FM Radio to be scrapped

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 07 Jan 2017, 14:04

FM radio in Norway will be shut down this year. Story.........

This will mean many people will not have any method to listen to radio, and will not be able to set timepieces accurately. Shutting down FM radio is also proposed in the UK.

Post by **adam2** » 07 Jan 2017, 15:46

AFAIK the plans in the UK are not to completely abolish FM radio broadcasts but are to keep the wavelengths for local or community radio use, with national and regional broadcasts being migrated to digital.

Here in the UK we still have medium and long wave broadcasts, though I doubt that LW broadcasts will survive for much longer, due to the age of the equipment and the cost and scarcity of spare parts, especially transmitter valves.

As you point out, digital radio broadcast are no good for really accurate setting of timepieces, though probably acceptable for most civilian purposes.

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 07 Jan 2017, 16:45

Scrapping FM national radio will be a PITA at best. No use for a lot of car radios except for local stations. AFAIK digital radios are more power hungry than analogue ones, and that doesn't even compare with the amount of power it will take to handle the digital stuff.
Since the delay on digital broadcasts as heard by the listener can be anywhere up to, and possibly longer than a minute and a half, time keeping will be a joke.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 07 Jan 2017, 17:05

I agree. I use digital radio on my PC. But that's about it. Certainly, I will never use one in a car unless and until I am absolutely forced to

madibe · Post by **madibe** » 10 Feb 2017, 00:52

The good news on this: it will free up all that bandwidth for individuals / independents to broadcast.

It just shuffles all the mainstream bullshit out of the way.

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 10 Feb 2017, 07:17

madibe wrote:The good news on this: it will free up all that bandwidth for individuals / independents to broadcast.

It just shuffles all the mainstream bullshit out of the way.

Don't kid yourself, these sort of rubbish claims were made for digital TV, The "mainstream bullshit" will be replaced with a lot of minority bullshit which consists of adverts and compressed music audio crap, plenty of which is already available.