Investing in a DAB radio company - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ocset
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 am
content: Hi,I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning them in from China?

author: The Soulman
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 09:25:49 am
content: Yeah, must be chinese old-stock, everybody is moving to DAB+ now.QuoteJoking aside, just visit the place where they do their designing and building?If they're reluctant, you'll know enough.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 10:50:25 am
content: The DAB market is pretty well populated with established UK manufactureres, you've got Pure, Roberts, Revo, and Ruark... all British, not to mention the multinational players, mainly Sony [Edit: and a bunch of cheap Chinese OEMs.]If this is a startup, then you're going to need to offer something that they don't, and be able to match their buying power when it comes to parts. Not to mention brand awareness and marketing. If it's one of the established companies, I doubt that they would be looking for small investments.Have you done any research at all on this? It sounds like your worst nightmare - trying compete against decent British companies with no excuses!

author: greenpossum
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 11:07:59 am
content: If they spell warranty that way perhaps you should not DABble in them, hahaha.

author: richard.cs
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 01:08:44 pm
content: Does anyone even use DAB in the UK? I personally don't know anyone who does. FM is likely to remain king here for a long time yet, any attempt to enforce a switchover will probably just lead to rise in the pirate stations.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 01:48:23 pm
content: DAB in the UK is dead. It always was.Receivers were (and are) expensive, and use much more battery power than FM. Sound quality is atrocious because of an outdated codec and the fact that way too many stations are crammed into the available bandwidth, so they all have a pitiful bit rate.We have mobile internet access now. There's just no use case for commercial digital broadcasts.Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 amTour the factory!

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 02:03:42 pm
content: DAB is a terrible standard. Worse audio performance than FM, essentially useless in cars, barely usable indoors (mm, bubbly sound), and receivers are damn expensive.I know the guy who was behind the development of one of the first DAB receivers to hit UK stores - back in 2000 or so - it shipped with an Altera FPGA to do the audio decode! Massive loss leader just to get them into homes, but ultimately not successful.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 02:39:45 pm
content: Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 amSounds (ignore the pun) like a bad idea.For a while, companies are likely to be under extreme strain, because of the coronavirus and its huge economic effects. Some/many, may even go bankrupt.With some exceptions, now is not a good time to suddenly invest in a company, you may lose all your money, in the coming future.Given, you don't even seem to know if they are really made in the UK (or China). It sounds like you know far too little, to invest in the company.tl;drHold on to your money, and don't invest.Also, as others have said/hinted. Whatever eventually replaces DAB, may be worth getting. But, I've heard bad things about dab radio. Such as the UK went far too early into it, and chose a terrible system, which is probably worse than the existing FM signals. E.g. Quality wise.If they had waited, there would have been much cheaper (because others, such as the rest of Europe, would have used it, bringing the prices down and the quality up), and better solutions.I've tried dab myself briefly, and ended up being rather disappointed with it. The sound quality was somewhat poor, and the radio seemed fiddly and a pain in the neck, to adjust/tune etc. The battery life, doesn't seem too good, either.It should have been (my opinion), great quality (MP3 or near CD), stereo (it doesn't always seem to be, especially on cheap dab radios, which I think are mono), very good/long battery life, very cheap, very easy to use, and have much less interference/disruption to the signals.My understanding is the dab system, offers none of what I just mentioned (even the lack of interference, although basically correct, as it is digital, is replaced by possible fading in and out signals, if I remember correctly, it was a long time ago).

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 02:41:54 pm
content: must be in the minority here,had a dab receiver since the first time dixons closed there stores and they were selling stock off at ridiculously cheap prices.With a small external aerial the sound quality is fine for my deaf ears.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 02:46:04 pm
content: Quote from: richard.cs on May 09, 2020, 01:08:44 pmMillions of people in the UK use DAB. but in their cars. not their homes. People don't use any kind of radio in their homes much these days. I took part in a survey about radio usage last year, and the lady questioning me said the majority of reported radio usage is now in cars, with some growth in using the BBC's sounds app at home.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 02:52:25 pm
content: Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 amLike most UK electronics these days I expect:Design means they pick among several finishes the actual maker offers, and specify how to add their logo.Build means the do final assembly of a kit from the actual maker.If they can't even spell warranty, they'll probably just pass on the actual maker's manual with its poor English, unable to polish it.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 02:52:42 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on May 09, 2020, 02:41:54 pmUnfortunately, I do tend to be somewhat of a hi-fi buff (like). So, to me, it sounds somewhat terrible (sorry).But, it was a rather cheap and nasty dab radio, I tried. That could have been a factor as well.But, I think I have heard reviews and things say, the dab radio sound quality is not very good. Especially not compared to the much later, and better standards, which emerged, in Europe.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 02:54:46 pm
content: DAB has never really taken off over here, and in many other countries in Europe. Interesting to see there are still a lot of people using that in the UK, but I would still see this as a pretty small market overall, and likely to disappear as internet connections will become increasingly available inside cars. Just MHO though.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 03:00:21 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on May 09, 2020, 02:52:42 pmThere are two huge weaknesses in the original DAB spec. They rushed the spec out, even though it was obviously going to take quite a long time to move in the market. This meant they had to use a crappy codec. because the first of the decent ones, like MP3, were still in development. By the time DAB product development had really got anywhere, MP3 was available. They made some funky choices in the coding, so there are situations where a weak signal causes a modest bit error rate, but this results in some very unpleasant noises.I think most of the DAB radios in the UK are DAB+ designs, which fix these problems. However, because some early DAB only radios are still around, the transmission side has not been changed.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 03:14:12 pm
content: Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 amThis raises the following questions:1) Why have YOU been offered this chance? If it is such a good deal, why has the person offering it to you not taken up the chance himself?2) DAB has been replaced, technology-wise, by DAB+ in most parts of the world. You better make sure the company is developing DAB+ radios!3) What does "British designed and built" mean? Do you mean the "product" design, the chip design, the software design (again: are we talking about the full system or just the GUI implementation), etc.4) How big is the market?5) Why does the company need YOUR investment? If the company needs your investment, you are either incredibly rich and can put a lot of money in this company at an interest rate beneficial for both parties or we are talking of a small start-up company that will probably buy a SoC with SDK to "design" the radio around it: good luck with that.Note that so far DAB and DAB+ has been a major flop. For everyone involved.Radio stations cannot afford their stream to be included by in the transmitters, reagional broadcasters have no benefits of the nation-wide broadcast, since they make money from local advertising. Users prefer FM broadcast due to its better reception, especially when moving in a car or in less than optimal reception areas.Finally, the sound quality of DAB/DAB+ is far from the promised CD quality. It is actually worse than FM, due to the compression level imposed by adding too many radio stations in one single transponder.DAB/DAB+ will only start to become relevant when the analog FM shutdown comes. This has been delayed a few times and the truth is that when it finally happens, people will be streaming internet radios rather than listining to DAB/DAB+.Conclusion: I would definitly not invest my money in this technology.Regards,Vitor

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 03:14:49 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 03:00:21 pmThat is so sad and crazy.When the UK, moved to colour TV (from memory, around 1966, PAL, BBC2, the new second! UK channel). They were very clever in the signals design. It maintained compatibility with 625 line black and white signal TVs, and yet added the 2 extra colour signals, so that full colour TV could be shown. From the same TV signal.I.e. It could be used for black and white (625 line) TVs, or on (much more expensive and very rare at the time), colour 625 line (PAL) TVs.If my memory is playing up (there was eventually a third TV station, ITV), and there were 405 line (old standard) Tvs, still floating about, for many years, after that. Until the signal (405, great reception quality, with simple Aerials, usually all valve/tube sets) was eventually turned off in the 1980's.N.B. All above from memory, so could be out by a bit.I.e. Dab, should have been able to have (include the option for) later/future standards, which still kept the old radios working. This should have been thought of, when dab was originally conceived.Analogy: Otherwise, we would still be limited to a maximum of 4K of Ram on microprocessors (Intel 4004), and maybe 640K of ram, on PCs.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 03:23:03 pm
content: QuoteDAB/DAB+ were developed to produce a new market and respective demand. Those implementing it could not care less about existing receivers! Interestingly this is the reason it failed completely.The same happend when analog TV was replaced with DVB-T. You would expect one single norm for the whole world or at least the EU.But no: in a short period of time we got two modulations (DVB-T and DVB-T2).These carry different codecs: MPEG2 or MPEG4, MP3 or AAC. In any combination!This means that a DVB-T receiver sold in Spain may not work in Portugal...In Germany they introduced DVB-T with MPEG2/MP3 but after only a few years they replaced it by DVB-T2. Imagine the amount of incompatible TV's which were brand new! And an even higher amount of receivers that are obsolete in 1-4 years...Oh, and there was DVB-H, too... Meant to provide audio and video to moving cars. It died because of DAB/DAB+, if I correctly remember.With all this said and staying on topic, the only reason to invest in a company in this field is if you can lobby your exclusive right to produce a compbination of demodulator and codec that allows you to own the market for a given period of time (ahead of competitors) and with a market created by a forced shutdown.Regards,Vitor

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 04:17:18 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on May 09, 2020, 03:23:03 pmThis concept, seems to happen, lots of the time.Driving on the left vs right.VHS vs Betamax (vs V2000/Video2000)Blu-ray vs HD DVDDVD-R vs DVD+RBig-endian vs Little-endianMetres/Kilometres vs Yards/Feet/Miles/InchesUK Gallons vs US Gallons (This always gets me, how on earth can they be different sizes, but the same NAME, crazy).Because of Brexit, I suspect there will be more to add to this list.Mains voltages, (50/60Hz) frequencies, max currents, plug/socket types/styles, are not exactly standardised on a world-wide basis.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 04:29:15 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on May 09, 2020, 03:14:49 pmJust like DVB-T, DAB does provide for upgrades. The channel ID, codecs, bit rate, and other parameters are send in the bit stream, so these can be changed at any time, and the receiver knows what it is receiving. However, an old receiver can't make sense of newer features. As with DVB-T, DAB could be broadcast concurrently in older and newer forms, with the receivers able to select the stream which best suits them. The BBC and ITV TV channels have chosen to do this. The radio channels haven't.Comparision witth analogue TV is similar. 405 line TV couldn't be made compatible with 625 line, so they arranged parallel broadcasts of the two standards (although in limited amounts. Most people had to wait for colour broadcasts to start in order to get the parallel higher resolution broadcast (which was a HHHUUUGGGEEE improvement) on their B/W TVs). Those old analogue systems didn't tell the receiver what it was receiving, so selection was entirely manual. It was a natural thing to make colour transmissions compatible with black and white, so that is what they did, and the 625 line B/W transmissions could migrate seamlessly to a combined B/W and colour signal. Another compatibility choice was with FM radio. There was nothing particularly natural about the way they added stereo to FM transmissions, but there was a strong desire to make a single transmission compatible with both mono and stereo receivers. So, they cooked up the sum and difference approach, and merged the 2 signals onto a single carrier, using a sub-carrier. Selection was fully automatic there, as a stereo capable receiver just has to detect the sub-carrier.History is full of upgrades where the choice has to be made between running parallel systems vs a single merged compatible system. The choices made have mostly made sense.

author: richard.cs
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 04:39:30 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 02:46:04 pmAnd yet you can still buy a new car and not get a DAB radio. Yes these are now a minority but they will be on the road for the next 15 years or so:https://radiotoday.co.uk/2020/01/record-year-for-dab-radio-as-standard-in-new-vehicles/Quote

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 04:47:05 pm
content: Quote from: richard.cs on May 09, 2020, 04:39:30 pmDAB radios only became commonplace in cars quite recently, so most of them are DAB+. They could kill DAB transmissions, and go 100% DAB+, leaving the people without DAB+ support in their radio to use FM, and the number of people annoyed probably wouldn't be that big.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 05:15:42 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 04:29:15 pmI guess, there is not a perfect solution, to such a problem. You just have to choose the best compromises, overall, and accept the inevitable negative comments.What I find funny, about many negative comments, is they (e.g. the government), would have got such comments, regardless of what option they had chosen ?E.g. Quarantine all airports in January. Negative comments "Huge over-reaction by UK government, when there are still zero or few deaths in the UK".Insist on quarantine for all UK airports, at end of May. Negative comments "You should have done it in January".tl;drYou can't win.Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 04:47:05 pmI think, a while back. The BBC, on purpose, switched off certain AM (if I remember correctly) signal(s). For a limited (but significant) period of time. As an experiment.I remember, they didn't receive a single complaint.They were using those tests as ammunition, so that they can permanently switch off AM broadcasts (I think).

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 05:52:38 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on May 09, 2020, 02:52:25 pmYou might expect wrong in this particular case. DAB has 'traditionally' (if that's the right word) been something of a niche area - probably because it is a fairly localised standard. When I was designing high volume consumer in the UK, we were lobbied quite hard by the semiconductor manufacturers to produce a DAB product. Unfortunately my oriental lords and masters vetoed the idea, which was a shame because the achievable margins would have been much better than a lot of our DVB-T stuff.Even so, I've been surprised how those prices have held up over the years, for what is a fairly simple (but dedicated) chipset and frontend. Not the sort of thing that you want to run extensively on batteries though.Support tends to be pretty good - Pure, for instance, offer standard 3 year warranty (not wishing to do treez's basic research for him).We have a couple of DAB radios around the house, handy for listening to Radio 4 and R4ex. It was nice when the car came with it too. It's at market saturation these days though.

author: intmpe
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 06:03:20 pm
content: The requirements for "made in xxx" country are usually pretty low - like 10 or 20% content.This can often mean just putting a foreign made product into a locally sourced box.The way you find out is easy - if they are asking you to invest - show up and "audit" the place - talk to their design staff. They would be happy to see an investor take the interest. Less so if its a scam.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 06:11:40 pm
content: Agreed with above: obvious answer: how can you find out? Easy: audit the fricking place!Any serious investor would do this anyway. Just ask them for that, plan your audit, sign some agreement (so they are guaranteed of confidentiality), and do it!

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 06:20:10 pm
content: Reading the following, doesn't make dab (at least in Norway) look worth investing in.http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2018/11/no-more-investments-in-nationwide-dab.htmlIt seems to suggest, getting the government, to outright ban FM radio transmissions, in order to get dab radio to succeed. Which, sounds a bit naughty to me (i.e. it causes this:http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot.com/2018/09/listeners-calling-on-parliament-to.html).

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 06:26:12 pm
content: It may be about milieu control.Quote from: MK14 on May 09, 2020, 06:20:10 pm.I listen to FM a lot. I grew up on it. The FM around here is actually quite interesting and fun sometimes.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 06:34:16 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on May 09, 2020, 06:26:12 pmIf I listen to (a real) radio, I like FM, as well.But, internet radio (or whatever you want to call it, e.g. via Amazon Alexa), seems to be a promising way, as well.Assuming you are happy that there is a slight/tiny (or worse, depending on how you worry about such things) loss of privacy (E.g. your listening preferences could be noted), and consumption of your internet bandwidth.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 07:08:05 pm
content: Quoteonly FM i used to listen to as a yoof was at the top end of the broadcast band were the local police could be found, otherwise it was either radio 1 on 247 or 208 luxembourg.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2020, 07:11:17 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on May 09, 2020, 05:52:38 pmThat was a long time ago, when the volumes were low. These days DAB operates in quite a few places, the volumes are pretty good, and the silicon is standardised and cheap. Asian companies make a lot of this stuff now.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2020, 03:57:39 am
content: The US has (had?) an odd sort of hybrid digital system called HD Radio. I remember a Sony receiver that was very popular but they discontinued it after only a year or so. People were buying it not for the "HD" but because it had very good reception of the standard radio signals.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 10, 2020, 06:33:16 am
content: Quote from: Bicurico on May 09, 2020, 03:14:12 pmSeriously though, it means "Designed and built in Britain from Chinese parts"

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2020, 01:57:54 am
content: Quote from: MK14 on May 09, 2020, 04:17:18 pmBecause global standardization is avery, veryyoung concept. It didn't really begin in any meaningful way until the 19th century. Before then, standards were local. So every country (if not even smaller regions!) had its own mile, its own inch, its own pound, its own gallon (or alternatives!)… in the 19th century, as travel became easier, there began to be more need for international standardization. So first, the old units began to be standardized (so for example, a standard pound), and then later they were replaced by metric almost everywhere. The few holdouts remain with a smattering of the remaining semi-standardized units.Wikipedia has this great image from an 1848 Austrian book with the conversions of the different weight units in use, both into "Viennese Commercial Units" (0.56kg) and "French kilograms":https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Gewichtmaße1.jpgNote that while some were already using kg at the time, most were using some form of pound (varying from 301g to 763g), or something altogether unrelated. (For Switzerland, it says a pound was 500g "for most cantons", meaning it wasn't even consistent within this little tiny country!!)Remember, until railroads, there wasn't even such a thing as synchronized time (i.e. time zones): every place was on its own time, based on sunrise.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2020, 10:02:43 am
content: Thanks, that is brilliantIt has explained WHY, and helped me understand the situation nicely.Even now, different countries, choose (in some cases), different standards/measurement systems and stuff.Those decisions, can carry on for many decades and even centuries.It is why some stuff is so silly. Such as standard tyres, having one of its measurements in metric (millimetres), and the other in imperial (inches).So, a 195/65R15 tyre, has a width of 195 millimetres and a diameter of 15 inches.The reason why (tyres/tires), is long and complicated. But, a very quick summary, it is because the US and rest of the west, couldn't agree to sensible standards. The US went its own way, with certain laws (I think), (hence economically, as US is a huge market), somewhat forcing the weird, mixed metric/imperial standard, we see, today.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2020, 10:33:55 am
content: Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 amI see you've found a way to introduce (yet again) one of your two topics.Are you planning to bring SMPSs into this thread, or to create another?

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2020, 06:18:49 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on May 11, 2020, 10:02:43 amGlad you appreciated it!I think it’s a good rule of thumb in most situations, when you’ve encountered a decision that doesn’t make sense, to consider what information was availablewhen the decision was made.Because in most cases, the decisions were the right onesat the time.A great example of this is the Microsoft Word file format. Even in its modern XML incarnation, the internal representation of the document appears insanely convoluted. It’s not the file format that’s complex, it’s the object model of the document that is complex. But why? Well, when Word was originally conceived and written, computers didn’t have anywhere near as much RAM as today. The typical (“naïve”) approach is to simply load a document into RAM. And that works fine for small documents. Ok, so what about big ones that are too big to fit in RAM? For unformatted text, you just page in the segment you’re working on and leave the rest on disk. But then there’s formatting. Tag-based formatting (like RTF or HTML) suddenly becomes a big problem, because to know the formatting of any given character, you have to parse all of the document that comes before it, because a formatting tag opened on page 1 could still be open and affecting page 183. This means you functionally cannot just page in segments of the document, you have to read it all, which again becomes impossible on highly RAM-constrained systems. Additionally, tag-based formatting means that making changes anywhere in a file on disk requires rewriting every single bit starting from the changed one, which was a big deal back when we were using slow hard drives (if you were lucky) and even slower floppy disks (if you weren't).This is where the genius in Word’s approach comes in: itcompletelydecouples formatting from the text, and completely decouples the order of text in the file from its order in the document! In essence, it’s a little file system, and every span of text is stored as an object, and that object in turn is assigned one, and only one, style. As such, text in Word cannot have no style assigned, which is why everything starts with the “Normal” style. Similarly, even an empty document has to have a style, so that it can format the insertion point.Let me illustrate using pseudo-HTML for nesting.Suppose you have this sentence:This is some really important text.The document object model will conceptually already be something like this:QuoteIn the file on disk, this might look like this:QuoteSo far, so good. The chunk of text is in one place, the formatting in another, and the “glue” in another.Suppose you now make the word “really” bold:This is somereallyimportant text.Now the behind the scenes starts to get interesting.Remember how I said that a span of text must have one, and only one, style assigned to it? So how does it format just a part ofan existing span? By breaking it up, of course! So conceptually you end up with this:QuoteSee how it broke up the text into three spans with new IDs, created another style (namely, a style based on another style, so just adding the changes in formatting), and then assigned the bolded word that new style?Now it's in a format where the program can determine the formatting of any word, on any page, without needing to know the formatting of the text that preceded it.Remember how I said that back then, disk access was slow? Rewriting a long document from scratch could have taken a LONG time. So Word used something they called "fast save", and this is what it would have done to the file:QuoteNote that the only part of the file that was actually overwritten is the original table of contents;every other change has been accomplished by appending onto the end of the file,which is massively faster than rewriting the whole thing. The downside was that files grew ever larger, took slightly longer to open since they're fragmented, and as many a politician and businessperson learned the hard way, it contains a record of deleted text! (This is why people would sometimes do a "save as" on a document to save it to a fresh, efficient file. And you could disable Fast Save altogether, if you didn't mind the speed penalty.)So imagine a final edit, where we insert another sentence before the first, and swap out the bolded word:Writing is fun. This is someinsanelyimportant text.Can you guess what the file will look like after another fast save?QuoteSeems crazy. But it solved amajorproblem at the time, allowing machines with just a few hundred KB of RAM and slow disks to efficiently editformatteddocuments far larger than the available resources, something other early word processors could not do. Would we design it that way now? Of course not. Today, for the purposes of word processing, we have essentially unlimited RAM and instant disk access. So we wouldn't mess with Fast Save. (And indeed, Microsoft disabled the Fast Save option years ago to close that security gap.) The decoupling of text from formatting does, however, still have some advantages.(And this is a simplified, incomplete, absolutely wrong-in-the-details account from memory. I don't remember how they dealt with pagination, and there are actually more types of styles than just paragraph styles, but for the sake of illustration, it's close enough!)

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2020, 11:16:38 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on May 11, 2020, 06:18:49 pmThanks again, that was also really interesting!There are lots of amazing, optimisation techniques, developed over the years. Thanks for explaining, that particular one! I enjoyed reading it.It's sad, but some of the great optimisations in the past, are gradually being lost to time. As people retire, things get forgotten etc. There were lots of rather clever techniques developed, over the years (a long time ago). To allow huge amounts of data to be stored on reels of tape. They had clever ways of sorting huge files, with multiple passes of the tape, which overcame the (relatively) extremely small ram (probably core memory, actually), and coping with a rather slow processor, by today's standards.The amazingly fast speed, the tape could be played/written to, with the reels, spinning round at crazy, breakneck speeds, and using these amazingly complicated mechanisms, to cope, without breaking or damaging, the somewhat delicate tape, with (probably) very valuable data on it.These days, you would probably use lots of microcontrollers, and modern sensors, to do it. yet, it was all done with none of that, just plain mechanical and transistorised circuitry (depending on the generation of the mainframe computer, it could be all valves/tubes, or even all relays).By coincidence, I've recently been playing about and investigating early PCs, and their software. Specifically targeting, the first/original one, i.e. an IBM 4.77MHz Intel 8088, 8 bit (external), 16 bit internal (not everyone agrees, some consider it an 8 bit, because of only having an external, 8 bits).I was writing some (rather small, for fun), assembly code, to see how fast it runs.Emulation only. Because I don't have an 8088 PC as such, and they generally cost a small fortune on ebay.Occasionally, an affordable 8088 PC, does pop up. So, I will have to see.8088 based motherboards, can be affordably purchased, and because they are more recent (the ones I was looking at), they are less work in theory), to keep running.There are so many amazing things about those 8088's. As slow as one might think/expect them to be, there were a number of partly extreme, optimisation techniques, to get the best horse power, out of them.As well as writing the code in 8088 assembly, they took great care into which register they used, along with which instructions they would be using.Because, a number of such combinations, are coding into only 8 bits (a sort of tiny, 8 bit thumb (arm thumb is bigger than 8 bits, anyway) like mode, always active).So, by clever choice of what register and instruction combinations are used/needed, for the entire section of code. Most/all of the instructions can then be 8 bits in size. This gave a considerable/significant speed improvement.As the 8088 had no program or data cache as such.But it did have a 6 byte, pre-fetch buffer. This was significantly less effective on the 8088, as it was so much slower (especially bus wise, as it was only 8 bits wide, rather than the much faster 8086, which was 16 bits, external bus, which could make good use of the 6 byte pre-fetch).What has partly blown my mind (and I don't properly understand it), is a method, of creating a genuine (simple), extra second processor, and using it. On a standard 8088 IBM PC (I assume it applies to clones as well).It re-purposed, the Dynamic Ram Refresh controller, and arranged it so that it was acting as a kind of (DMA like), simple second processor. Allowing, significance, increases, in speed, in some use cases.Possibly, by messing with a Motorola 6845 display/graphics controller chip, which is somewhat reprogrammable, to change its functionality. The PCjr had one (apparently), I'm not sure if the original 8088 had it as well, I would have to research it.Three part article, starts here:https://trixter.oldskool.org/2013/01/10/optimizing-for-the-8088-and-8086-cpu-part-1/

author: M0HZH
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2020, 07:49:36 am
content: Quote from: richard.cs on May 09, 2020, 01:08:44 pmQuote from: AndyC_772 on May 09, 2020, 01:48:23 pmDigital radio is prevalent in the UK with a 58% share at the end of 2019 (source) and virtually all new cars sold in the UK have a DAB receiver (source).As most radio listening is done in the car, DAB radios are quite superior in terms of sound quality for the sole purpose that they don't fade / interfere; FM is only better at maximum strength signal and is extremely bad at mediocre levels. The chart below explains it quite well, even if it refers to a different (quite inferior) digital mode.

author: Fred27
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2020, 08:02:12 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on May 11, 2020, 10:33:55 amWhat does anyone even reply to this obvious troll?

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2020, 09:12:16 am
content: Quote from: M0HZH on May 12, 2020, 07:49:36 amI have a DAB receiver in my car, but I rarely use it. Normally I play music from USB, or stream from my phone using 4G.The source you've linked says 58%digital, which includes DTV, online and apps. I am admittedly surprised to see DAB accounting for 70% of that, so 41% of listening overall. Maybe it's OK just to have on in the background in the car, where it's competing against engine and road noise anyway, and the terrible bit rate doesn't matter.I can't see any way in which that figure is likely to do anything but shrink in future, though. Improved 4G and 5G coverage is going to make streaming all the more popular, offering better quality, a far wider choice of stations, and no need for anyone to buy a separate radio receiverat all.If every car already comes with DAB, and people can stream any station they like using the phone or laptop they already have, who exactly is going to go out and buy a DAB radio today? Where's the compelling use case? Why would anyone consider investing in DAB now?

author: richard.cs
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2020, 09:16:07 am
content: Quote from: M0HZH on May 12, 2020, 07:49:36 amCareful there - that source gives you minimal information about DAB specifically. It defines "digital" as all digital radio services including internet streaming.QuoteThe same survey actually showed AM/FM at 49.1% and DAB at 36.8% of all radio listening (remainder other digital streams). That puts the Analogue:DAB ratio at 57%:43%. Still higher than I would have expected from my personal experience in the UK.https://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/2018_03/RAJAR%20Q1%202018%20-%20Chart%201%20-%20All%20Radio%20Listening%20-%20Clean.pdfGenerally, there seem to be a lot of UK articles conflating "all digital radio services" with DAB, when DAB is only about 70% of digital listening. I think it's probably deliberate given the UK government plan of setting a switchover date once 50% is met.Side note, whilst looking for numbers I stumbled across this (now rather dated) document:https://www.parliament.uk/documents/documents/upload/stevegreen.pdfIt's an interesting read. The issue of cars is declining, but the fundamental problem of having adopted DAB rather than DAB+ has not changed. Worth noting that new DAB radios sold in the UK since 2013 have been required to support DAB+ - maybe someone, somewhere is thinking long term for once. I suspect the wider issue is that there's an increasing number of people who simply don't listen to radioat all, and that many of the people who might favour DAB for the variety just use online streaming instead.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2020, 09:44:57 am
content: Quote from: Fred27 on May 12, 2020, 08:02:12 amI wouldn't class him as a troll per se - although he does display some of the characteristics inhttps://www.eps.mcgill.ca/jargon/jargon.html#trollHe appears to be more of a fanatic, in the sense of somebody that can't change their mind and won't change the subject.Both can be irritating. Ignoring them is a useful response, but it is occasionally alerting newbies to their previous posting history.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2020, 10:00:12 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on May 12, 2020, 09:44:57 amAre they ever going to come back to this thread, and reply/update it ?Or are they trolling us, and/or not telling the truth ?I'm getting fed up of their antics. Thanking some posts, does not really count as replying.tl;drTheir lack of posts after the opening one, despite many on-topic replies (many off-topic as well, e.g. me), means they are probably wasting everyone's time again.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2020, 02:56:33 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on May 12, 2020, 09:12:16 amHuh? People have invested in DAB if they bought a recent car. The sales problem with stand alone radio sales is not whether they are FM or DAB, but that people don't need them at all. People walk around the house with their phones, and can use things like the BBC sounds app. from their house wi-fi. Its becoming like this with TV, too. We bought a new TV a few months ago, and placed it where we do not have a TV aerial socket. Watching TV from the internet has served us well enough so far, that I can't see me even bothering to add an aerial socket when we decorate the room.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2020, 05:41:40 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on May 12, 2020, 10:00:12 amAnd nobody gets "thanked" either... disappointing.