BBC & DW Joint Test Transmission

[Digger]

BBC & DW Test 9545 SKN

These are my logs for the 27th November. I used one antenna and two receivers, one connected to the office's PC and one to a laptop.

The last hour from Skelton ended in a total loss of the signal on both receivers.

[Digger]

BBC & DW Test 3995 SKN

These are my logs for the 27th November. I used one antenna and two receivers, one connected to the office's PC and one to a laptop.

Perfect propagation. It looks like a TX break around 18 UTC, but according to the schedule, all came from Skelton.

[simone]

Some comments concerning audio etc.

On HF transmissions audio sounded really good despite audio bandwidth was a bit lower than on the regular BBC WS transmissions.
(Also sounded better than on DW transmissions where there are lots of artefacts, donīt know if that was also part of your question).
On MF audio was not good as usual yesterday after your changes, until 1730 audio bandwidth was reduced, using only 11.5 kHz like on HF, seems that was corrected then. In general audio quality on BBC WS has improved a lot lately, I thought it was always strange that audio from the studio (i.e. the news)was a lot worse than reports from far remote places! The only annoying thing that is still there is the crackle during the time signal.
Compared to other transmissions and broadcasters, for me 1296 kHz is one of the most reliable transmissions in the early morning and at night, also audio with music sounds great, maybe only WDR is slightly better.
Concerning the parametric stereo, I would not use it below 21 kbps and on this service as long as there is mostly speech there is no need for to use stereo.
Great configuration with mode A 16QAM which worked well on the HF transmissions. It would be nice to have again an additional dataservice (BWS or Jouranline etc.) on the new service.
Simone

[Julian]

Did anyone decode the EPG data? Unfortunatly, I did not get any program information using DREAM 1.10.6cvs.

Sorry - we didn't manage to get EPG files into the system. We have fixed this problem now.

Julian

[Julian]

Thanks for your great work monitoring these test transmissions, we will be looking your posts and our own monitoring results to optimise the frequency plan before launching the service.

Julian

[kc2eni]

Hello. I'm an editor at the BBC and am working with Julian and colleagues on the new BBC & DW channel.

I would be very keen to hear comments, however subjective, about the sound quality, especially in comparison with other DRM services you may receive.

For my money I'd like to see an increase of the audio bandwidth. Perhaps you could ditch the P-Stereo in favour of a single wider audio channel instead of 2 skinnier ones.

Program content could also be improved. If the test was indicative of the programming content it is very one sided in favour of DW. Even then they chose to offer the same program repeatedly on all the HF outputs I could hear.

Perhaps an alternating of BBC/DW would be better? Here in the US we can hear Wooferton and Sines very well as probably does the rest of Europe. It's quite possible that listeners would follow any frequency change and therefore would like to hear some variety.

Other than that it was OK.

Mark

[simone]

If the test was indicative of the programming content it is very one sided in favour of DW.
Mark

Hi Mark,
I think there were a few changes to the schedule after Julianīs post, so there were more hours from BBC WS, especially 1800- 2300 UTC was not solely DW .
Simone

[pb1]

Most importantly, they broadcasted Newshour at 22 CET.

[Steve Martin]

Editorial schedule for BBC & DW channel

The launch schedule will be, in UTC:

BBC: 0500-0700
DW: 0700-1400
BBC: 1400-1800
DW: 1800-2100
BBC: 2100-2300

You'll get virtually all the main BBC programmes, including our daily science, documentaries and arts shows, Premier League football at the weekends, The World Today at 0600, Europe Today at 1700, Business Daily at 2230 and our flasgship Newshour programme at 1400 and 2100.

Your feedback on this offer would be very welcome of course. The people working on this project (all seven of us) read this forum.

Steve.

[pb1]

Just received the invitation to the launch at Bush House

Dear Sir,
We would be very happy if you could join us on December 10th for the launch of this new joint initiative which should give our European listeners another way of accessing excellent programming from two major international broadcasters.

Yours sincerely,

Fanny Podworny
Communications & PR Assistant
Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM)

[Brendan1]

Question for Steve Martin & Co.

Hi BBC/DW folks!

Any chance of such a service for the Americas? TDF has a great DRM equipped facility in Guyane at Montsinery that covers the hemisphere extraordinarily well, and they'd probably love to sell you some air-time! In past special event broadcasts they reached most of North America easily with both 17 and 15 MHz frequencies, often with near perfect reception. We're starving for DRM broadcasts out here.

Just an idea...and thanks for reading!