Radio measurement service RAJAR’s survey of the first quarter 2007 showed that just under one in five UK households have at least one DAB receiver.

No other country or region can boast of the same level of digital take-up.

One fundamental reason for consumer acceptance of digital radio in the UK is the joint effort of broadcasters and the regulator setting an action plan and sticking with it. These stakeholders realized that digital uptake could not rely on early-adopters – the technology fans, the anoraks. To reach the consumer mainstream broadcasters needed a consistent message about digital radio broadcasting and insure that the promise was met with performance.

Adopting DAB, synonymous now with the Eureka 147 standard, as the standard for digital radio in the UK in 1995 was the logical choice; everybody could agree on it. Endless debates, technical or political, cause endless delays. Of course, something better is always over one horizon or another. Business plans, however, require present thought more than future speculation.

Broadcasters in Denmark, too, have moved forward with DAB. WorldDMB’s Overview of DAB and DAB+ in Europe, released in May, estimates about one million Danes have access to DAB reception, about 20% of Danish households. By contrast the same report estimates DAB receiver sales in Switzerland at between 30,000 and 50,000.

The WorldDMB Forum is both protector and promoter of the Eureka 147 DAB family of standards. Reflecting the obvious migration to multi-media the organization changed its name from WorldDAB.

The Eureka 147 DAB standard uses the MP2 audio compression codec, first demonstrate in 1990 and the best technology offered for a decade. MP2 is also known as MPEG-1 audio layer II and sometimes Musicam. It was developed for professional audio and critically tested with classical music.

WorldDMB’s extended family now includes DMB for mobile TV and data, DAB-IP for internet streaming of multi-media and now DAB+, the MPEG 4 upgrade for digital radio. DAB+ is alternatively referred to as aacPlus or HE-AAC, bowing to the compression codec developed by Coding Technologies. Advantages over the earlier standard are stronger error correction coding and lower bit rate requirements.

WorldDMB added DAB+ as the significantly improved digital radio standard to its basket of multi-media standards late in 2006. DAB was conceived in 1980 and reach testing and demonstration in 1988. In 2006 Berlin Brandenburg (Germany) media regulator Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg (MABB) rejected the DAB standard entirely as old and inefficient, preferring mobile telephone standard DVB-H.

Digital radio is very new in the consumers’ world. The millstone around the necks of broadcasters, regulators and developers is the ‘receiver issue.’ Digital radio receivers were not even available until 1999. Analogue radio broadcasting has been more than sufficient from consumers’ point of view, evidence being that all radio receiver sales have been stagnant for decades, UK and Denmark, recently excepted. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu reported in their 2006 predictions for the global media that 1.8 billion radio receivers, pervasively analogue, are in world-wide use. Digital radio offers a reason to shop for a new but relatively expensive receiver. The UK’s radio lobby RadioCentre called for a fixed date for analogue shut-off, perhaps as early as 2015, to encourage receiver manufacturers. 

The audio quality argument for digital radio disappeared quickly, leading to a divide between audio specialists and broadcasters. In the UK – with barely 350 available radio channels for a country of 60 million, one per 175,000 persons - the successful argument has been more choice and flexibility. By contrast, American broadcasting, including satellite services, offers about one radio channel per 100,000 persons. Most of Europe, with national and regional public broadcasters dominating, about one radio channel per 150,000 to 250,000 persons is offered. For radio’s customers – formerly known as listeners – the pervasive argument for a new receiver is flexibility.

DAB+ receivers are, however, “just over the horizon.” The new receivers, when they’re manufactured, will not be downwardly compatible with existing DAB receivers.

Earlier this spring the UK regulator decided not to force nascent UK digital radio listeners to buy yet newer receivers nor force broadcasters to buy yet newer transmission systems. Adopting the MPEG4 (AAC+) codec now would, in the words of an Ofcom spokesperson, “have a severe effect on existing users.”  The BBC said it had “no plans to consider DAB+.”

Australia’s Parliament passed (May 10) legislation authorizing digital radio deployment using the DAB standard. Digital radio will come to Australia’s main cities beginning in 2009. Two factors led to the legislature’s choice: DAB is an internationally recognized standard and “a wide range of reasonably priced receivers is available.” Commercial broadcasters have chosen the DAB+ standard.

Other digital radio standards, platforms and codecs abound and interest in alternatives increased measurably, at least among the technically inclined, shortly after DAB channels launched in the UK.  More inclined than committed American broadcasters are adding HD (formerly known as IBOC) digital transmissions for an essentially receiver-less market. Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) offers attractive solutions for a variety of AM/MW broadcasters. Still, apart from the UK and Denmark, no radio broadcasting stakeholders are willing to launch and sustain extensive promotion of digital radio.

Arguments about digital media standards, not limited to radio broadcasting, are beyond the circular, The mobile telephone and personal audio players have raised radio broadcasters insecurity over the entire realm of digital media. MPEG players like Apple’s iPod frighten radio broadcasters offering music-based formats. The AAC+ standard would offer quality equal to the tiny shirt-pocket players but the barely available receivers are still table-models. AAC+ is also available for DRM systems.

And all audio systems are set for even higher quality. Germany’s legendary Fraunhofer Institute has developed yet a newer compression codec – MPEG Surround.

“This is a compression technology that is able to work with any existing audio codec in the broadcasting world,” says Fraunhofer spokesperson Mandy Trommier. “Using it with HE-AAC you can have a surround signal with just 64 kbps. Of course, MPEG Surround is fully backward compatible to stereo players and it comes along with a binaural mode for enjoying it with stereo headphones.”

Mobility being essential and the mobile telephone ubiquitous radio broadcasters – continental Europe, at least – face the possibility of an entire platform shift. European Commission Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding stunned national regulators and broadcasters by endorsing a single platform for mobile digital broadcast media – DVB-H, the mobile TV standard. Mrs Reding’s intention seems to give a boost to mobile television, a product that has yet to excite consumers. Finland, home to Nokia, has also shunned DAB in favor of the mobile TV standard.

“At present, there are no plans to switch-off analogue radio,” said Ofcom’s statement announcing a public consultation on spectrum issues. “However, in the future this spectrum might be better used for other services such as mobile television, more digital radio, more community radio services or other new technologies,”

Adapted from an article written by Michael Hedges and previously published in Radio World International as "Questions Rise About Analog Shutoff" August, 2007

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On September 3, 2007 Fergus Pitt Project Co-ordinator, ABC Digital Radio wrote:

Actually, the commercial and public sector broadcasters both recommended DAB+. This includes the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Corporation (SBS). In fact the ABC, Commercial Radio Australia and Broadcast Australia jointly won an award at SMPTE this year ( http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0101/t.8082.html ) for "Outstanding Contribution to World Standards".

Community radio broadcasters will be using the new codec as well.

On September 1, 2007 Greg Smith Olney MD USA wrote :

The DAB digital rollout in the UK has pretty-much stalled, due to slowing consumer interest:

"2004/13 – DIFFUSION online"

"The DAB market has been very slow to catch on. The technology is 10-15 years old, and though it can be said that DAB is perhaps the most talked about technology, it can also be said that DAB has perhaps put itself into a corner."

http://www.ebu.ch/en/union/diffusion_on_line/dossiers/diffonline_2004_03_22.php

The digital rollout in Canada has stalled:

"Digital radio in Canada"

"The Commission is very concerned about the stalled DRB transition. Some stations that once operated have since ceased operations. Few receivers have been sold, and there is no interest in expanding DRB service beyond the six cities where it exists."

There is almost ZERO consumer interest in HD Radio (HD/IBOC) in the US.

iBiquity may have to look at other alternatives, if there are any.

If lackluster consumer interest doesn't kill HD Radio, then the new broadcaster royality rates may.