RIP DAB?

According to this story on The Register, Germany will end Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) next year. Digital terrestrial radio is currently available via different standards: HD Radio in the United States, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) in Europe, Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), a digitized European AM standard, and Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) in South Korea.

Some interesting quotes:

Part of the problem is that analogue FM never went away and most people didn't seem to care for the clear digital-quality sound, and were left nonplussed by such benefits as easy tuning and message displays with song names and titles.

Hmmm, where did we hear this one before? SACD and DVD-Audio anyone? And when is good, good enough? Contrary to popular belief, DAB can sound worse than a good analogue FM signal. Depending on the available spectrum, some broadcasters use low bit rate transmissions that sound like low grade MP3's with all the dynamics gone.

DAB is struggling almost everywhere in Europe. The standard never really succeeded in Europe except in Denmark and the UK, where this year the upgraded DAB+ format will be launched (including podcast services).

Experts believe Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) and DVB-T have surpassed DAB technically.

Maybe Internet streaming and narrowcasting substituted the broadcasting of DAB? Why sticking to OTA (Over The Air) when your wire line home broadband can get you the same stuff? Digital Media Adapters (DMA) provide you with a lot more additional features than a DAB radio, often at a cheaper price. And if you just want plain vanilla music, FM is still around. Will analogue radio go the same way as analogue broadcast TV? Will regulators revive DAB by forcing analogue out of the air? Or was DAB the solution to a problem that did not exist?

Interesting fact DAB+ is not backwards-compatible and ordinary DAB receivers cannot receive DAB+ broadcasts. So those in UK and Denmark will have to buy new receivers if they want to benefit from the new and more efficient codec.

UPDATE 25th of February 2008: I bumped into this article on madcomments.co.uk. Apparently there are some issues in the UK as well. Interesting quote from the article:

... internet radio accounts for just fewer than two per cent of all radio listening at the moment.