França recusa DAB e avança para T-DMB

« (...)His comments come as France appears poised to adopt T-DMB technology for digital radio services, even though it was designed for mobile TV. It is an audacious move backed by the Groupement pour la Radio Numérique (Association for Digital Radio), a group of broadcasters whose members have more than 95 per cent of France's domestic audience.  GRN members have already started trial services in Paris, with a nationwide commercial launch planned for Christmas 2008. The French authorities will provide frequencies in the VHF (Band III) and Band L range.  The GRN is plumping for T-DMB, rather than DAB+, because its members believe that multimedia services will play an important part in the future of radio. Unless radio becomes interactive and adds pictures, they say, it will die a slow, but inevitable death. "Digital radio cannot only be digital sound - it needs to have the right functionalities to compete with other digital offerings," says Anichini. These include a screen, rich data, synchronization between data and sound and high audio quality. I am one of those who believe that radio’s unique advantage is that you can listen to it whilst doing other things. The challenge facing mobile TV, in contrast, is to convince consumers that it is not a “sit-back” medium. Nevertheless, the GRN perceives mobile TV as a real threat to the future of radio. For this reason, they argue that radio needs to be in DMB-equipped mobile phones. Samsung will provide the phones. However, Nokia, which prefers the rival DVB-H technology, is unlikely to follow suit. Instead, the Finnish giant is offering a free Internet Radio download for all Nokia phones running the Series 60 operating system. The service, which allows users to browse for radio programmes by genre, language, country, or name, will be installed on new phones. The fact that GRN broadcasters are demanding more bits for DMB services will further restrict competition. However, Nokia's Internet Radio could have a significant Long Tail effect by allowing small stations squeezed out by the GRN a real opportunity to reach new audiences. This leads us to the other question mark against the French strategy: is multimedia really the future of radio? Despite massive investment, commercial broadcasters in the UK have so far failed to launch any truly successful services. Multimedia is undoubtedly a sexy addition to radio, but can it really compete with the sophisticated services already available on the Internet? Many outside France, including foreign regulators and receiver manufacturers, have condemned the GRN’s controversial decision to adopt T-DMB for radio services. But perhaps the French are the ones who are seeing furthest into the future. If you build a network capable of transmitting DMB audio, it is easy to convert it to deliver DMB video. However, if you build a DAB+ network, there is no migration path to the brave new world of multimedia services. I suspect this is a question of culture, rather than technology. Different choices - T-DMB or DAB+ - may be appropriate in different countries.»

 fonte: «Re-thinking radio's digital future», Mike Mullane, 4/12/07

Mais: «Sachant que les expériences de RNT lancées en Espagne, en Italie et en Allemagne n'ont pas rencontré un franc succès public - la Grande-Bretagne a depuis longtemps adopté une autre norme que celle retenue par la France -, Christine Albanel n'a pas manqué de souligner, mercredi 5 décembre : "La France est l'un des premiers pays européens à se lancer, et je ne doute pas que nous ferons rapidement école." Ce qui pourrait participer à la "massification" de la radio numérique.»; Le numérique offrira des possibilités nouvelles à l'auditeur.
RETOUR EN ARRIÈRE :
permet d'écouter, depuis le début, une émission alors même qu'elle est en cours de diffusion.
PAUSE :
possibilité d'arrêter puis de reprendre l'écoute là où on l'avait laissée.
TÉLÉCHARGEMENT (OU PODCAST) :
permet d'enregistrer un programme et de l'écouter à n'importe quel moment.
SERVICES SUPPLÉMENTAIRES :compléments d'information (titres et interprètes, bibliographies, photos et vidéos, etc.), météo, horoscope, applications interactives...

MAIS:

«"Il est dommage que les pouvoirs publics, français et européens, n'accordent pas plus de place à la radio numérique terrestre (RNT) dans leurs discours", a regretté Jean-Paul Cluzel, président de Radio France, en ouverture du 10^e Forum international du son multi-canal qui s'est tenu, à Paris, les 25 et 26 octobre. "Dans quelques mois, la France assurera la présidence de l'Union européenne. C'est donc le bon moment pour dialoguer entre pays européens pour une Europe de la radio numérique", a-t-il ajouté. (...) Encore faut-il que les autorités françaises acceptent la norme actuellement utilisée en Angleterre (DAB +) en plus de celle que prônent les grands diffuseurs français (T-DMB). Les deux sont compatibles. La Commission européenne attend une réponse avant le 16 novembre. Viendra ensuite la bataille pour récupérer des fréquences dans un contexte de pénurie. Pas sûr en effet que les quelques 1 000 radios françaises trouvent leur place dans le nouveau paysage numérique. »

Mais: «According to Wikipedia: "DMB was developed in South Korea under the national IT project and the world's first official DMB broadcast started in South Korea in 2005, although trials were available much earlier." Trials are also being run in Germany, Italy, Norway, Indonesia and other places.
DMB and DAB+ are almost identical. However, the need to allow for images means DMB is about 35% less efficient than DAB+, reckons DRT. The French will therefore get fewer stations or a lower audio quality than they would have got with DAB+.
Steve Green, who runs Digital Radio Tech, reckons the only solution to the radio problem is to provide "over the air" (OTA) software updates so that radios can be upgraded to cope with whatever new systems are introduced. This type of approach works with Wi-Fi radios.»