In light of several canceled/postponed industry events around the world in 2020, GatesAir is presenting a special schedule of webinars and online events to keep you informed and engaged. This includes new product updates, topical presentations, round tables with special guests, and even “virtual booth meetings” to help personally support their broadcasting needs.
One of the recent webinars in this series was titled Digital Radio: A Review of the Latest Standards – HDRadio, DAB, and DRM and featured Rich Redmond, resident, GatesAir International.
Digital radio offers a wide range of services beyond simple audio delivery. The webinar looked at the most popular standards available today, status of the technology, advanced features offered, new revenue streams enabled, receiver availability, and costs to deploy.
DAB DAB+ uses Band III VHF and L-Band to provide a suite of audio and multimedia services, needs a common transmission infrastructure, occupies 1.5 MHz RF bandwidth and Supports multiple audio and video channels.
HD Radio uses existing AM and FM frequencies to provide audio and multimedia services, is broadcast in analog and digital simultaneously, supports multiple audio channels and offers wide array of data services
DRM uses existing SW, AM with DRM+ FM to provide audio and multimedia, is broadcast in analog and digital, supports Multiple Audio channels and offers wide array of data services.
A new digital Radio receiver is necessary in all three cases.
There are drastic cost reductions using DAB+ compared to FM and DRM+ for areas which have 18 or more services. It uses 10 times less RF power in DAB+ for same coverage as FM. Due to higher losses in Band III (Filter, RF line) the effective transmitter power of DAB+ is ¼ to FM.
Key technologies deliver superior green footprint. Additional savings are realized from facility space, cooling, construction and maintenance costs and advancements in multi channel and outdoor system reduce the cost to expand network coverage.
All major brands now offer factory-installed HD radio technology and Virtually all (98%) HD Radio Technology users surveyed are satisfied with their HD Radio Technology experience
The webinar also looked at the progress of digital radio across the world, as countries begin to switch off FM. Norway was the first one to go fully digital in 2017, Switzerland plans to switch off its FM by 2024, 58% of listening is digital in UK and in Italy all receivers must have DAB+ from 2020.
Over 529 million people are now within reach of a DAB/DAB+ signal, DAB/DAB+ is now available in 45 countries/territories worldwide, with over 80 million receivers sold.
Watch the full webinar here.
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