Skip to main content

digital radio in Sweden: what is happening?

Time to time, it becomes extremely difficult for me to follow up the progress in technology. The main reason for this is nothing but MONEY :) 

I have to finance all my trips to events, at which I have the chance to meet colleagues from industry and ask my questions. But, for some events, the cost for the event is too high, like the DVB World Congress in Venice. Although I bought the tickets for the flight & booked a hotel on my own, it seems that I will not find a way to attend the event, as it is not possible for me to pay 1000 € for a two day congress.

The title of this post is again on the same issue, the unability to attend the events.

As you may already know, there is a hot topic in the digital radio world: Sweden. It is a country of social democrats and a heaven for some, because of this. This Nordic country, has been trying the digital radio for many years and now decided not to proceed any more. It is quite interesting as another Nordic, Norway, is preparing for the first FM switch off process next year. It is again quite interesting, as Sweden was also announced a FM switch off calendar. 

There are many different news on the decision of Sweden with the digital radio. Actually it becomes difficult to just follow the news and try to understand the "fact", if there is one. 

At the end of the day, I think that, the decision makers of Sweden are just confused as many. On one hand, there is a trend of digitalization of the broadcast, both TV & radio. On the other hand, the quality of FM is quite satisfactory & the receivers are too cheap when compared with the digital ones. Also, to build the same coverage network as with FM in digital,  it cost a lot. Regarding the broadcasting costs, unless you close FM transmitters, the digital transmitters add on the FM costs.  

The latest announcement are from WorldDAB. As a last word, I want to quote form their announcement:
“Nothing has changed in Sweden since the Ministry of Culture's decision last summer. The plan for digital radio is stopped and the Government decision has been confirmed by Parliament.However, the recent discussion in Parliament shows that it is wrong to say that digital radio is dead in Sweden. All political parties agree on the importance of following developments in Europe. Norway begins the transition to digital terrestrial radio in less than one year, so it will not be so long before we can evaluate the results."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

e-interview with Ad Signal

Q1. Could you kindly provide a succinct overview of your company and the solutions showcased during IBC 2023? Ad Signal was founded to address the need for fast, accurate and independent linear advertising. However, we have become so much more than that. Our sustainable fingerprinting technology now underpins a suite of products designed to deeply understand the content you hold, saving cost and carbon in the process. We showcased three key SaaS products at IBC 2023: Match  Using our environmentally friendly fingerprinting technology, Match lets you quickly deduplicate your content regardless of format, codec and resolution. It also allows you to run AI on your content with >25x the granularity but 25% of the cost and carbon.  Harmonise Further expanding on the uses of our fingerprinting technology, Harmonise creates a genealogy of content, improving edit and rights management workflows, and ensuring you always know where every shot and second of audio originated Compose The firs

8th Annual Digital TV Central and Eastern Europe Event

I attended to IP & TV World Forum and TV Connect events in Istanbul, which of both was organized by Informa. Having attended to these events, I am glad to say that I will have chance to follow the Digital TV Central & Eastern Europe Event on 25-27 June at Krakow, Poland.  Actually I have to thank to Informa, for their support in attending the event.  Main topics that will be covered in the event are OTT (Over The Top) TV and Pay TV. There will be a one day event dedicated to Over The Top Television. I will try to attend this event also, which will be on 25 June. In fact I think that OTT will replace classic IPTV offers, with the increase in smart tv, connected tv sales figures, need for a set top box will diminish. Therefore, this one day event is really important for the sector professionals.  When we look at the speakers of the event, one can easily understand the importance of the event. Some of the speakers are: Ian McDonough, Senior Vice President and General M

e-interview with Cuebric

1. For the readers of TVTechTR, I kindly request a brief introduction to Cuebric. Cuebric is an elegant, intuitive tool that helps users create, segment, and dimensionalize scenes, allowing them to go From Concept to CameraTM in minutes. Through the power of artificial intelligence, Cuebric creates an entirely new way of working, one that transcends what was once possible, allowing storytellers to achieve new levels of productivity while maintaining cinematic quality. Cuebric has been welcomed and used by creators from all backgrounds, including filmmakers at prominent studios and leading VFX companies. More information online at www.cuebric.com 2. Could you please elaborate on the innovations that the collaboration between Cuebric and Disguise will bring to the industry? Additionally, is it possible to integrate Cuebric with native game engines? Plug & Play 3D uses advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to turn image layers into near-3D assets, automatically mapped to