In article ,
"Joel Kolstad" wrote:

"Telamon" wrote in message
..
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DRM benefits the broadcaster not the listener.

I bet a lot of listeners to, e.g., satellite radio in the U.S. and Europe
would disagree with the assessment that digital radio doesn't benefit the
listener.

But you do have to keep in mind that companies exist to make a profit.
Unless you'd advocate that only governments should have broadcast rights,
the market will insure that people 'get what they want' when it comes to
broadcasts -- even if that does imply that the content is crap relative to
what you or I might desire.

I have several problems with what you posted.

I have not seen a poll of SW listeners who have compared DRM to analog.
What poll are you referring too?

The majority of the SW broadcasters are not for profit national arm of
their respective governments so this has nothing to do with private
companies or the profits they make.

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If you take a careful look of the DRM system, you will understand that
the first order benefit is a reduction in electrical costs to the
broadcaster. Like any anything though there is a down side even to this
main and as far as I can tell only real benefit to either broadcaster or
listener and that is that the broadcaster must then transmit at lower
power. This transmission mode is not supposed to require as much power
as analog for good reception. The result will be lower signal levels at
the listeners radio. This will make the transmission more difficult to
decode with good quality.

The big picture is even worse when you consider that the listeners radio
must now be more complex and require more power to operate. New radio
receivers will cost more and will cost more to operate. Almost all the
existing radios from the beginning of SW broadcasting to now will be
obsolete and the rest converted at no small cost.

The listener will not benefit in any way over analog if the broadcast
power is reduced so that the broadcaster will be able to derive the only
real benefit of the DRM system. The signal that could have been clearer
and free from interference will degrade and instead of being noisy on an
analog receiver will cut in and out on a digital unit.

Under any but the ideal conditions of very good signal to noise the DRM
receiver will cut in and out. This behavior is much worse to most
individuals than the analog fading on current receivers so this is just
an example of different tradeoffs in the system design instead of DRM
being a better system.

I could go on and on about the pros and cons of DRM to analog but the
end result is no better or actually worse for the listener.

The listener will likely have to replace their current radio. The new
radios will cost more money than the current radio. The current or new
listener will have to spend more money for a radio and spend more money
to operate it because it will consume more power. The listening
situation will be different from analog where some aspects will be an
improvement at the cost of different set of downsides. The net result
will not be better then analog just different.

The broadcaster still has to buy the same size transmitters because the
DRM system requires tremendous overhead capacity so that cost does not
change. The transmitter modulation subsystem is more complex and a
little more costly than analog. The engineering costs are a little
greater because keeping all the transmitter parameters within very tight
limits so it does not splatter across the band is more difficult to
maintain then analog. The broadcaster has to transmit a weaker signal to
reap the one real benefit of the DRM system where the listeners antenna
and radio will have to deal with that weaker signal.

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All that said the thing that ticks me off about the DRM consortium is
that they lie about the system. The claim that the encoding, decoding
system is open is as false as the real benefit will turn out to be if
DRM is implemented as envisioned.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California