Bye bye FM

[David Hess]

It's not about cheap or not. It's about the radio spectrum being overcrowded and needing the space for more efficient digital applications.

Great, so there will be more cookie cutter Clear Channel stations broadcasting the same thing.  I suppose since I stopped listening even when the alternative is nothing, the impending obsolescence of my AM/FM car radio is irrelevant.

[cdev]

There is tons of spectrum space that is not used practically at all, ever.  This becomes obvious when you look around with a $10 RTLSDR. So there is tons of spectrum for innovative uses. The problem is corporate rule.

[Mr. Scram]

There is tons of spectrum space that is not used practically at all, ever.  This becomes obvious when you look around with a $10 RTLSDR. So there is tons of spectrum for innovative uses. The problem is corporate rule.

Must you make everything into a tin foil hat discussion? Corporate rule has little to do with it. It's a legislative matter at worst, and technology itself probably plays the most important rule.

Besides, what makes you think the radio spectrum isn't closely packed? The fact that it isn't used at that very moment doesn't mean it's free to use. A shooting range does not make for a good picnic spot between shots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2016_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.pdf

[TassiloH]

And then governments complain about an increase of e-junk

Indeed. DSR (digital sat radio, back when sat TV was still analog) - gone. DAB (digital radio, first gen.) - gone. DVB-T (digital terrestrial TV first generation) - gone. DVB-H: Never took off. The lifetime of all these standards seems to have been shorter than the age of any FM radio receiver in this household.
I don't get why it is good or necessary to get rid of FM radio: It is blocking just a 20MHz band (so around 1/20th of what the old analog TV used), good enough for the job (car/workplace/background noise), lots of hard-to-replace receivers. Having 100 instead of 20 stations: no difference, there will just be more stations playing essentially the same rotation.
I guess I wouldn't buy any receiver hardware for a new audio broadcast standard that isn't even in worldwide use, instead I'd get some internet radio players (or just bluetooth audio receivers for the old stereos) for the house and a better mobile data plan, at least this gives a better choice of stations from all over the world.

[IanMacdonald]

I suspect the reasons behind some of these changes may be 'wastemaking' -it's an obvious and massive advantage to manufacturers when perfectly serviceable hardware has to be scrapped en masse.

Other examples:
Windows XP EOL, and software with designed-in security vulns through the use of C/C++.
The anti diesel-car crusade -after the Greens promoted them as low-carbon transport.
The MITM paranoia and HTTPS. (Not strictly wastemaking, but likewise a certificate and hosting sales scam)

[bd139]

I think it’s simpler than that. You can only build stuff based on what you know now. At some point the effort to correct your mistakes you weren’t aware of at the time you did it outweighs the effort to just burn it and start again. No one wants to pay for the additional costs of foresight

XP was architecturally flawed so had to be burned as were 32-bit x86 CPUs. C/C++ is prone to human error due to lack of foresight. Diesels were again foresight. HTTPS is a cat and mouse game built on a pile of hacks (well strictly TLS) so what you knew when you built it was only valid for a short window.

This is just iterative progress. No agenda. No wastemaking.

[cdev]

There is a global movement to reverse democracy and its being accomplished by mass control of information. FM stations are still up there, at least in my area they are the most interesting and fun thing happening in broadcasting. Television is crap, but radio is still good.

Since the costs to set up an FM station are fairly modest they are being targeted. There is no shortage of spectrum, thats a total fabrication. They should allocate some other band and not eliminate FM.

[Mr. Scram]

There is a global movement to reverse democracy and its being accomplished by mass control of information. FM stations are still up there, at least in my area they are the most interesting and fun thing happening in broadcasting. Television is crap, but radio is still good.

Since the costs to set up an FM station are fairly modest they are being targeted. There is no shortage of spectrum, thats a total fabrication. They should allocate some other band and not eliminate FM.

I posted a map of the usage of the spectrum just a few posts ago. Could you please just look at that, rather than rehashing the same tin foil hattery again?

[bd139]

Indeed.

Sounds like the old analogue cable bollocks again. It's about bandwidth. With compression you can squeeze a whole load more digital data down the same pipe. 99% of the users don't give a crap how the sound gets there, they just want the sound. 99% of the engineers on the projects have the same goal which is low bandwidth usage, less power required, good enough reproduction, easier tuning etc.

Also radio is shit! The only decent radio here in London is the pirates and frequency and spectrum allocation doesn't seem to bother them that much. I listen to my pirates on my DAB radio (which incidentally does FM as well...)

[mc172]

Anybody remember the pirate FM stations back in the day when somebody would build a 25W FM transmitter in a biscuit tin and broadcast from the top of a tower block and the "radio police" would scurry around and try to find it ? Nope probably not but the music was good and it was community broadcasting. Back then it took dedication and effort to do that shit, big respect  A Now you could probably do the same stuff with a PC and an internet connection but that's not the same.
Maybe the Norwegian broadcasters have have had the foresight to see that very few people listen to FM radio these days let alone AM, or maybe the FM broadcast spectrum is up sale.

They still do that now! There's probably 50 or so pirate stations on in London as I type this.

[bd139]

There's so many in London that they made a comedy mockumentary about it (People Just do Nothing): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01z03jt

Incidentally this is set about 2 minutes down the road from me.

[mc172]

That programme is hilarious!

https://www.transmissionzero.co.uk/radio/london-pirate-radio/

[shawty]

Everybody, all around the world....

This is a call to arms.

Get your Raspberry PI's/Arduinos/Whatever platform you use out the cupboard, and start broadcasting....

Broadcast everything you can/anything you can... Music, Data, Speech you name it.  Let's fill the airwaves and see what happens :-D

If your within range of the North East UK, I'm chucking out simple text files as data using the cw command and minimodem for various baud style audio transmissions :-)  Don't ask me what frequency I'm currently on however, Iv'e no Idea... and Iv'e had too much whiskey at the moment to go climbing ladders into my loft to look at the RPi's display.

[bd139]

Be careful or you’ll get a stern letter from ofcom

[Kleinstein]

In Germany the FM band is getting close to the limits. In some areas you start to get two stations overlap. So they either need more bandwidth or a different more efficient modulation.  They went for digital radio.

In principle this is a good idea, as the stations need less power and less problems with multi path reception. However they are really slow in bringing up the new DAB+ stations and sending power is too low in many areas. So reception is not really good in many places - and this is when the first generation DAB is already phased out. So they never finished in the time the first standard was supported.

The main downside on digital audio is that the receiver needs a little more power. So it can be a little harder on the batteries, but it is not that bad anymore. It is more a problem they shut down AM radio as AM radio offered longer range reception.

With digital TV, the extra HW is not that bad. Modern TV's usually already includes a receiver for DVB-T/T2/S/S2. Especially in the US analog TV  terrestrial was not the best technical quality.

[james_s]

Sounds like what they really need is fewer stations, aren't most of them crap anyway? I know I only ever listen to 2 or 3 different stations on the rare occasions I listen to the radio anymore. More stations = more advertiser money though I guess.

[madires]

We got two and a half types of radio stations. There are the public service stations which are financed primarily by our "broadcasting tax", but also get some money from selling airtime for ads. The other stations are privately run and need the ad money. And the remaining 'half' are some tiny amateur stations covering just a city or a local area.

[bd139]

Sounds like what they really need is fewer stations, aren't most of them crap anyway? I know I only ever listen to 2 or 3 different stations on the rare occasions I listen to the radio anymore. More stations = more advertiser money though I guess.

Agreed. There's some gold out there but it's not in the usual places.

There's an unintentional comedy show that runs constantly on 160m amateur band (top band / 3.5MHz) here in the UK. There are three or four amateur radio operators who just chat, some of the driest humor there is and take stabs at each other. It's hilarious. You can pick it up on WebSDR.

That's far better than any programming that you get on commercial radio.

For music, there's Apple Music / Spotify / Google Play etc or old fashioned mp3s.

[shawty]

Be careful or you’ll get a stern letter from ofcom

 

I'm counting on it .....

LOL

[mrf184]

Hi all,

I am an EE in China and using the resources here you can produce high power FM transmitters (50W) for very cheap.

On the refurbished chips market exists UHF power transistors (60W) taken from disassembled cell phone tower for $2 in abundance, they can operate at 100MHz because the internal matching network is ineffective at low frequency. mrf9060, mrf5s9070, etc etc

The driver can use transistor for walkie-talkie, rqa0009 etc

The FM modulator can be very simple, using PLL chip and transistor oscillator it can be made for few dollars.

The output low pass filter is little more tricky, inductors need to be winded by hand.

I maybe will manufacture and put it on aliexpress, maybe $25, it will be bring your own psu and heatsink.

[bd139]

Interesting idea. Might get confiscated at the border though as there are usually import restrictions on such things.

A design for one here which roughly matches your description: https://ludens.cl/Electron/fmtx/fmtx.html

Big problem is antennas.

[Mr. Scram]

I think it’s simpler than that. You can only build stuff based on what you know now. At some point the effort to correct your mistakes you weren’t aware of at the time you did it outweighs the effort to just burn it and start again. No one wants to pay for the additional costs of foresight

XP was architecturally flawed so had to be burned as were 32-bit x86 CPUs. C/C++ is prone to human error due to lack of foresight. Diesels were again foresight. HTTPS is a cat and mouse game built on a pile of hacks (well strictly TLS) so what you knew when you built it was only valid for a short window.

This is just iterative progress. No agenda. No wastemaking.

Exactly. People seem to idealize XP, but the world out there has changed and it's woefully outdated in regards to architecture and security. The same applies to Windows 7 to a lesser degree, though that's been developed further and turned into Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10. That wouldn't have been possible if you would have mucked about with an OS not even intended for 64 bit systems.

[james_s]

What people idealize about XP is the user interface, and IMHO it is quite good, Windows 7 gradually grew on me and in most ways I find its UI superior to XP however the calculator and mspaint in 7 are garbage, easily replaced by the superior XP versions.

The back end of XP is what was woefully outdated but there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have put the Win8/10 back end under the XP/Win7 UI but they didn't. The complaints about Win8 were almost entirely centered around the horrible joke of a UI they used, Win10 makes a few steps toward correcting that, but completely screws up the back end making it a nearly unusable and completely unacceptable OS.

[David Hess]

What people idealize about XP is the user interface, and IMHO it is quite good, Windows 7 gradually grew on me and in most ways I find its UI superior to XP however the calculator and mspaint in 7 are garbage, easily replaced by the superior XP versions.

There were so many useful capabilities removed from the Windows 7 interface that I have still not made the transition.  For instance custom file manager columns are no longer supported which means no handy display and sorting of directories by size.  Microsoft claims this capability was removed because of performance problems but that is why my last system was built with a fast RAID configuration and SSDs make this a non-issue.  I suspect it was also removed to prevent competition with their "database" file system replacement for NTFS which crashed anyway.

The back end of XP is what was woefully outdated but there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have put the Win8/10 back end under the XP/Win7 UI but they didn't. The complaints about Win8 were almost entirely centered around the horrible joke of a UI they used, Win10 makes a few steps toward correcting that, but completely screws up the back end making it a nearly unusable and completely unacceptable OS.

I think Microsoft was trying to leverage their desktop monopoly to gain market share on tablets and PDAs by unifying the interface but the only result for them was driving customers away from Windows.  Apple is apparently going down this dead end as well.

[brucehoult]

Well if the complaints I received in my housing estate towards my experiments using an RPi to broadcast FM are anything to go by, then quite a lot of my neighbors in out cul-de-sac still use FM radios :-)

How did they know it was you?