Portable Digital Radio – Quick and Easy Info

Everyone has been there, sitting listening to the radio, walking or driving and ‘BZZZ’ interference, dropping out and hissing spoils your favourite song or the news and weather. Well you can kiss that all goodbye, portable digital radio is here and it’s here to stay!

Who doesn’t want their news and radio tunes in near CD quality? Okay we’re in the age of the iPod and other media devices allowing us to take our music with us everywhere, excessive amounts of music, 30 Gb, 120 Gb? People are filling their devices with amounts of music that are akin to the libraries at radio stations hundreds of thousands of songs but in all honesty you can only listen to one at a time, unless you have more than one set of ears and a few brains to match. Most of these devices are quite expensive and if lost, damaged or stolen you’re stuffed.

So we’re all familiar with digital television I take it? Digital radio is a similar thing, a pure digital signal that is then decoded when it reaches your special radio. Since this is a digital signal, yes you guessed it, data can also be sent out and if you have a higher range radio you possibly could receive song titles and even album art if the broadcaster is sending it! Some of the higher end radios have LCD screens to show this data, maybe it’ll scroll through the weather or news headlines on a talkback station. The ability to rewind up to 10 or 15 minutes is becoming possible with the DAB+ standards that set the international standard for broadcasters.

Portable Digital Radios

Many of the digital radios on the market today are portable to some extent and if you are a radio buff you’ll be in all your glory walking around listening to CD quality reception. You will need a new radio to receive the digital signal as the radio actually decodes the digital signal for you to be able to hear it and also since it contains other information.

Digital radio is still fairly new technology and not therefore still doesn't have the coverage of old school analogue but the quality is pretty amazing, and with the extras like song titles and album art that some radios can display I'm sure that we're seeing radio become 'cool' again.

I'm sure many countries have implemented websites where you can check your reception and if the service is available to you in your area but if it you can’t receive the service yet hang tight since it is expanding at an ever so fast rate.