Re:Norway to switch off FM in 2017
by rootsofallevil on Sunday April 19, 2015 @10:57AM
(#9403366)
I remember a few years back being dismayed when I plugged my brand new DAB radio into my Kill-A-Watt and rather than register nothing like the FM radio that it was substituting, it was showing ~ 4 W, going up to ~ 6 W when playing.
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Not enough is being said about this, there are still no really energy efficient receivers and on a per-station basis DAB is also a lot more expensive to transmit. DAB only becomes energy efficient at the transmitter end because it's always transmitting a multiplex of many stations.
A few years ago I bought a battery-powered DAB radio so I can listen to Radio 4 in the bath. It will zip through a set of high capacity AA NiMH cells in around 2-3 weeks, the old FM radio used such a small amount of power that Alkaline cells made more sense and would consume around two sets per year.