› Forums › Radionics › NL : De toekomst van AM is onzeker / future of AM broadcast in NL is uncertain
- This topic has 2 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated September 18, 2015 at 4:40 pm by General Lighting.
-
AuthorPosts
-
May 10, 2015 at 3:12 pm #1058228
There have been way too much atmospherics [QRN] this recently and QRM [interference caused by humans] from equipment in my house (and from street lamps and anything the neighbours may also use) to comfortably listen to Radio Maria NL at any time than morning / afternoon. I was at least able to listen to (and understand) all of the teenagers programme raaa
Although they have always had a webstream; I’d felt a bit guilty about using up their bandwidth as I’m not that religious; and thought the webstream was for buitenlanders in the Phillipines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia who are Catholic and understand Dutch (there are a fair few of them!)
They would have no chance whatsoever of receiving a signal from Lopik; which is usually in reception range of Eastern England. (they have a DAB+ sender for NL). And the amount of Euros they must pay KPN and the baldy men at Agentschap Telecom to keep that running is a source of Angst to them, so I thought “well I should use that if it is there”.
Finally today I had enough of the “rrrrrr / sssssss” noise as well as the radio (which as it is has to be put in an incovenient place) and went to RMNL website to find the URL for the Shoutcast server. (I can at least see if the listener slots are overloaded).
Today i noticed a big prominent warning on the website which translates as “the future of AM broadcast is uncertain”. In NL the NPO (equivalent to our BBC) is stopping with all AM broadcasting (RMNL might still rent the TX from Hilversum as it was previously Hilversum 3), and there is a risk that Agentschap Telecom cancel everyone elses AM broadcast licenses(!) That doesn’t seem logical nor fair although it is may be that AT have got DAB+ allocations ready for all the displaced broadcasters (there is enough space for them) or they are already on DAB+ .
So they now encourage everyone to listen either with DAB+ or online (with links to some impressive DAB+/internet portable radios, which we are not yet advanced to have in the UK). The online sound quality is impressive (sounds good even at 128k MP3) on the second setup in my bedroom with a Japan midi system feeding Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 LS.
There have been a few gaps and glitches in playout (without the interference these show up more) for which they can be forgiven; it seems to be only Vincent and Pater Elias holding the fort. The young bald lad, the other lad with long hair and Marieke are back at University – plus all the younger teenagers (who go to the schools for brainy people like gymnasium and lycaeum) are doing their exams.
May 30, 2015 at 3:34 pm #1278960I managed to track down info about the changes on another Dutch radio enthusiasts website; the whole of NL is indeed stopping with MF / AM broadcasting in September; and Agentschap Telecom has found space for all the displaced broadcasters on DAB+!
That means all the prog rock national stations, some community broadcasters, a few dance/youth stations and the rest of the “Godzenders” (there are at least 3 others!) . RMNL actually gains as they get a 64k AAC+ / DAB+ allocation for the whole country as well as the existing 56K one for half of it.
it was actually Ofcom UK who worked out it was technically possible to do this with small scale TX’s ; but none of the big UK radio groups (or their counterparts in DE, often part of the same company!) seem bothered to use AAC encoding so keep with the poor quality MP2; it is not clear if AAC encoding is yet allowed here (it probably is but not all radios will decode it) and the copyright licensing organisations in the UK want unrealistic fees in comparison to NL.
[A lot more of the NL broadcasting infrastructure may still be nationalised (its still linked to the nationalised Electricity Board, probably as tall masts are used for telemetry linked critical national infrastructure and emergency comms; and it is understandably a matter of national pride that NL has managed to do this. I’ve got a link to the website if anyone is interested; be aware its not only fairly technical but all in Dutch 😉 )
September 18, 2015 at 4:40 pm #1278961adieu Lopik (I had considered making a similar video myself but even in NL there was loads of interference; I suspect KPN had been turning down the power anyway)
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.