Still amazed at WSRO's Digital quality!

[Rob Landry]

Canada used L-band, unless I misremember. The VHF band used in Australia 
has propagation characteristics more like the FM band, and should work 
better for DAB+ than L-band.

Only two European countries have shut down FM (Finland and Norway, unless 
I misremember; my WRTH isn't handy at the moment); many other countries 
use FM exclusively.

There are only about a dozen stations left on longwave (150 - 400 KHz). I 
used to be able to hear Algeria on 251 KHz in the winter, but haven't 
heard it this year. WRTH says it's still on the air.

AM ("medium wave") still has some life in it, and some countries, e.g. 
India, are experimenting with digital radio in that band. However, they 
are using DRM ("Digital Radio Mondiale"), not HD Radio, which has been 
something of a flop inthe rest of the world.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the HD Radio patents run 
out; that ought to open the floodgates for a lot of new devices. It 
boggles the mind that the Xperi (formerly Ibiquity) people didn't get HD 
Radio into cell phones.


Rob

On Sat, 7 May 2022, Garrett Wollman wrote:

> Of course, US broadcasters would have been strongly opposed to the
> adoption of any digital system that did not preserve the inequality of
> signals and service areas, so the FCC never pursued such a thing, even
> when there would have been plenty of VHF spectrum available to make it
> practical.  Canada used the Eureka 147 DAB system for a while, in a
> less suitable frequency band, and had very limited uptake on the part
> of both consumers and broadcasters.  Meanwhile, a number of European
> countries have entirely shut down mediumwave broadcasting and have or
> are in the process of doing likewise for analog VHF FM.
>
> -GAWollman
>