Details of all these stories are available on the DRDB website at www.drdb.org or the consumer site at www.digitalradionow.com
New Products
Genus DAB Upgrade DU1
DAB Upgrade DU1 - a new in-home DAB adapter from Genus. The Upgrade connects to hi-fi separates, a micro system, 5.1 surround sound system, in fact anything that has an AUX IN or an SP/DIF IN, turning it into a DAB receiver. All it takes is a single cable. The Genus Upgrade DU1 is available for around £65.
Trinloc DAB USB Receiver
Plugs into a USB port on your PC to provide user interface and easy recording. Access EPG data and schedule recordings ahead of time. Listen through speakers, headphones or hook up to your hi-fi. Exclusively available from Simply Radios at around £99.
Coming soon
New DAB handheld from Nevada
Portsmouth-based company Nevada is about to launch a new handheld DAB digital radio, the Nevada ND-01 Personal in John Lewis stores later this month.
Nevada is looking for opportunities in the export market and already has interest from Denmark and Germany.
Until now, Nevada has been a DAB radio distributor. Managing Director, Mike Devereux now hopes to use the new radio to propel Nevada into Europe, where the digital radio market is ripe for development. The company has doubled its turnover in the last three years.
Capital Disney wins Sony Award
DAB only radio station Capital Disney has won the radio industry’s equivalent to an Oscar - the Sony Award for Digital Terrestrial Station of the Year.
The award was presented by Lord Currie, Chairman of Ofcom at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Monday, May 9.
Chill and Fun - new for the UK
GCap Media has launched two new DAB digital radio networks in the UK. Chill is a lay-back-and-chill-out format available with a DAB radio in London, Peterborough, Norwich, Bournemouth, Bristol/Bath, Cambridge, Coventry, Exeter/Torbay, Plymouth/Cornwall, Reading/Basingstoke, Southend/Chelmsford and Swindon/West Wiltshire.
Fun is a new children’s network targeting the under 10s and their parents. Music is comprised of children-friendly popular and soft contemporary music, music from films and musicals, sing-a-long songs, nursery rhymes and classical, while speech is centred around fun and discovery for children, as well as parent-oriented entertainment and information for grown-ups.
Fun is available in Bournemouth, Bristol/Bath, London, Reading/Basingstoke, Southend/Chelmsford and Swindon/West Wiltshire. It is a joint venture between GCap Media and HIT Entertainment.
Sky TV via DAB Digital Radio
An innovative service to deliver live television to mobile phones will be piloted by BT Wholesale and Virgin Mobile this summer. The service will be broadcast on the national commercial DAB digital radio network, operated by Digital One. Listeners with standard digital radios will not be able to pick up the encrypted television channels.
For the pilot, BT Livetime will provide selected Virgin Mobile customers with access to Sky Sports News, Sky News and new music channel Blaze. The four-month pilot of 1,000 users will begin in June in south-east England, within the M25.
When the full service launches, BT Livetime will enable mobile companies to offer their consumers access to television and radio channels broadcast direct to DAB digital radio enhanced mobile devices such as smartphones and personal media players. This "one-to-many" delivery of mobile TV is a cost-effective method of giving very large numbers of consumers, high quality TV services.
BT Livetime’s wholesale mobile TV service is complementary to mobile operators’ existing GPRS and 3G services, stimulating new revenue growth by delivering a facility similar to the interactive services which currently exist on digital television.
The DAB digital radio technology approach adopted by BT Livetime is the quickest and most cost effective method of giving UK consumers a mobile broadcast TV service. It is based on spectrum availability, existing transmission infrastructure and ease of integration into mobile phones.
For more information visit www.ukdigitalradio.com
DRDB launches new radio ad campaign
The DRDB (Digital Radio Development Bureau) has signed top comedy duo French and Saunders as the new voice of DAB Digital Radio.
A series of radio ads with the distinctive French and Saunders brand of humour will run across 250 analogue and DAB commercial radio stations in three bursts during the second half of 2005. The ads kick off in on June 16 with a four week campaign that is designed to promote a strong, single industry wide message and to reach a mass market audience using unique, memorable content.
A total of 12 scripts of 20, 30, 40 and 50 seconds will be staggered over the next six months so that freshness of content is maintained. The prime message to consumers is one of DAB digital radio benefits, more stations, clarity of sound, ease of use. There is an underlying suggestion that analogue radio is passe and DAB is what the tech-savvy consumer should be buying. The ads were conceived and written by Radioville.
News from PURE Digital
PURE Digital has announced the PURE EVOKE-1XT Tri-Band DAB digital radio, a special international edition of the market leading DAB radio.
EVOKE-1XT Tri-Band adds several enhanced features specifically for international users, including: Band III and L-band DAB reception1; FM with RDS; support for a wide selection of European languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian).
PURE Digital has demonstrated the PocketDAB 2000, which combines two of the hottest categories in consumer electronics - DAB digital radio and MP3 - into one stylish handheld device.
PocketDAB 2000 features DAB and FM (UKW) radio; ReVu™ to pause and rewind DAB digital radio; and MP3 playback from SD memory card (64MB included). It enables listeners to record DAB radio programmes and tracks to SD memory card, even while on the move.
The new TxtStor™ feature enables users to save the scrolling DAB text messages broadcast by most stations and refer back for phone numbers, track names, web addresses etc.
This groundbreaking product from PURE is the first to combine all of these features in a handheld device and will be available later this year.
News from Frontier Silicon
Frontier Silicon has launched a significant new capability that will bring personal-video-recorder (PVR) like capabilities to digital radio. The company has introduced DABplus, a combination of a sophisticated advanced electronic programme guide (EPG) and advanced recording and timer capabilities for its highly successful Venice module to transform the personal listening experience of DAB digital radio.
DABplus includes scrolling text for lines that extend beyond the 16-character screen width, enabling a rich user interface to be implemented.
Users can bring up seven days of programmes,select what they want to listen to or record, and use any number of timers to record their favourite programmes onto a memory card for playback on the same radio or any other compatible audio player.
Frontier Silicon has launched Venice 3 FS2023, an ultra low power tri-band DAB digital radio receiver module which also integrates an FM radio receiver with RDS in the same chip. The power consumption of the new module is less than half of existing solutions, enabling up to 60 hours of battery life in a portable DAB radio.
Frontier Silicon has announced that it has started sampling the world’s most advanced terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) chip set in Korea. The company’s Apollo 1 RF chip and Kino 1 baseband chip are now sampling with an evaluation board available through the company’s local representative BSI.
RadioScape announces first DRM module
RadioScape has launched the RadioScape RS500™ module that can receive DRM™ (Digital Radio Mondiale™) as well as DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast), FM with RDS, LW, MW and SW to form the basis of the world’s first affordable, integrated, multi-standard, digital radio receivers.
The RS500 is based on RadioScape’s innovative radiOS™ architecture, enabling re-use of existing applications and features previously developed for the RS300L™ DAB/FM module. Many of the innovative features available on the RS300L have been directly implemented on this module, accelerating time to market for a fully featured receiver design. The RS500, for example, immediately supports capabilities such as the highly popular Pause, Rewind and Record to MMC card features as well as the ability to display and use Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) data.
The RS500 is size and pin compatible with RadioScape’s successful RS300L, enabling radio manufacturers to migrate existing designs to the RS500, rapidly bringing to market ranges of receivers, which include DRM-capable designs, in time to catch the pre Christmas 2005 sales.
The RS500 is based on the Texas Instruments TMS320DRM350 digital signal processor-based (DSP) baseband.
Latest Market Data
ENDS
June 26, 2005
The Digital Radio Development Bureau is funded and supported by BBC, Digital One, Emap Digital Radio, CE Digital, MXR (Chrysalis, GMG, Capital and UBC), Capital Digital and GWR’s Now-Digital. The DRDB’s task is to ensure digital radio’s wide accessibility and swift adoption in the UK with consistent and effective marketing.
Visit the DRDB's consumer web site www.digitalradionow.com, or our Business to Business site, www.drdb.org.
If you have any news you would like included in the next DRDB news bulletin, please email mandy@drdb.org
If you do not wish to receive future copies of this news bulletin please email mandy@drdb.org
Mandy Green
Press and Publicity Manager
DRDB
The Radiocentre
77 Shaftesbury Avenue
London W1D 5DU
020 7306 2636
07973 184995