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Comment by xysg | Hacker News Reader

The reverse scenario happened here in Singapore. It was the first in Asia to introduce DAB in 1999. The national broadcaster MediaCorp then decided to cease DAB transmission in 2011, forcing those who've invested in new DAB equipment to throw them out the window (while many are dual-FM/DAB sets, some more affordable ones are exclusively DAB-only). Interesting that the decision was made to go backwards in technology, likely motivated by economics.

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> the decision was made to go backwards in technology

What is so forward about DAB ?

In theory it sounds excelent. In practice it sounds like crap due to using the lowest bitrate possible.

DAB is optimized for "rights holders". Not for radio stations, not for end users, not for the state. It's designed against everyone but the rights holder / copyrights industry interests.

How so? It's not encrypted or anything similar.

https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01...

Is this actually used anywhere? To me it feels like DAB and any putative DRM mechanisms have already been basically obsoleted by streaming systems like Spotify.

That's not the real rightsholder thing, as hardly anyone bothers with scrambled broadcasts; no, the real rightsholder handicap was limiting the bitrate of original DAB so it sounds worse than CDs.

It never mattered what the max bitrate was going to be, because as long as there was a lower bitrate option that allowed you to broadcast more channels, that was the option station owners were going to use. Because selling X ads makes less money than selling 2X ads.

Digital TV and radio were simply the first casualties of the modern advertising economy.

While DAB is very rough (mp2 at usually under 128kbits) DAB+ is HE-ACC and will sound better than FM even at quite low data rates.

DAB has also effectively been abandoned in Ireland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_in_the_Republic_...)

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