Digital technologies

DAB
The government wants digital switchover to take place in 2015, but a variety of people are not pleased with this plan. This is because of the costs of replacing the FM radios, people may not want to buy new radios. Also older cars won't be able to get this.

 DAB is a digital radio technology for broadcasting radio stations, which is used in several countries. DAB Digital radio is a better way to listen to the radio, it brings new benefits. These benefits are an explosion in listening choice, Clearly digital sound quality, the end of confusing frequencies, brand new feactures and control of your listening. On DAB digital radio you can listen to national commerical stations, BBC national stations and a variety of local stations. There is a mixture of entertaiment and genre of music on these radio stations such as; classical music, rock, spoken word entertainment, latest chart hits, and a range of other stations which may suit your mood. DAB have less interfernece and a massive sound quality upgrade for AM stations. There will be more information about what you are listening to, the information includes the title and artist of the song, the news headlines, or the latest sports results. Some digital radios include the ability for you to pause and rewind live radios, others let you set a timer to record a specific programme at a specific time. They cover most major towns and hundreds of miles of motorways and major roads. Both Digital one and the BBC currently reach more than 8/10 people in Britain with their national transmitter networks, they're currently working on covering  more. They are only available  with the right equipment, so if you wanted DAB radio you would need to buy a radio that's able to decode digital radio signals.
There are also some disadantages of using DAB radio such as the reception quality on DAB can be poor, even for people who live within the area, this is because the old version of DAB uses weak error correction coding. Sometimes there can be a complete loss of signal. Also in the past broadcasters have been criticized for squeezing in more stations per ensemble than recommended.

DRM
Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) is a set of digital audio broadcasting technologies designed to work over the bands which are currently being used for AM broadcasting. DRM can fit more channels than AM.
The benefits of DRM are:

•  higher quality,
•  wider range,
•  audio content
•  cost efficient.

You don't need an internet connection to listen or a Wi-Fi spot to tune in. It is portable and mobile, you can take a DRM radio any where and listen to what you want, when you want, where you want. It's ideally suied to long range broadcastin, you can stay tuned to the same station as you cross regional and national boundaries and move from one country to the next. For example; If you have a job which you have to drive across Europe, you would be able to stay tuned to your favourite radio station from back home.

Some advantages of DRM are;

• Digital dropouts.
• Poor dead air conditions.
• Not many consumer devices available.