17 Mar Southern Africa Development Corporation Member Countries to Experience DRM Digital Radio Quality
The DRM Consortium was invited to the 11th SADC (Southern African Development Community) DTT forum in Maseru, Lesotho and was part of the Digital Sound Broadcasting workshop. DRM held a comprehensive full-day workshop on March 16th about the full DRM technical capabilities and flexibility, its features and overall benefits for both broadcasters and their listeners.
Radio specialists from Fraunhofer, DRM Project Office and South African companies like Radio Pulpit, Kofifi Radio, Broadcom International and network operator Sentech made high quality presentations received with great interest by the representatives of the fifteen countries that make up the Southern African Development Community. The event was very interactive with many pertinent questions about the DRM standard capabilities in both AM and VHF, that is the FM band and band III, which broadcasters can use to satisfy their own transmission and coverage needs delivering substantial energy savings.
The highlight of the workshop was the live transmissions facilitated by another Consortium member, Babcock International, of a BBC programme via the transmitter on the Ascension Island, some 5,000 kilometres away from the kingdom of Lesotho. The broadcast was carried to fit with the Maseru workshop to demonstrate the sound quality over very large areas and it was accompanied by text.
During the workshop the participants found out about the latest developments of DRM in cars either as line-fit receivers (as seen in India) or as DRM+ software update (recently announced).
This is the third SADC event in 9 months attended by the DRM Consortium and several countries in Africa are already broadcasting or are interested in deploying DRM.
Radu Obreja, DRM Marketing Director