DAB radio under £15. DAB Alarm clock under £20

Milex

bhebbes wrote: »

Surely there should be some mention of digital broadcasting OUTSIDE the UK - some people occasionally go abroad, with portable radios.

See post #86 above. You'll have to use "trial & error" outside western Europe.

You'll need a truckload of batteries, or - more convenient & much cheaper (£2.47 in Argos) - a universal mains adapter, which you can also use for any appliance with a UK plug such as a camera, mobile, hairdryer, etc.

lofielectronic

PrinceGaz wrote: »

It's well known that DAB has been a failure, unlike Freeview, despite them both being based on outdated transmission codecs (modern digital-compression could provide the same quality in half the bandwidth, or alternatively allow DAB music stations to sound almost CD quality instead of a quality which is far surpassed by any pirate uploading an 128kbps MP3 on a file-sharing network).

It's no wonder most people stick with analogue. DAB requires battery-hungry radios when used on the move, unlike VHF FM radios which use very little power. At home, DAB sounds awful compared with VHF FM (assuming you have good reception); at moderate reception DAB might pull ahead if it can still extract the signal cleanly, but with poor reception there won't be any DAB reception whatsoever. About the only market where DAB stands a chance of competing is on a car-radio where quality doesn't matter and there is always plenty of power available to run the receiver.

If I were OFCOM, I'd run it down now as it has less future than the old VHF FM imo. Concentrate instead on an AAC/Ogg Vorbis quality codec which will actually allow high quality stereo in 128kbps (high enough to match the ancient VHF FM broadcasts at their best, anyway).

I wouldn't say it was a well known failure.

I'd come to that conclusion after several stations went leaving basicly the bbc and a bunch of stations you can allready hear elsewhere. I also hadn't heard about the power required to run them, till I tried with my recargable batteries.

I think its a shame it hasn't caught on but more so that people are buying them expecting more than they are going to get.

I really love radio as a format and hope wi-fi radios work out to be more of a sucess as the 'standard' station choice we get in both local and national coverage is pretty poor.