DAB Radios

[mancmo]

m thinking of getting one of these at xmas and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice.

There is a radio station in Southern Ireland that I love listening to when Im over there (I currently live in England) would I be able to pick up this channel on a DAB or do you have to download it from the internet? if the latter.. how do you do it?!!!

Hope someone can help
Thanks x

[spudqueen]

If you go on this website
http://www.ukdigitalradio.com/

and put in your postcode it will tell you which stations you are likely to receive.

Regarding the station in Southern Ireland, why don't you 'google' it and see if you can listen on line?

[mancmo]

Thank you for that, thats really helpful, but would want the radio in the kitchen only, comp upstairs which isnt handy!

[spudqueen]

How do you listen to the station in Southern Ireland at the moment? Is it on FM? If so why don't you buy a DAB radio like this one
http://www.johnlewis.com/230503768/Product.asp x
which has DAB and FM.

[Buenchico]

DAB radios only receive stations from your local digital transmitter. The radio stations have to pay to have their programmes included in the local line-up. A commercial radio station in Ireland won't carry advertising targeted at your area, so it's highly unlikely that it would be available on your local transmitter. (Even RTE would find no commercial advantage from broadcasting on transmitters in the UK).

VHF ('FM') signals only carry over a very short distance, so buying a combined DAB/FM radio won't help.

The only way that you'll be able to listen to your favourite station is over the internet. When internet broadcasting first started, most stations used the 'Real Media' format, which meant that you needed to install Real Player to listen to them. Some stations still use this format but most stations now use a format which uses Windows Media Player (which comes with Windows). You simply click on the relevant link and Windows Media Player should open and load the stream from the required station.

The links for all stations in the Republic of Ireland can be found here:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/data_prote ction.aspx
(See the foot of the page to check whether the station requires Real Player or Windows Media Player).

If you'd rather not listen to the radio station through your computer, you can buy special radios which connect to the internet. Simply search for 'internet radio' on sites like Amazon.

Chris