"Telamon" wrote in message
...

They have taken their shot at marketing and blew it big time. They came
out and presented DRM as an open system, which it is not. They state
that it will sound better in the same bandwidth, which it can not. They
state that it can stay in the current channel assignments but does not
spreading out beyond + / - 5KHz.

DRM = Deception Radio Mondiale

It is just a different system with some pluses on one side and
drawbacks on the other side of "better than the current analog system."

For digital to be unquestionably better it would take another approach
than DRM, which would use digital signals to better adapt to the
resultant distortions HF of propagation.

Such a system might be technically better, but would people buy it? The
synchronous detector reduces the problems with SW reception and a radios
with synchronous detectors have been around for years. But radios with
synch detectors haven't taken a large percentage of the radio marketplace.

Technically oriented people see a problem and expect a technically oriented
solution. International broadcasting isn't what what it was twenty years
ago. Thinking that people are being driven away from SW by SW radio's sound
quality is an understandable reaction. But, if sound quality is really the
reason old line international broadcasting is declining, shouldn't radios
with sync detectors have been much more successful?

As I see it, sound quality is irrelevent to the decline of old line
international broadcasting. Governments are less interested in public
diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. Also, people with interent access
have the world's news at their fingertips when they want it, not when the
broadcasts get through.

The problem with DRM, as I see it, isn't marketing, it's market research.
It seems this scheme got started without a firm answer to the question,
"Will people really want to buy this thing?"


Newer and different does not equate to better.

No doubt about that!


--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Frank Dresser