Grundig Digital Radio User Manual download pdf (Page 87)

DIGITAL RADIO GUIDE INTERNET RADIO

Virgin Radio has been available on the net for nearly a decade. In 1996, Virgin was the

first station in Europe to broadcast 24 hours online, initially using Real Player. Nowadays,

Virgin has four radio stations, which are available online in a variety of different formats

and speeds. Virgin stations are currently available in the following formats:

• Windows Media 20 kbps mono

• Windows Media 64 kbps stereo

• Real SureStream 8 kbps - 32 kbps mono

• Streaming MP3 32 kbps mono

• Streaming MP3 128 kbps stereo

• Ogg Vorbis ~20 kbps mono

• Ogg Vorbis ~160 kbps stereo

In addition, Virgin Radio is available in Real AAC 128 kbps stereo, and QuickTime 64

kbps stereo.

Virgin concentrates on UK listeners - who are the majority of those that listen online - and

is fully licensed for broadcasting to the UK over the Internet. This is covered by Virgin's

music licensing fees, which cost over £1.2 million a year.

6.10.3 Swedish Radio multichannel audio distribution

In addition to some 15 Internet Radio channels which are regularly broadcast from

www.sr.se, Swedish Radio has since midsummer 2001 been distributing multichannel

audio files via their web-site on-demand. The audio content is coded in 5.1 DTS (Digital

Theater System) format. The SR website posts nearly 40 audio-only clips of

downloadable multichannel material, ranging from about one minute duration to shows of

over one hour. There has been a huge interest for downloading these audio programmes

worldwide: to date more than 4 million successful downloads have been made. Users can

play these files directly from the hard drive or from a CD and reproduce them via a

surround sound loudspeaker system. The cost incurred for broadcasters is very minor.

6.11 Summary and Conclusions

Conventional radio broadcasting on AM and FM has been around for about a century.

New digital broadcasting technologies such as DAB, XM radio, DRM and others are

becoming very popular in many parts of the world. Traditional on-air radio has many

strengths and is still a vibrant medium. It is likely that it will remain the principal delivery

mechanism of radio content for quite some time.

Internet opened a new possibility for radio enthusiasts. During the last ten years or so

Internet Radio has been a major focus of technical innovations and operational

experiments. Now Internet Radio has become a mature medium with its distinctive

characteristics. There are many tens of thousands of Internet Radio stations worldwide,

ranging from big portals down to small local and individual streaming stations.

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Grundig Digital Radio User Manual Page 87