Digital Radio!

[CharlieBrown]

Hey Guys & Gals

For the techsperts out there ... with the roll out of Digital Radio... are we going to have to change the HU's??

Nova 106.9 launches two new digital stations | The Courier-Mail

[armthehomeless]

Sweet. I've been waiting for this!

Well...definitely not Nova, but I've been waiting for it in general.

[CharlieBrown]

Whats wrong with Nova?

Will our HU's automatically pick up the digital signals? or do we need to change them?

[Nexus]

I expect you will need after market HU. We'll likely see them arriving as stock equipment in a few years time.

There are serious complications to receiving digital signals in a moving vehicle; one of the side effects is that instead of losing signal quality on minor interference, one loses the signal altogether.

For instance -- to compensate for the moving vehicle's doppler effect, which significantly impedes digital reception, two antennas > 1m apart and two receivers are used and then both are passed though a signal processor to correct for the moving vehicles doppler.

Doppler is the effect that makes a siren change pitch as an emergence vehicle speeds past....

You can buy this sort of thing now for digital TV and radio, but you need to spend quite big to get reception at speeds of 100Km/h or higher. Cheap ones would be lucky to get 60Km/h. It's not as big an issue for audio only as it is for video+audio, however I'm expecting that people will not like it in vehicles because of the greatly increased annoyance factor that interference will have.

Having said that, no doubt coverage will be increased and receivers improved by the time people want this in their cars as a matter of course.

[EQ]

I was with you right up to "For instance......"

:ROFL:

[tricache]

You got further than me...i got to "I expect you will need after market HU" and went *doh*

[Nexus]

I was with you right up to "For instance......"

:ROFL:

Yeah, righto. I'll just stop explaining technical detail then, shall I?
Let me think about that. Umm, no someone else might actually find it informative.

If you can explain it more clearly, feel free....

[Jmac]

Yeah, righto. I'll just stop explaining technical detail then, shall I?
Let me think about that. Umm, no someone else might actually find it informative.

If you can explain it more clearly, feel free....

I gotcha mate, thanks for explaining.
I was not aware of that, how do they combat it in the states. I was under the impression it is quite common there?

[kmh001]

I'm surprised that Doppler is a problem at such low velocity.

Jmac you're probably thinking of XM digital radio which is a subscriber service in the US similar to pay TV. XM use two geostationary satellites with very high power transmitters at an altitude of about 35,000 km. Very different to ground station radio.

[EQ]

Yeah, righto. I'll just stop explaining technical detail then, shall I?
Let me think about that. Umm, no someone else might actually find it informative.

If you can explain it more clearly, feel free....

Sorry dude, just my sense of humour. I'm really interested in this - no offence intended.

[Nexus]

Sorry dude, just my sense of humour. I'm really interested in this - no offence intended.

None taken, just bear in mind how the comment comes across to the average user, and that I'm keen on seeing real info posted. I'm not easily offended; just don't want anyone to feel discouraged from posting info.

[CharlieBrown]

Thanks for your help with this...

I kinda assumed that UK had this already? I remember driving a Renault (Clio ) when i was in Scotland late last year... they'd have cut-over road reports etc.. that is, that the current station, whatever your listening to, would pause, then BBC1 would come on to give an update on the A8 or whatever you're travelling on, then revert to say Clyde1...

I must admit, I have no idea what/how Digital works