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Sunday 5 July 2009
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Re-inventing digital radio for Internet age
Thursday 30 November 2006
The UK digital radio industry is struggling to survive in the Internet age and desperately has to reinvent itself, according to John Hall, chief executive of UK digital radio company Radioscape.
“The thing that isn’t going to work is making more radios that look like the radios we have today because that is a very slow, evolutionary approach. There’s so many other new and exciting things competing for the consumer pound. The broadcast industry desperately needs change,” he said. “This is almost a survival issue because the old streams of revenue such as advertising are dwindling in favour of the Internet.”
Radioscape has nearly 30 per cent of the UK DAB receiver market, well behind Frontier Silicon’s 70 per cent, but also has a strong position in DAB broadcast equipment. The firm celebrated its tenth anniversary last week.
One of the ways forward is to combine DAB and the newer DRM technology that is cheaper to rollout and has more range, but less bandwidth. The first dual mode DAB/DRM radios are shipping from Morphy Richards in Germany this week, to be followed by France, Switzerland, Portugal in the New Year. “Then there will be four or five radio makers following in the UK,” he said.
Hall is doubtful of the next generation of DAB based on the AAC+ codec as an option. “The value of a software defined radio solution is that we are ready with the new audio codec when the industry asks for it, and we have not timetabled a product for it,” he said.
He pointed out it would have to be a standard at ETSI first, and then approved by Ofcom in the UK, so he sees no UK market for the new technology until the end of 2007 or 2008. “We have to get people off this topic and drive more content,” he said.
“The thing that isn’t going to work is making more radios that look like the radios we have today because that is a very slow, evolutionary approach. There’s so many other new and exciting things competing for the consumer pound. The broadcast industry desperately needs change,” he said. “This is almost a survival issue because the old streams of revenue such as advertising are dwindling in favour of the Internet.”
Radioscape has nearly 30 per cent of the UK DAB receiver market, well behind Frontier Silicon’s 70 per cent, but also has a strong position in DAB broadcast equipment. The firm celebrated its tenth anniversary last week.
One of the ways forward is to combine DAB and the newer DRM technology that is cheaper to rollout and has more range, but less bandwidth. The first dual mode DAB/DRM radios are shipping from Morphy Richards in Germany this week, to be followed by France, Switzerland, Portugal in the New Year. “Then there will be four or five radio makers following in the UK,” he said.
Hall is doubtful of the next generation of DAB based on the AAC+ codec as an option. “The value of a software defined radio solution is that we are ready with the new audio codec when the industry asks for it, and we have not timetabled a product for it,” he said.
He pointed out it would have to be a standard at ETSI first, and then approved by Ofcom in the UK, so he sees no UK market for the new technology until the end of 2007 or 2008. “We have to get people off this topic and drive more content,” he said.
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