I feel justified in not stumping up the £100 for DAB. I do have it at home since last year but it has a mind of its own and sometimes takes an age to gather up its skirts. The quality difference is audible but by no means massive to standard AM. I think its just being pushed as its technically easier to do from the broadcaster end, and probably cheaper for them too. Why ever do we need this stuff??? Now I really an grumpy
I MEAN GRUMPY!
DAB was pushed by government for monetary reasons.
For each frequency, DAB can transmit lots of stations, each being licenced, bringing revenue to government.
On AM or FM, each frequency carries one station.
Same with TV.
I think DAB also released more for mobile phones, so again, more revenue.
Digital TV is a pain. With analogue TV, I tuned the TV when I bought it, and it was fine until it broke, many years later.
With digital TV, they keep moving the channels arouond, so we are forced to retune regularly. If you miss a retune, some favourite program fails to record.
Digital TV was supposed to bring 'more choice', but reality shows we jsut get lots of repeats, because programs cost lots to make. With advertising revenue spread across more channels, fewer people see each advert, so advertisers pay less. So we get longer ad breaks, but still the stations get less revenue, so fewer new shows get made.
Then research shows that we watch less TV now. When we had 4/5 channels, we would generally just choose the best of them to watch. Now we have 100, we scan them all, and switch off instead. So advertisers pay even less for a smaller audience.
Did someone say progress?
When I worked for a large company, change was constant, much for its own sake, rather than improvement. Often new ways of working would be proposed, and an older colleague would point out that it had been tried years ago, but we'd change anyway, and find the process failed, in a similar way to the previous time. This prompted me to use one, or both of these statements:
Different is not the same as better.
Progress, like chaos, is just going around in circles. The difference being the time taken to return to a previously tried method. The two seem to be merging.
I'm sure they were pleased to see me go, although, the division I worked in has now ceased to exist. I win.