Investing in a DAB radio company

[MK14]

Reading the following, doesn't make dab (at least in Norway) look worth investing in.

http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2018/11/no-more-investments-in-nationwide-dab.html

It seems to suggest, getting the government, to outright ban FM radio transmissions, in order to get dab radio to succeed. Which, sounds a bit naughty to me (i.e. it causes this:   http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2018/09/listeners-calling-on-parliament-to.html   ).

[cdev]

It may be about milieu control.

Reading the following, doesn't make dab (at least in Norway) look worth investing in.

http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2018/11/no-more-investments-in-nationwide-dab.html

It seems to suggest, getting the government, to outright ban FM radio transmissions, in order to get dab radio to succeed. Which, sounds a bit naughty to me (i.e. it causes this:   http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2018/09/listeners-calling-on-parliament-to.html   ).

.

I listen to FM a lot. I grew up on it. The FM around here is actually quite interesting and fun sometimes.

[MK14]

I listen to FM a lot. I grew up on it. The FM around here is actually quite interesting and fun sometimes.

If I listen to (a real) radio, I like FM, as well.

But, internet radio (or whatever you want to call it, e.g. via Amazon Alexa), seems to be a promising way, as well.
Assuming you are happy that there is a slight/tiny (or worse, depending on how you worry about such things) loss of privacy (E.g. your listening preferences could be noted), and consumption of your internet bandwidth.

[themadhippy]

I listen to FM a lot. I grew up on it.

only FM i used to listen to as a yoof was at the top end of the broadcast band were the local police  could be found, otherwise it was either radio  1 on  247 or 208 luxembourg.

[coppice]

You might expect wrong in this particular case. DAB has 'traditionally' (if that's the right word) been something of a niche area - probably because it is a fairly localised standard. When I was designing high volume consumer in the UK, we were lobbied quite hard by the semiconductor manufacturers to produce a DAB product. Unfortunately my oriental lords and masters vetoed the idea, which was a shame because the achievable margins would have been much better than a lot of our DVB-T stuff.

That was a long time ago, when the volumes were low. These days DAB operates in quite a few places, the volumes are pretty good, and the silicon is standardised and cheap. Asian companies make a lot of this stuff now.

[rdl]

The US has (had?) an odd sort of hybrid digital system called HD Radio. I remember a Sony receiver that was very popular but they discontinued it after only a year or so. People were buying it not for the "HD" but because it had very good reception of the standard radio signals.

[Halcyon]

What does "British designed and built" mean?

Seriously though, it means "Designed and built in Britain from Chinese parts"

[tooki]

UK Gallons vs US Gallons (This always gets me, how on earth can they be different sizes, but the same NAME, crazy).

Because global standardization is a very, very young concept. It didn't really begin in any meaningful way until the 19th century. Before then, standards were local. So every country (if not even smaller regions!) had its own mile, its own inch, its own pound, its own gallon (or alternatives!)… in the 19th century, as travel became easier, there began to be more need for international standardization. So first, the old units began to be standardized (so for example, a standard pound), and then later they were replaced by metric almost everywhere. The few holdouts remain with a smattering of the remaining semi-standardized units.

Wikipedia has this great image from an 1848 Austrian book with the conversions of the different weight units in use, both into "Viennese Commercial Units" (0.56kg) and "French kilograms": https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Gewichtmaße1.jpg

Note that while some were already using kg at the time, most were using some form of pound (varying from 301g to 763g), or something altogether unrelated. (For Switzerland, it says a pound was 500g "for most cantons", meaning it wasn't even consistent within this little tiny country!!)


Remember, until railroads, there wasn't even such a thing as synchronized time (i.e. time zones): every place was on its own time, based on sunrise.

[MK14]

Thanks, that is brilliant 

It has explained WHY, and helped me understand the situation nicely.
Even now, different countries, choose (in some cases), different standards/measurement systems and stuff.
Those decisions, can carry on for many decades and even centuries.
It is why some stuff is so silly. Such as standard tyres, having one of its measurements in metric (millimetres), and the other in imperial (inches).
So, a 195/65R15 tyre, has a width of 195 millimetres and a diameter of 15 inches.

The reason why (tyres/tires), is long and complicated. But, a very quick summary, it is because the US and rest of the west, couldn't agree to sensible standards. The US went its own way, with certain laws (I think), (hence economically, as US is a huge market), somewhat forcing the weird, mixed metric/imperial standard, we see, today.

[tggzzz]

I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

I see you've found a way to introduce (yet again) one of your two topics.

Are you planning to bring SMPSs into this thread, or to create another?

[tooki]

Thanks, that is brilliant 

It has explained WHY, and helped me understand the situation nicely.
Even now, different countries, choose (in some cases), different standards/measurement systems and stuff.
Those decisions, can carry on for many decades and even centuries.
It is why some stuff is so silly. Such as standard tyres, having one of its measurements in metric (millimetres), and the other in imperial (inches).
So, a 195/65R15 tyre, has a width of 195 millimetres and a diameter of 15 inches.

The reason why (tyres/tires), is long and complicated. But, a very quick summary, it is because the US and rest of the west, couldn't agree to sensible standards. The US went its own way, with certain laws (I think), (hence economically, as US is a huge market), somewhat forcing the weird, mixed metric/imperial standard, we see, today.

Glad you appreciated it!

I think it’s a good rule of thumb in most situations, when you’ve encountered a decision that doesn’t make sense, to consider what information was available when the decision was made. Because in most cases, the decisions were the right ones at the time.

A great example of this is the Microsoft Word file format. Even in its modern XML incarnation, the internal representation of the document appears insanely convoluted. It’s not the file format that’s complex, it’s the object model of the document that is complex. But why? Well, when Word was originally conceived and written, computers didn’t have anywhere near as much RAM as today. The typical (“naïve”) approach is to simply load a document into RAM. And that works fine for small documents. Ok, so what about big ones that are too big to fit in RAM? For unformatted text, you just page in the segment you’re working on and leave the rest on disk. But then there’s formatting. Tag-based formatting (like RTF or HTML) suddenly becomes a big problem, because to know the formatting of any given character, you have to parse all of the document that comes before it, because a formatting tag opened on page 1 could still be open and affecting page 183. This means you functionally cannot just page in segments of the document, you have to read it all, which again becomes impossible on highly RAM-constrained systems. Additionally, tag-based formatting means that making changes anywhere in a file on disk requires rewriting every single bit starting from the changed one, which was a big deal back when we were using slow hard drives (if you were lucky) and even slower floppy disks (if you weren't).

This is where the genius in Word’s approach comes in: it completely decouples formatting from the text, and completely decouples the order of text in the file from its order in the document! In essence, it’s a little file system, and every span of text is stored as an object, and that object in turn is assigned one, and only one, style. As such, text in Word cannot have no style assigned, which is why everything starts with the “Normal” style. Similarly, even an empty document has to have a style, so that it can format the insertion point.

Let me illustrate using pseudo-HTML for nesting.

Suppose you have this sentence:
This is some really important text.

The document object model will conceptually already be something like this:

<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=1, style ID=1 />
    </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

<Paragraph Styles>
  <Style 1>
      Style name="Normal"
      Font=Times New Roman, style=plain, size=12pt, line spacing=1.25 , alignment=left, color=black, proofing language=US English, etc.
  </Style 1>
</Paragraph styles>

<Text Span 1>This is some really important text.</Text Span 1>

In the file on disk, this might look like this:

=== Beginning of file ===
0.
Table of contents:
Page 1: Document structure
Page 2: Style 1
Page 3: Text Span 1

1.
<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=1, style ID=1 />
    </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

2.
  <Style 1>
      Style name="Normal"
      Font=Times New Roman, style=plain, size=12pt, line spacing=1.25 , alignment=left, color=black, proofing language=US English, etc.
  </Style 1>

3.
<Text Span 1>This is some really important text.</Text Span 1>

=== End of file ===

So far, so good. The chunk of text is in one place, the formatting in another, and the “glue” in another.

Suppose you now make the word “really” bold:
This is some really important text.

Now the behind the scenes starts to get interesting.

Remember how I said that a span of text must have one, and only one, style assigned to it? So how does it format just a part ofan existing span? By breaking it up, of course! So conceptually you end up with this:

<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=2, style ID=1 />
      <Text span ID=3, style ID=2 />
      <Text span ID=4, style ID=1 />
    </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

<Paragraph Styles>
  <Style 1>
      Style name="Normal"
      Font=Times New Roman, style=plain, size=12pt, line spacing=1.25 , alignment=left, color=black, proofing language=US English, etc.
  </Style 1>
  <Style 2>
      Based on ID=1
      Style=bold
      Computed style name="Normal+bold"
  </Style 2>
</Paragraph styles>

<Text Span 2>This is some </Text Span 2>
<Text Span 3>really </Text Span 3>
<Text Span 4>important text.</Text Span 4>

See how it broke up the text into three spans with new IDs, created another style (namely, a style based on another style, so just adding the changes in formatting), and then assigned the bolded word that new style?

Now it's in a format where the program can determine the formatting of any word, on any page, without needing to know the formatting of the text that preceded it.

Remember how I said that back then, disk access was slow? Rewriting a long document from scratch could have taken a LONG time. So Word used something they called "fast save", and this is what it would have done to the file:

=== Beginning of file ===
0.
Table of contents:
see new TOC on page 4



1.
<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=1, style ID=1 />
    </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

2.
<Style 1>
      Style name="Normal"
      Font=Times New Roman, style=plain, size=12pt, line spacing=1.25 , alignment=left, color=black, proofing language=US English, etc.
</Style 1>

3.
<Text Span 1>This is some really important text.</Text Span 1>

4.
Page 1: deleted
Page 2: Style 1
Page 3: deleted
Page 4: TOC
Page 5: Document structure
Page 6: Text Span 2
Page 7: Text Span 3
Page 8: Text Span 4
Page 9: Style 2

5.
<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=2, style ID=1 />
      <Text span ID=3, style ID=2 />
      <Text span ID=4, style ID=1 />
    </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

6.
<Text Span 2>This is some </Text Span 2>

7.
<Text Span 3>really </Text Span 3>

8.
<Text Span 4>important text.</Text Span 4>

9.
<Style 2>
      Based on ID=1
      Style=bold
      Computed style name="Normal+bold"
</Style 2>

=== End of file ===

Note that the only part of the file that was actually overwritten is the original table of contents; every other change has been accomplished by appending onto the end of the file, which is massively faster than rewriting the whole thing. The downside was that files grew ever larger, took slightly longer to open since they're fragmented, and as many a politician and businessperson learned the hard way, it contains a record of deleted text! (This is why people would sometimes do a "save as" on a document to save it to a fresh, efficient file. And you could disable Fast Save altogether, if you didn't mind the speed penalty.)

So imagine a final edit, where we insert another sentence before the first, and swap out the bolded word:
Writing is fun. This is some insanely important text.

Can you guess what the file will look like after another fast save?

=== Beginning of file ===
0.
Table of contents:
see new TOC on page 10



1.
<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=1, style ID=1 />
      </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

2.
  <Style 1>
      Style name="Normal"
      Font=Times New Roman, style=plain, size=12pt, line spacing=1.25 , alignment=left, color=black, proofing language=US English, etc.
  </Style 1>

3.
<Text Span 1>This is some really important text.</Text Span 1>

4.
Page 1: deleted
Page 2: Style 1
Page 3: deleted
Page 4: TOC
Page 5: Document structure
Page 6: Text Span 2
Page 7: Text Span 3
Page 8: Text Span 4
Page 9: Style 2

5.
<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=2, style ID=1 />
      <Text span ID=3, style ID=2 />
      <Text span ID=4, style ID=1 />
      </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

6.
<Text Span 2>This is some </Text Span 2>

7.
<Text Span 3>really </Text Span 3>

8.
<Text Span 4>important text.</Text Span 4>

9.
<Style 2>
      Based on ID=1
      Style=bold
      Computed style name="Normal+bold"
</Style 2>

10.
Page 1: deleted
Page 2: Style 1
Page 3: deleted
Page 4: deleted
Page 5: deleted
Page 6: Text Span 2
Page 7: deleted
Page 8: Text Span 4
Page 9: Style 2
Page 10: TOC
Page 11: Document structure
Page 12: Text Span 5
Page 13: Text Span 6

11.
<Document structure>
  <Section 1: margins 3cm, 1 column, Arabic page numbers, etc >
    <Paragraph 1>
      <Text span ID=5, style ID=1 />
      <Text span ID=2, style ID=1 />
      <Text span ID=6, style ID=2 />
      <Text span ID=4, style ID=1 />
    </Paragraph 1>
  </Section 1>
</Document structure>

12.
<Text Span 5>Writing is fun. </Text Span 5>

13.
<Text Span 6>insanely </Text Span 6>

=== End of file ===

Seems crazy. But it solved a major problem at the time, allowing machines with just a few hundred KB of RAM and slow disks to efficiently edit formatted documents far larger than the available resources, something other early word processors could not do. Would we design it that way now? Of course not. Today, for the purposes of word processing, we have essentially unlimited RAM and instant disk access. So we wouldn't mess with Fast Save. (And indeed, Microsoft disabled the Fast Save option years ago to close that security gap.) The decoupling of text from formatting does, however, still have some advantages.

(And this is a simplified, incomplete, absolutely wrong-in-the-details account from memory. I don't remember how they dealt with pagination, and there are actually more types of styles than just paragraph styles, but for the sake of illustration, it's close enough!)

[MK14]

Seems crazy. But it solved a major problem at the time, allowing machines with just a few hundred KB of RAM and slow disks to efficiently edit formatted documents far larger than the available resources, something other early word processors could not do. Would we design it that way now? Of course not. Today, for the purposes of word processing, we have essentially unlimited RAM and instant disk access. So we wouldn't mess with Fast Save. (And indeed, Microsoft disabled the Fast Save option years ago to close that security gap.) The decoupling of text from formatting does, however, still have some advantages.

Thanks again, that was also really interesting!
There are lots of amazing, optimisation techniques, developed over the years. Thanks for explaining, that particular one! I enjoyed reading it.
It's sad, but some of the great optimisations in the past, are gradually being lost to time. As people retire, things get forgotten etc. There were lots of rather clever techniques developed, over the years (a long time ago). To allow huge amounts of data to be stored on reels of tape. They had clever ways of sorting huge files, with multiple passes of the tape, which overcame the (relatively) extremely small ram (probably core memory, actually), and coping with a rather slow processor, by today's standards.
The amazingly fast speed, the tape could be played/written to, with the reels, spinning round at crazy, breakneck speeds, and using these amazingly complicated mechanisms, to cope, without breaking or damaging, the somewhat delicate tape, with (probably) very valuable data on it.
These days, you would probably use lots of microcontrollers, and modern sensors, to do it. yet, it was all done with none of that, just plain mechanical and transistorised circuitry (depending on the generation of the mainframe computer, it could be all valves/tubes, or even all relays).

By coincidence, I've recently been playing about and investigating early PCs, and their software. Specifically targeting, the first/original one, i.e. an IBM 4.77MHz Intel 8088, 8 bit (external), 16 bit internal (not everyone agrees, some consider it an 8 bit, because of only having an external, 8 bits).

I was writing some (rather small, for fun), assembly code, to see how fast it runs.
Emulation only. Because I don't have an 8088 PC as such, and they generally cost a small fortune on ebay.
Occasionally, an affordable 8088 PC, does pop up. So, I will have to see.
8088 based motherboards, can be affordably purchased, and because they are more recent (the ones I was looking at), they are less work in theory), to keep running.

There are so many amazing things about those 8088's. As slow as one might think/expect them to be, there were a number of partly extreme, optimisation techniques, to get the best horse power, out of them.
As well as writing the code in 8088 assembly, they took great care into which register they used, along with which instructions they would be using.
Because, a number of such combinations, are coding into only 8 bits (a sort of tiny, 8 bit thumb (arm thumb is bigger than 8 bits, anyway) like mode, always active).
So, by clever choice of what register and instruction combinations are used/needed, for the entire section of code. Most/all of the instructions can then be 8 bits in size. This gave a considerable/significant speed improvement.
As the 8088 had no program or data cache as such.
But it did have a 6 byte, pre-fetch buffer. This was significantly less effective on the 8088, as it was so much slower (especially bus wise, as it was only 8 bits wide, rather than the much faster 8086, which was 16 bits, external bus, which could make good use of the 6 byte pre-fetch).

What has partly blown my mind (and I don't properly understand it), is a method, of creating a genuine (simple), extra second processor, and using it. On a standard 8088 IBM PC (I assume it applies to clones as well).
It re-purposed, the Dynamic Ram Refresh controller, and arranged it so that it was acting as a kind of (DMA like), simple second processor. Allowing, significance, increases, in speed, in some use cases.
Possibly, by messing with a Motorola 6845 display/graphics controller chip, which is somewhat reprogrammable, to change its functionality. The PCjr had one (apparently), I'm not sure if the original 8088 had it as well, I would have to research it.

Three part article, starts here:
https://trixter.oldskool.org/2013/01/10/optimizing-for-the-8088-and-8086-cpu-part-1/

[M0HZH]

Does anyone even use DAB in the UK? I personally don't know anyone who does. FM is likely to remain king here for a long time yet, any attempt to enforce a switchover will probably just lead to rise in the pirate stations.

DAB in the UK is dead. It always was.
...

Digital radio is prevalent in the UK with a 58% share at the end of 2019 (source) and virtually all new cars sold in the UK have a DAB receiver (source).

As most radio listening is done in the car, DAB radios are quite superior in terms of sound quality for the sole purpose that they don't fade / interfere; FM is only better at maximum strength signal and is extremely bad at mediocre levels. The chart below explains it quite well, even if it refers to a different (quite inferior) digital mode.

[Fred27]

I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

I see you've found a way to introduce (yet again) one of your two topics.
Are you planning to bring SMPSs into this thread, or to create another?

What does anyone even reply to this obvious troll? 

[AndyC_772]

Digital radio is prevalent in the UK with a 58% share at the end of 2019 (source) and virtually all new cars sold in the UK have a DAB receiver (source).

I have a DAB receiver in my car, but I rarely use it. Normally I play music from USB, or stream from my phone using 4G.

The source you've linked says 58% digital, which includes DTV, online and apps. I am admittedly surprised to see DAB accounting for 70% of that, so 41% of listening overall. Maybe it's OK just to have on in the background in the car, where it's competing against engine and road noise anyway, and the terrible bit rate doesn't matter.

I can't see any way in which that figure is likely to do anything but shrink in future, though. Improved 4G and 5G coverage is going to make streaming all the more popular, offering better quality, a far wider choice of stations, and no need for anyone to buy a separate radio receiver at all.

If every car already comes with DAB, and people can stream any station they like using the phone or laptop they already have, who exactly is going to go out and buy a DAB radio today? Where's the compelling use case? Why would anyone consider investing in DAB now?

[richard.cs]

Digital radio is prevalent in the UK with a 58% share at the end of 2019 (source) and virtually all new cars sold in the UK have a DAB receiver (source).

Careful there - that source gives you minimal information about DAB specifically. It defines "digital" as all digital radio services including internet streaming.

In terms of reach, 36 million adults or two thirds of population aged 15+ are now tuning in to radio via a digitally enabled platform (DAB, DTV, Online or App) each week

The same survey actually showed AM/FM at 49.1% and DAB at 36.8% of all radio listening (remainder other digital streams). That puts the Analogue:DAB ratio at 57%:43%. Still higher than I would have expected from my personal experience in the UK.
https://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/2018_03/RAJAR%20Q1%202018%20-%20Chart%201%20-%20All%20Radio%20Listening%20-%20Clean.pdf

Generally, there seem to be a lot of UK articles conflating "all digital radio services" with DAB, when DAB is only about 70% of digital listening. I think it's probably deliberate given the UK government plan of setting a switchover date once 50% is met.

Side note, whilst looking for numbers I stumbled across this (now rather dated) document:
https://www.parliament.uk/documents/documents/upload/stevegreen.pdf
It's an interesting read. The issue of cars is declining, but the fundamental problem of having adopted DAB rather than DAB+ has not changed. Worth noting that new DAB radios sold in the UK since 2013 have been required to support DAB+ - maybe someone, somewhere is thinking long term for once. I suspect the wider issue is that there's an increasing number of people who simply don't listen to radio at all, and that many of the people who might favour DAB for the variety just use online streaming instead.

[tggzzz]

I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

I see you've found a way to introduce (yet again) one of your two topics.
Are you planning to bring SMPSs into this thread, or to create another?

What does anyone even reply to this obvious troll? 

I wouldn't class him as a troll per se - although he does display some of the characteristics in https://www.eps.mcgill.ca/jargon/jargon.html#troll
He appears to be more of a fanatic, in the sense of somebody that can't change their mind and won't change the subject.

Both can be irritating. Ignoring them is a useful response, but it is occasionally alerting newbies to their previous posting history.

[MK14]

I wouldn't class him as a troll per se - although he does display some of the characteristics in https://www.eps.mcgill.ca/jargon/jargon.html#troll
He appears to be more of a fanatic, in the sense of somebody that can't change their mind and won't change the subject.

Both can be irritating. Ignoring them is a useful response, but it is occasionally alerting newbies to their previous posting history.

Are they ever going to come back to this thread, and reply/update it ?
Or are they trolling us, and/or not telling the truth ?
I'm getting fed up of their antics. Thanking some posts, does not really count as replying.

tl;dr
Their lack of posts after the opening one, despite many on-topic replies (many off-topic as well, e.g. me), means they are probably wasting everyone's time again.

[coppice]

If every car already comes with DAB, and people can stream any station they like using the phone or laptop they already have, who exactly is going to go out and buy a DAB radio today? Where's the compelling use case? Why would anyone consider investing in DAB now?

Huh? People have invested in DAB if they bought a recent car. The sales problem with stand alone radio sales is not whether they are FM or DAB, but that people don't need them at all. People walk around the house with their phones, and can use things like the BBC sounds app. from their house wi-fi. Its becoming like this with TV, too. We bought a new TV a few months ago, and placed it where we do not have a TV aerial socket. Watching TV from the internet has served us well enough so far, that I can't see me even bothering to add an aerial socket when we decorate the room.

[ebastler]

Their lack of posts after the opening one, despite many on-topic replies (many off-topic as well, e.g. me), means they are probably wasting everyone's time again.

And nobody gets "thanked" either... disappointing.