Blogging Nick Piggott

The Eureka 147 project, from which DAB Digital Radio was born, bequeathed us a very feature rich, powerful and flexible multi-media broadcasting platform, neatly optimised for small, mobile, battery powered receivers. In fact, as a piece of technology, the core EN 300 401 spec and its associated standards (EN 302 077 etc.) are often imitated and are hard to beat. For mass-market radio broadcasting, I believe it is an unbeatable technology.

The core standards were written as a pan-European project to create a digitisation path for radio; an early example of Agree on Technology, Compete on Content. Whilst there are daft things in there (over 10 categorisations of speech programming, only 2 categorisations of “Pop” and “Rock” music), the core has been on-air since 1995, and remains virtually unchanged.

Being fine technologists, the original specification writers left lots of hooks and places to extend the specification. That’s why DAB has so easily incorporated DAB+ and DMB (Mobile TV), and spawned a myriad of interesting data applications – Slideshow, Broadcast Website, EPG, TPEG, IP over DAB (to name but a few). Whatever problem you have to solve, EN 300 401 provides a pretty good starting point. Without over-simplifying things, if you can write packet-orientated IP applications, you can probably write applns for DAB too.

But somewhere along the way, the community lost track of the real reason to Agree on Technology – and it’s receivers. It’s all very well writing the coolest ever DAB application, but what if nothing can receive it? E P I C F A I L…..

I’ve grumbled enough about the individual nations of Europe (and elsewhere) tinkering around without thinking about the implications of their actions. Nuff said.

The outcome was that too many manufacturers, particularly the automotive manufacturers, just found it too confusing and risky to build receivers. Last time I looked, there were three different audio transmission systems, three different ways of visualising radio, two ways of adding browseable content, two ways of transmitting text information, two ways of downloading Java apps to the receiver, and nobody seems to have agreed completely yet how to transmit traffic and travel information. Not only were receiver manufacturers confused about what to support in their devices, broadcasters and regulators couldn’t decide what to do either.

In an attempt to get some direction back into the matter, WorldDMB have produced (after due consultation with the relevant stakeholders) a set of standard receiver profiles, which attempt to balance functionality, complexity and cost, whilst retaining a goal of European-wide interoperability.

• The Profile 1 receiver is pretty simple – audio (all three types), simple text display. The Profile 1 receiver is the market entry receiver that demonstrates that DAB Digital Radio is a mass market technology anyone can afford. I would hope to see €15,- receivers available Europe-wide within 5 years.
• The Profile 2 receiver is, in my opinion, where it’s at – or more precisely, where the money is at for the broadcasters. Profile 2 requires a colour screen and supports simple visualisation (amongst other things). If Profile 1 is analogue radio made digital, Profile 2 is proper digital radio. Profile 2 ought to be attainable by all “radio” manufacturers, and Profile 2 (automotive) has to be a slam dunk when you see what people like Audi have in store for our cars.
• The Profile 3 receiver will probably never get built. Seriously. Profile 3 is the all-singing-all-dancing-it-does-everything-the-licensing-costs-will-be-horrendous profile. What I expect will happen is that a device that already includes pretty much all the relevant technology (and nasty licensing fees) will use Profile 3 to integrate DAB into the device. Think Nokia N-Series, Apple iPhone, Google Android (because I certainly am).

Hopefully by creating some more definite “standard receivers” from the standards, it will enable to confident decision making and commitments. Without it, the market would have stalled in hesitation and uncertainty.

So the ball is back in the court of the broadcasters to broadcast services that consumers will want to buy new radios from manufacturers to receive. That’s natural order of these things. And hopefully, in the future, my colleagues from across Europe will be talking together about how to evolve radio, so that we avoid another clearing-up session in 5 years time.

(Photo – (C) DRDB – Digital Radio Development Bureau)

I’ve been enjoying meeting colleagues from all over Europe and beyond in the last couple of days. Myself and James Cridland were invited to talk to a series of conferences in Sweden, Norway and Denmark about how you can combine radio and technology in interesting ways for listeners and advertisers*. Of course, to ensure that lots of people came to the session, it needed a buzzword, so it acquired the title Radio For The Facebook Generation. (You can download the script here).

The lineups for the conferences were really exceptional; indeed, more diverse and international than many of the conferences in the UK. Our fellow speakers included Dave Foxx (Big name producer from the US), Nik Goodman (UK Consultant – see James’ blog for a review of his session), Geoff Lloyd (Presenter at Absolute Radio), and Mark Ramsey – a guy who’s blog I’ve been following for ages, as he gives the US perspective on the effect that new technology is having on radio. Mark’s presentation was very impressive – hopefully he’ll publish some of it on his blog. On the huge stage and screen in Sweden, it really had impact. You might disagree with some of his analysis, and there’s plenty of debate about the speed of change, but I doubt anyone was left feeling that they could keep ploughing the same furrow for the next ten years.

James and I covered a bunch of subjects and projects that have come out of radio in the UK – things that we believe are innovative for listeners and advertisers*, and demonstrate how radio can use technology sympathetically to really improve the experience without undermining the core attributes that radio is loved for. So we talked about mi-XFM, RadioPop, Tagging, Visualisation, EPG, Text Information, Olinda – all useful milestones in the timeline of radio’s development.

What we both wanted to emphasise is that not only is it possible for public service and commercial radio companies to collaborate, it’s essential for the future development of radio. Individual companies alone can’t influence the direction of technology (not even the BBC), and consumer electronic companies need to see European sized markets to start integrating radio cleverly into devices. So I hope that what we showed was the practical benefits of Agree on Technology, Compete on Content.

It was also great to get questions from our host countries – three countries geographically and culturally close together, but with some differences in their radio industries. Norway has a strong national commercial radio station (P4 – nice building in Oslo), Denmark is doing brilliantly well with DAB Digital Radio, and Sweden has a really good selection of private stations. In all the countries, the private sector is in the minority against well-funded and heritage public service broadcasters, who don’t appear to face as rigorous questioning about the value of their public service as the BBC does in the UK.

For the first time, the green shoots of interest in Digital Radio are showing from the private radio sector. Their absence (either planned or unintentional) from Europe’s Digital Radio Plans (hereto dominated by the PSBs) has, in my opinion, been a real inhibitor to change. In a separate session, Joan Warner from Commercial Radio Australia brought a new, non-European perspective, about the benefits to commercial radio of digitisation, which in turn prompted questions more thoughtful and insightful than I’ve heard before in these sessions.

So I’ve come away from Scandinavia more hopeful than I ever have before that the private radio sector will be included (or will include themselves) better in the transition to digital, and can see that collaborating with their competitors and public service broadcasters in some areas in no way compromises their right to beat the daylights out of them in the ratings.

* Obviously, I was talking about the commercial benefits and benefits to advertisers. Even with the atmosphere of collaboration, I don’t think the BBC would be in a position to champion commercial benefits.

Along with a number of luminaries of the radio and consumer electronics world, I was lucky enough to be invited to the launch of PURE’s new converged radio – supporting FM, DAB and WiFi in one familiarly styled case. I’ve been lucky to know the guys at PURE since the early days of the original EVOKE-1, and as well as their remarkable marketing skills, they’ve got a great in-house technical team, headed up by Nick Jurascheck.

So this is my initial experience of using my EVOKE Flow, based on about the first hour of usage.

You can feel it’s a well built radio, and the piano black casing is very attractive (matches my new eee pc 901), and the power supply has shrunk right down. Plug in, switch on, and it’s ready to go.

The display is such an improvement (although not yet colour), and the initial user experience is dead simple. There’s a short “setup” guide in the box, which guides you through setting it up. Selecting “DAB Radio” did a band scan, which picked up all the stations I expected it to. Similarly, setting up the WiFi was simply a question of finding my WiFi network by name, and entering in the password. The unit obviously does a variety of “brute force” attacks to find out exactly which encryption is in use, and correctly worked out that I use WPA-PSK.

It’s quick. There’s no sluggish response to the UI, and the display and soft keys keep up with even the speediest actions. The station lists are quick to show, and the filtering (by location, genre, keywords, sound quality etc.) works exactly as it needs to when you’re handling thousands and thousands of WiFi stations.

It sounds good. That warm, rich sound is just as good as it’s even been, even on some of the ropier internet streaming.

The navigation is pretty good. The top level divides things into logical blocks (DAB, The Lounge, FM etc.) and there’s reasonable consistent use of a “back” or “cancel” function to get back where you were. The only area I stumbled around in a bit was when I was using filters to find stations, and adding them to favourites, although I suspect it’s just a case of getting use to it.

The radio is designed to be used in conjunction with PURE’s “The Lounge” website, which is a device portal. This isn’t yet live, so I couldn’t test out the interaction between the two, but I can see it’s probably easier to manage favourites from The Lounge.

Other nice features – there’s a comprehensive list of “On-Demand” and “Podcast” content, which appears to have scraped the BBC dry. PURE sounds gives you access to the kind of incidental and background audio that has made Birdsong a minor celebrity station.

Any bugs? Well, yes a few. Once of the immense challenges of doing a WiFi radio is trying to keep track of all the darned streams and what they are. I tried finding a particularly big, popular, public service pop station in Europe (not in the UK!), and found it was linked to another stream from the same PSB. So I went hunting for a way of manually entering a stream address, and there doesn’t appear to be one. Maybe I can add it through The Lounge?

Navigation of the WiFi content (even on a decent screen, with a fast UI) continues to be a real challenge because there’s just so much stuff. Again, I guess that’s what The Lounge is for.

The DAB and WiFi are two very distinct modules in the radio, which are kept separate from the main menu downwards. I couldn’t find a way, for instance, of having a common favourites list between DAB and WiFi. I have some DAB stations I want, and some stations I want to stream – I intensely dislike using my bandwidth to stream stuff I could be getting over the air. (And I get text information from DAB too, which is finally readable on this display).

The DAB is lacking an EPG, which would have been so much easier to navigate on this device. I know the support of it from broadcasters is currently weak, but it would make navigation and discovery better. Maybe that’s also something that could be integrated into The Lounge?

Overall, I like it. It looks nice, it works nice, and it’s a significant improvement in user experience over the Acoustic Energy unit that it’s taken over from in the kitchen. The SRP is £150, which seems to be in the right ball park for this kind of radio, and it does do nice things for you.

So I know what you’re thinking – a WiFi/DAB radio isn’t new.

Some of the most interesting stuff in the Flow is under the bonnet, and it’s why it’s an exciting development. PURE have talked about enabling music downloading and tagging, and the reason they can talk about those kind of developments confidently is that the Flow is built on Linux. As far as I’m aware, it’s the first large scale production DAB device that’s got Linux at the core (kernel 2.6 for the production model, if you’re interested).

This is a remarkable development. It means the radio can be upgraded to support new functionality, and that functionality can be programmed far more easily that the traditional micro-coding (which makes you go blind, sterile and your hair falls out) associated with embedded microprocessors. Nick and the PURE team have written drivers for the hardware, and used the power of Linux to build a radio that behaves really well. It’s now a connected computing device, optimised for audio and radio. Brilliant.

I’m looking forward to what the radio industry could do with connected, software based, devices like Flow, to speed up the delivery of innovation to consumers. All it needs now is a lovely QVA Colour Screen, it will be darned near perfect.

Freeview is getting a pasting in the press at the moment, because a small number of set-top boxes have died after a change to the multiplex configurations. It highlights a problem faced by all digital platform operators, and challenges the notion that market forces can regulate the quality of receiver products.

The four digital TV platforms in the UK all use variants of the DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) standard. Sky and Freesat use DVB-S* (Satellite), Virgin Media uses DVB-C (Cable) and Freeview uses DVB-T (Terrestrial). DVB-T is widely rolled out across Europe, and is the basis for Digital Television in many countries globally. DVB is to digital TV as GSM is to mobile telephony.

Both DVB and DAB are standardised in detailed standards documents published by ETSI, but like all standards, there are options and alternate configurations. All these possibilities are laid out in the standards, and both broadcasters and receiver manufacturers work from the same document to ensure that the end-to-end chain works.

Or at least, that’s the theory.

In practise, commercial pressures trump technical diligence more than manufacturers would like to admit. The standards are written in technical English, but it’s a major committment to read and really understand all the detail in the documents, and that takes time, and it’s expensive. Then the testing phase is complex, because there are so many permutations to work through to be sure that your receiver is going to work in all permissible conditions, or at least behave gracefully when it can’t support something.

Unfortunately, there is another way to develop a receiver. A scant skim-read of the spec, combined with periods of time with prototype receivers in hotel rooms, hacking away at code until the signal is correctly decoded. I know of a number of receivers that have been developed in this way – simply bashing away at code based on what’s being transmitted. As soon as the required signal comes out, the code is committed.

It’s faster and cheaper than doing it meticulously against the spec, and it allows a manufacturer to race a box out potentially earlier than rivals, and without having invested much time in tracking the development of the technology. The manufacturer just wants to shift the box, get the cash, and move the engineers onto the next consumer electronic device.

Interestingly, DAB suffered from exactly the same problem that Freeview has now, but about 9 years ago. A well-known (and at the time, best-selling) brand of DAB receiver appeared to be working perfectly until DigitalOne came on air. At the time, the BBC multiplex was broadcasting 8 services, but DigitalOne had 10. The additional number of services crashed the receiver, because the engineers at the time had assumed that 8 services would be the maximum on a multiplex. Thankfully, this was a reputable manufacturer who organised and paid for the recall and firmware upgrading of all receivers free of charge. Other receivers have been had similar limitations which have only become obvious when used in other countries, where the multiplexes are configured differently to the UK, but still entirely legitimately within the published specification.

Sky and Virgin avoid the problems that Freeview have had by supplying the receivers themselves, and testing every box themselves for compliance. It’s more costly for them, but dramatically reduces the customer-service problems that crap products create.

Because crap products tarnish the platform more than the manufacturer.

The headlines in the papers run along the lines of “FREEVIEW FIASCO“. That’s unfair. Why isn’t is saying “DAEWOO BOXES DIE” or “BUSH RECEIVERS BITE THE DUST“? Why does the Freeview platform bear the brunt of the criticism when they’re working within the spec? The Daewoo spokesman is quoted as saying “We certainly had no intention of selling boxes that would not work witin a few years”, which is hardly a robust defence. Why no unequovical statement of “Our receivers were developed according to the DVB-T specification, and tested accordingly”? What’s your view of the Daewoo, Bush, Labgear and Triax brands?

The argument from manufacturers about receiver compliance is “let the market decide”. In other words, those reputable brands who develop compliant receivers will benenfit, and people who put out rubbish will get crucified by the consumer and their brands will be trashed. Unfortunately, the Freeview problem is showing that consumers don’t react like that. They’ve already forked out their money, and their motivation was to receive the Freeview service, not necessarily to buy a cherished Daewoo product. It’s Freeview that they’re raging against.

DAB suffers from this problem. Consumers appear to assume that no matter how cheap and obviously nasty a DAB radio is, it should work perfectly, and maybe that’s a legitimate assumption. In the same way that a supermarket can’t sell you dangerously unfit food, surely they won’t sell you a digital radio that’s functionally useless. Unfortunately, it’s not the case, and there are DAB radios out there (cheap and nasty ones) which simply don’t meet the requirements of the spec, particularly in terms of sensitivity (the ability to pick up weaker signals).

Doing receiver compliance properly is a high-risk issue. Broadcasters and transmission providers are wary of running compliance programmes in case they get sued by a manufacturer if a receiver stops working. Manufacturers find it difficult to get hold of sufficient test signals to check all permutations (and that’s even the digilent ones). The risk falls disproportionately on the consumer.

The DVB / DAB logos are only supposed to be applied to receivers reaching the spec, but clearly not many people trust the manufacturers’ thoroughness in testing for these logos to carry much value any more. The logos just go on the box if it appears to work. Freeview and Freesat now run a testing programme on receivers, which grants a UK specific “tick” logo to boxes proved to be compliant. I would prefer to see a crack-down on receivers falsely applying the DVB/DAB logos, rather than developing a safety net branding. But to do so would need a significant investment in compliance testing and enforcement by DVB Form/WorldDMB, customs, importers and retailers. Is it worth it for a £15 receiver box?

Photo – my own, entitled “World’s Stupidest Freeview TV #2″.

George Lamb is the mid-morning presenter on 6 Music, one of the BBC’s Digital radio stations. 6 Music has a tendency to take itself, and its music, rather seriously. It was apparently born from (or heavily influenced by) the ashes of BBC Radio London when that station reinvented itself as a more news & current affairs station called BBC LDN. Indeed, the previous occupant of the 10am – 1pm slot on 6 Music, Gideon Coe, was a luminary of BBC Radio London and somewhat of a music guru. 6 Music is under the wing of Lesley Douglas, who’s main job is looking after BBC Radio 2.

George’s arrival certainly shook up 6 Music, and generated plenty of heated debate by the music loving listeners to the station. He’s suffered criticism like few other presenters have, and he’s borne it well. His show is best described as unique, and somewhat less reverential about music than some of the other 6 Music presenters.

So why is George Lamb potentially “the Saviour of Digital Radio”?

In many ways, for the same reason that Chris Moyles can claim to be “the saviour of Radio 1″. George invokes serious passion in people; love him or hate him, everyone has an opinion on him, and his fame spreads way beyond the 520,000 people who listen to 6 Music each week. Just this week, I grabbed an Arena magazine (for a surprisingly long flight to Sweden – who’d have thought it was nearly 3 hours from Bristol?), and there was an article entitled “Black Sheep” all about George. People are talking about George Lamb, and the radio station he’s on.

George Lamb is the best marketing 6 Music has got. And in turn, it’s the best marketing Digital Radio has had in years.

A lot of earlier marketing about Digital Radio was pretty functional. “Buy a radio and get more channels“. Unsurprisingly, the mention of individual stations was very vague, because nobody wanted to promote a competitor’s station. Audience levels across the board were small, and it was virtually impossible to buy a radio, so nobody wanted to invest in station specific marketing.

But now Digital Radio is maturing, it does make sense to start marketing stations, and what a great way to promote a station by employing brilliant new talent, and talent that invokes passionate discussion – good and bad. (Given a choice, I would much rather manage a difficult but brilliant presenter who invokes polarising feelings in his/her listeners, than someone easy, bland and unassuming).

6 Music aren’t the only station investing in presenters as marketing. Planet Rock (560,000 listeners per week) has had stars like Alice Cooper, Rick Wakeman and Gary Moore on its presenter lineup.

The cleverest way to continue to grow Digital Radio listening is to make it the home of great new talent.

For the next stage of Digital Radio’s growth, I don’t believe we need to spend millions of pounds on “above the line” marketing like billboards or bus-sides or TV. Word-of-mouth about great talent spreads through the Internet, through Facebook and Bebo and onwards, particularly if it is a bit niche and a bit hard to get hold of. And given the relatively low revenue levels on Digital Radio, this risk involved with trying out new people is way lower than it is on analogue.

Commercial Radio, for once, has a level(ish) playing field; as many people can listen to Commercial Digital radio (through DigitalOne, or the considerable coverage offered by the network of local digital multiplexes) as can hear the BBC. If Commercial Radio can start stations that can house great talent, and work the PR and the exposure right, then it stands to gain as much as the BBC. It just needs to get comfortable with the idea of working bigger in an industry that previously considered “big” to be Capital FM. (A previous home to Chris Moyles, along with a string of local commercial radio stations incidentally). That doesn’t overcome the massive funding difference between the BBC and Commercial Radio, and the BBC’s ability to offer radio presenters routes into TV, but Digital Radio has narrowed the gap.

The appointment of Tim Davie (who has a marketing background) to replace Jenny Abramsky as Director of BBC Audio and Music, could be the catalyst for the BBC to do more to promote its digital radio services. The BBC Trust noted in its recent annual report that awareness of BBC Digital Radio services (at 41%) is perceived to be low, and that surely is a cue for the corporation to start working harder and smarter at promoting the services it spends quite of lot of money making.

Lesley Douglas said at the Radio Festival that it was time to stop talking about the technology of Digital Radio and start talking about content, and by George, Mr Lamb is content to talk about.

Photo: Applause by svenwerk @ flickr

[UPDATE 23-Jul-2007]

My post about a controversial person seems to have generated quite a lot of controversy, judging by the comments (and this is the most commented post so far).

I just wanted to clarify two things about the original post:

• I am neither a fan nor not a fan of George Lamb. I’ve not heard enough of his show to make a judgement, and I rarely listen to 6 Music. I wasn’t intending to pass comment on George’s talent or lack of it. The reason I picked George was because I’d just read a big article (in a popular mainstream culture magazine) about him, and the digital radio station he worked on, and that’s a big deal for those of us who are tracking the development of digital radio globally. It’s a significant point in time to be able to say that digital radio stations have to got a point where the personalities on those stations can garner coverage and exposure for what they do on their radio shows. I hope more digital radio stations can use that to their advantage, and to the advantage of the medium as a whole.
• When I talk about preferring to manage difficult but talented personalities, I’m not referring to anyone in particular. I’m going back to when I used to be a programme controller (of both analogue and digital stations) and was working alongside, and for, other successful radio programmers. Managing a great talent who polarises opinion is very hard work, and can be immensely frustrating, but you have to believe that it’s the right thing to do. Managing personalities is very hard. By contrast, managing unassuming, safe, competent radio presenters is pretty simple, but it doesn’t make radio that makes people laugh, cry, amused, amazed or enraged. And if it’s not doing that, what’s the point?

So please forgive me for inadvertently straying onto the battlefield, and consider me limping off, tending my wounds. But I’m still glad that it’s a digital radio station that’s creating such controversy.