In-vehicle Receiver Technical Trial

You may know that there is a not-for-profit organisation working for radio, just like the one for telly, that has the cute robot dude that helps little old ladies with their set top boxes. They are Digital Radio UK (DRUK) and they work at Ministerial and heads of BBC and broadcast mogul level. They are heavy dudes and little old Talk Audio has literally barged into their heady world! (What ME? BARGE?)
Hmmmm, poor souls never did stand a chance of ignoring us as I was sat in the front row, like a chubby over-eager student when they ran their first Drive To Digital conference at Broadcasting House in London. It was about the DRUK campaign to tell the world more about digital radio being available in cars.

“BH”, the very HQ of the BBC; we had Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries to tell us about how the government is committed to the future of radio – and that means Digital Radio. I was there for CAR magazine, for whom I have done pitifully small amounts of work considering how keen I am to talk to their opinion-forming readers. I was first arm up for a question and asked the minister if any budget had been ring-fenced to protect the new Digital “tick” mark that will go on approved digital radios, from counterfeit use by Toerags selling Kak from under railway arches. Ed was clearly unused to the words ‘toerag’ and ‘kak’ being used as ministerial adjectives and liked them so much he used them both at the lunchtime sum-up and they were again mentioned in the final day’s sum-up too! (to my utter delight)

One thing I can relate dear TA readers, is that the old ‘DAB’ term (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is as silly as calling your television “DVB-T” for Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial. It’s just TV and you know of course that it is digital, not fuzzy analogue. So Dead & Buried – it’s DIGITAL RADIO!

As part of the DRUK thang, they send out a quarterly news letter and I know from experience that many trade folks look at Talk Audio. (‘Cos I found out when I was horrible to another reviewer in public on Talk Audio, that ALL kinds of terribly senior folk in 12V read my stuff, #scary) So, I thought I would re-publish this crucial snippet for the trade people readers and those who may just not yet know about this. It’s basically crews in cars, driving in and out of transmission zones and recording performance of ordnance from car makers and digital radio manufacturers.

Below is the stuff from DRUK:

 
We have recently launched the Digital Radio In-vehicle Receiver Technical Trial. This aims to test the implementation of service following (i.e. the switching between digital radio services as a vehicle moves in and out of coverage) and traffic announcements (i.e. the transferring of listeners from one station to another in order to hear traffic alerts) on UK roads.

This project will run until 15 June 2012 and aims to provide manufacturers and vehicle manufacturers with the opportunity to test these two functionalities, both of which are included within the UK’s minimum specification, which will sit behind the proposed Digital Radio Switchover Certification Mark, providing consumers with assurance in approved digital radio products and services.