hello all,

listening to a radio station today and they said that you can upgrade your radio to digital.they say to check with your dealers or go to halfords.

has anybody done this yet or heard the advert?

errrrr.......nooooooo.

upgrade radio? from FM to DAB? is that a pig I see flying over my house?

PS: If it were possible that would be great......

I think what they probably mean is go to your dealer and let them install a new radio and relieve your bank balance of wads of cash......or use Halfords to do the same.

So, no thanks. I'll live with my Columbus & FM.

Somebody was pulling your plonker.

Sure it wasn't a repeated item from the 1st?

I suspect something like this little gadget might be involved.

http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60905

Somebody was pulling your plonker.

Sure it wasn't a repeated item from the 1st?

Not pulling anything! There are add on boxes which will "upgrade" your existing radio to receive DAB. Halfords offer these and a fitting service, problem, I believe, is you need a new aerial - either internal or external. AutoExpress had an article about this a couple of weeks ago.

Agreed, but the OP said "upgrade your radio to digital" not add an extra unit.

Two different things in my mind.

Agreed, but the OP said "upgrade your radio to digital" not add an extra unit. Two different things in my mind.

You know, advertising language can sometimes be too optimistic

Kind regards.

well you know i was not taking much notice to the ad at the time so just said what i thought i heard

Agreed, but the OP said "upgrade your radio to digital" not add an extra unit.

Two different things in my mind.

Captain Pedantic!

This debate will go on and on, its like going from imperial to metric and long wave to FM.

DAB is great if you are in the right area, but if your'e not the stream compression and low bitrate can make it sound crap.

No doubt some government bureaucrat in the future will decide to turn off FM, then we'll have to have digital radio or go back to crystall sets.

The switch off was set for 2015, but Ed Vazey the minister in charge is making hard astern noises of late- so it looks like your old steam driven FM radio will be OK for the foreseeable future. DAB is OK if you are in a good reception area==it also seems prone to signal loss by thick walls etc

There is nothing wrong with FM, if you remember when it was brought in [i do unfortunately] it was and is, a great step forward. CD quality is obtainable especially if you use an external aerial, if it aint broke why fix it?

Edited 5 April, 201214 yr by yetiscot

I use a DAB radio at work and it is generally great, even taking into account some of the in-built interferences we have in the box. At home it would be a complete and utter waste of time; even the BBC say that we are unlikely to ever get an adquate DAB service here!

I use a DAB radio at work and it is generally great, even taking into account some of the in-built interferences we have in the box. At home it would be a complete and utter waste of time; even the BBC say that we are unlikely to ever get an adquate DAB service here!

I've been a long time stuck in the naughty corner Graham.........

I used to use the Roberts Sports DAB when walking round the Lake District (and will do again I'm sure!) - great reception in almost all but the deepest valleys, has it's own speaker as well as an earphone socket and is as small as the little pocket tranny radios that used to be around in my days - I haven't really noticed too many problems while driving around with a DAB either in Cumbria - yes, there are dead spots but that's no different than mobile phones

DAB is great if you are in the right area, but if your'e not the stream compression and low bitrate can make it sound crap.

The degree of signal compression and bitrate of the transmission is fixed once the signal leaves the transmitter, it is not affected by reception conditions.

Being digital, DAB is either receivable or not. If you are in a location with marginal reception the receiver may "hunt" back and forth between receiving and not receiving, and reception can also drop in and out due to interference. In either case the result sounds like the kind of audio distortion you used to get on AM but is really the audio version of the pixellation that can affect digital TV in poor reception areas.

And, of course, some channels choose to broadcast at bandwidths which demand aggressive compression which does affect the audio quality. (I believe BBC Radio 3 is the only DAB channel which actually uses CD quality sample rates.) But that's got nothing to do with reception conditions.