During the DRM session at this week's Digital Broadcasting Symposium, DRM Chair Ruxandra Obreja explained that Digital Radio Mondiale can use existing transmission infrastructure and can broadcast on all broadcast bands, Shortwave, AM and FM.
Speaking about some of the countries that are using DRM, Obreja outlined progress in India, where there are 35 transmitters already installed as part of a 3 year project.
Since the end January this year, All India Radio has started phase 2 of its digital roll out. “They will soon start a marketing campaign to inform the Indian population about what is digital radio.”
Trials are also underway in Pakistan and South Africa. In a recent trial in South Africa, the DRM 30 signal performed better than analog with a real reduction in energy consumption.
At the session Obreja unveiled a new multi band receiver with a tablet screen and a new receiver produced in China. New chipsets and software solutions are also being developed, which is likely to bring solutions for cars and mobile phones. Hyundai and the Indian car manufacturer Maroti are both including DRM receivers in new cars.
Alex Ng from GatesAir explained that DRM offers almost FM-like sound quality on all AM bands with no fading and distortion. Broadcasters have the flexibility to adjust between more robustness or larger coverage area in all DRM transmission configurations.
On the FM band you get the same quality of analog FM, without multipath distortion, pops and crackles.
“You will have some saving on CapEx when you buy the transmitters, but the biggest saving is operating costs in the long run. You have 5 times less operating expenditure,” he said, illustrated by the slides below.
Lindsay Cornell gave a summary of a DRM trial in Scotland. “What we found was very good coverage, excellent audio quality… Within the city there was a better signal than FM.” Full details are in a BBC white paper.
Alex Zink discussed a time-line blueprint for launch and explained the ingredients of success when planning, installing and launching DRM.
“Take it out of just the Engineering Department… make sure your Content Department is also involved so that they know what is going on and can do their preparation…
“Start with a very high robustness configuration so you get the best possible most reliable coverage, then you can adjust it later if you need to. Launch it with Journaline, so that listeners can see information on their screen to show listeners the extra benefits they can get from digital radio. You can reach people with different languages via the screen.
“Also mount more programs so that people who may only have had access to one program in the past now might have three, they will immediately see that one of the benefits of digital radio is they get more services.
He recommended that broadcasters start transmissions with all the possible features on air right from the start because it will encourage manufacturers and retailers to build and promote feature rich radios.
The latest Titus II tablet radio was demonstrated during the session.