Saturday, October 08, 2005

DAB Digital Radio

Today I invested in a new DAB Digital Radio, the sound quality is awesome, however I do not get the range of stations that you can supposedly get on Digital, for example, I cannot receive Wave 105.2 FM, or any other of my local radio, such as Ocean FM, or Radio Solent. It's great to be able to get the new BBC stations, such as 1xtra and 6 music, and I must say that PrimeTime and Core have some great tunes on their stations.

It would be good if I could receive my local stations as well as the national ones! I guess that the Midhurst transmitter is not yet fully DAB enabled, or the same excuse they used to say I couldn't receive Channel 5 on my TV is used, that more radio stations interferes with French broadcasts. Come on Ofcom / Government give us radio listeners a better choice, not just national stations, but local ones, especially if Digital Radio, like Digital TV is to become the only way to hear the Radio!

One of the features I really love is the fact that not only can I get the station name on screen, I can also get information such as the artist currently playing, or the latest news etc, which makes all the difference, as I often have times when I think, I know this song, what is the title or the artist!

Another useful feature of this radio is an alarm clock - you can have up to 4 alarms, and they can be set as every weekday, weekends, every day and once only. The strange thing is that when you want to set it as a once only alarm, not only do you give it the time, but you also have to give it the date as well! There is no need to set the clock as that is done automatically via the radio system, very useful for when you have power cuts, or the clocks go backward or forward etc.

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