General > General Technical Chat
Investing in a DAB radio company
coppice:
--- Quote from: richard.cs on May 09, 2020, 04:39:30 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 02:46:04 pm ---Millions of people in the UK use DAB. but in their cars. not their homes. People don't use any kind of radio in their homes much these days. I took part in a survey about radio usage last year, and the lady questioning me said the majority of reported radio usage is now in cars, with some growth in using the BBC's sounds app at home.
--- End quote ---
And yet you can still buy a new car and not get a DAB radio. Yes these are now a minority but they will be on the road for the next 15 years or so:
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DAB radios only became commonplace in cars quite recently, so most of them are DAB+. They could kill DAB transmissions, and go 100% DAB+, leaving the people without DAB+ support in their radio to use FM, and the number of people annoyed probably wouldn't be that big.
MK14:
--- Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 04:29:15 pm ---History is full of upgrades where the choice has to be made between running parallel systems vs a single merged compatible system. The choices made have mostly made sense.
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I guess, there is not a perfect solution, to such a problem. You just have to choose the best compromises, overall, and accept the inevitable negative comments.
What I find funny, about many negative comments, is they (e.g. the government), would have got such comments, regardless of what option they had chosen ?
E.g. Quarantine all airports in January. Negative comments "Huge over-reaction by UK government, when there are still zero or few deaths in the UK".
Insist on quarantine for all UK airports, at end of May. Negative comments "You should have done it in January".
tl;dr
You can't win.
--- Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 04:47:05 pm ---DAB radios only became commonplace in cars quite recently, so most of them are DAB+. They could kill DAB transmissions, and go 100% DAB+, leaving the people without DAB+ support in their radio to use FM, and the number of people annoyed probably wouldn't be that big.
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I think, a while back. The BBC, on purpose, switched off certain AM (if I remember correctly) signal(s). For a limited (but significant) period of time. As an experiment.
I remember, they didn't receive a single complaint.
They were using those tests as ammunition, so that they can permanently switch off AM broadcasts (I think).
Gyro:
--- Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 02:52:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 am ---Hi,
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?
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Like most UK electronics these days I expect:
* Design means they pick among several finishes the actual maker offers, and specify how to add their logo.
* Build means the do final assembly of a kit from the actual maker.
* If they can't even spell warranty, they'll probably just pass on the actual maker's manual with its poor English, unable to polish it.
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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.
Even so, I've been surprised how those prices have held up over the years, for what is a fairly simple (but dedicated) chipset and frontend. Not the sort of thing that you want to run extensively on batteries though.
Support tends to be pretty good - Pure, for instance, offer standard 3 year warranty (not wishing to do treez's basic research for him).
We have a couple of DAB radios around the house, handy for listening to Radio 4 and R4ex. It was nice when the car came with it too. It's at market saturation these days though.
intmpe:
The requirements for "made in xxx" country are usually pretty low - like 10 or 20% content.
This can often mean just putting a foreign made product into a locally sourced box.
The way you find out is easy - if they are asking you to invest - show up and "audit" the place - talk to their design staff. They would be happy to see an investor take the interest. Less so if its a scam.
SiliconWizard:
Agreed with above: obvious answer: how can you find out? Easy: audit the fricking place!
Any serious investor would do this anyway. Just ask them for that, plan your audit, sign some agreement (so they are guaranteed of confidentiality), and do it!
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