Analogue to DAB switchover

£10 for my NAT05. Sounds tempting.
NOT!

regards,
Steve

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£10 for my NAT05. Sounds tempting.
NOT!

Ditto for my NAT01 and Rega Radio.

Having said that, I've been debating whether to get out early and get a good price for them while I still can. I suspect that when the switchover does occur that an awful lot of high-end tuners will be appearing on fleabay etc ... a real glut on the market that will be.

Maybe those nice people at Naim will have come up with an add-on by then that allows for DAB or whatever system reigns at the time.
regards,
Steve.

Would be tempted by an offer of £10 for each of my DAB radios. The digital signal has disappeared around here rendering them even more useless.

Regards,

Willy.

There was an item on BBC2 programme 'Working Lunch' today. They mentioned questionable quality, stations closing and using the Internet as an alternative.

Cheers,
OW

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There was an item on BBC2 programme 'Working Lunch' today. They mentioned questionable quality, stations closing and using the Internet as an alternative

Internet radio wouldn't be much use in a car, IMO.

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Originally posted by Dr John William Martin:

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There was an item on BBC2 programme 'Working Lunch' today. They mentioned questionable quality, stations closing and using the Internet as an alternative

Internet radio wouldn't be much use in a car, IMO.

Surely the wonder tool that is the iPhone must be able to lock on to an internet radio station, in the car?
No good to me as I don't have one.

Do we have satellite radio over here?

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Surely the wonder tool that is the iPhone must be able to lock on to an internet radio station, in the car?
No good to me as I don't have one

I have an iphone, and sure it will connect when I'm in my car, although I've never tried it. There are apps available for DAB reception.

These apps I would assume depend on a broadband wifi connection or 3G. 3G usage for radio would rack up the minutes very quickly and probably be rather expensive. A better option is broadband wifi (again available on the iphone), but I can't really see them setting up the number of wifi hotspots required for realistic internet radio usage by car owners.

But back to those of us with upmarker FM tuners. Unless we all want to be the proud owners of expensive doorstops in 2015, then selling now and replacing with a dual function FM/DAB tuner may be the most realistic option, although I would miss the sound quality of my NATO1. Alternatively I suppose I could just use the digital radio stations on Freeview - probably more than adequate for the quality of DAB.

DAB radio really is the pits. Sound quality on a par with low bitrate MP3, and occasionally broke up altogether - that was from and Arcam DAB tuner owned by my son-in-law, tried with main BBC channels and some commercial channels in Wimbledon. Didn't even come close to my daughter's very old and cheap Yamaha tuner (old enough not to have presets).

Yet another case of commercial interests overriding quality.

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3G usage for radio would rack up the minutes very quickly and probably be rather expensive.

Get a deal with unlimited web minutes?

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Get a deal with unlimited web minutes?

So, I should start paying an enormous premium just for the "privilege" of listening to Internet Radio in my car? Plus I would have to find some way of connecting the iPhone to my car radio to listen to it. My car is a Volvo S60 and for those of you who don't know, the radio/CD is custom designed to sit neatly as part of the fascia. The only way of using an MP3 player with it is to pay for a modification with a trailing lead out so I can plug that into the headphone out of the MP3, or use one of tiny FM transmitter gadgets to make the car radio think it's a radio station - appalling quality, and most of the time doesn't work properly.

My iPhone is PAYG, and I probably only use about £10 in call charges etc per month. i.e. I top it up for £10 each month. Unlimited web usage is currently much more expensive than that. No thanks.

I suspect that when the changeover occurs we will all finish up having to buy new car radios (not sure how that would work for my car), or just give up and use the radio purely as a CD player. I'd miss the traffic reports on long journeys, though.

So, if this changeover is now inevitable, how come some new cars aren't being supplied fitted with DAB radios as default?

I am in the same position as you Dr John, I'm on PAYG, so it's about £1 a page to connect to WWW.

There are some quite cheap deals, with unlimited WWW, from about £20 per month, but a lot upfront for the iPhone.

Fortunately the cars we have are not the quietest (especially the MK 2 Golf GTI) , and the fact I don't do that many miles these days , so radio quality isn't really an issue.

Some of the cars we deliver now have DAB and it works well enough for a travelling system AFAIC, a few "drop outs" generally OK on Planet Rock.

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I am in the same position as you Dr John, I'm on PAYG, so it's about £1 a page to connect to WWW.

There are some quite cheap deals, with unlimited WWW, from about £20 per month, but a lot upfront for the iPhone.

Fortunately the cars we have are not the quietest (especially the MK 2 Golf GTI) , and the fact I don't do that many miles these days , so radio quality isn't really an issue.

Some of the cars we deliver now have DAB and it works well enough for a travelling system AFAIC, a few "drop outs" generally OK on Planet Rock.

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I am in the same position as you Dr John, I'm on PAYG, so it's about £1 a page to connect to WWW.

There are some quite cheap deals, with unlimited WWW, from about £20 per month, but a lot upfront for the iPhone.

Fortunately the cars we have are not the quietest (especially the MK 2 Golf GTI) , and the fact I don't do that many miles these days , so radio quality isn't really an issue.

Some of the cars we deliver now have DAB and it works well enough for a travelling system AFAIC, a few "drop outs" generally OK on Planet Rock.

I pay £10 a month to O2. I think that gives me quite a few hours of "free" wifi access to their hotspots, although I've never availed myself of them. To be honest, my phone is used more as a PDA (games/films/iPod/databases), next most frequently for SMS, and just occasionally as a phone. I've tried to persuade SWMBO to use it because of the 500 "free" minutes monthly for phone calls, but she is a confirmed technophobe.

I had a Golf GTi (Y reg) before my Volvo. Don't remember it as particulary noisy, and the Radio/CD was excellent as these thing go. I got rid of it because after many years of bigger cars I was finding it too small!

I'm enough of a realist to know that my NAT01 is going to be a doorstop in a few years time, and that if I want to continue with Radio in the car then DAB is going to be forced on me. I could live without it and just listen to audiobooks/radio comedy shows etc on CD, but SWMBO likes the radio when we're on one of our weekly trips to see one or other of the grandkids. (Wimbledon or Cambridge)

I don't recall ever having dropouts on FM radio except in the wilds of Northern Scotland.

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Radio amnesty offers discount

A letter writer on PM this afternoon made the interesting point that the word 'amnesty' implies something illegal, as in knife amnesty, drugs amnesty etc.

Chris