ManyMedia

Intel has developed chips that act as integrated frequency synthesizers:

Intel has unveiled a chip designed to meet the demands of future radio sets by switching between different networks and frequencies based on availability or local government regulations.

The chip maker showed off the 90nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) silicon transceiver with an integrated frequency synthesizer last week.

Intel’s new chip features a 10GHz radio, with the synthesizer enabling it to tune down to lower frequencies in 30KHz steps.

‘They tune and tweak themselves,’ explained Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, director of Intel’s communications circuits lab.

On a related note, Sanyo has developed a tiny FM tuner. This article is in Japanese, and reports the tuner chip (at 5mm wide) is about half the size of current tuners and requires no other parts to operate.

Devices, Network chip, filter, FM, frequency synthesizer, radio, spectrum, tuner

Pirate radio takes on a new meaning. Now with a couple of tools (iPod mini, iTrip mini) you can broadcast radio signals from your car. Or office. Or home. Or… Engadget reports:

We thought we might be able to make the range of Griffin’s iTrip mini a little better if took it apart and exposed the antenna, turns out we could. And then we thought, hey- we could use a couple iPods to broadcast something we wanted to get out there, perhaps not “should” that is, but could. So that was our motivation, and here’s the How-To. …

Getting Started

First, to become your own pirate broadcast station you’ll need to increase the range and signal of your iTrip mini. Turns out, there is an antennae built inside the iTrip mini. All you need to do is remove the top sticker-like protection which hides the antennae and then using tweezers or your fingernail, pull the antennae out. We’ve found a 20% to 30% increase of range on average. This likely voids the warranty, so there, we said it.

The signal is reported to travel about 150 feet. Not enough to challenge radio stations (especially in light of the fact that the signal can be mobile), but enough to share your tunes with the person next to you.

Devices, Network broadcast, Griffin, how-to, iPod, pirate radio, radio, sharing

BoingBoing points to this fascinating exchange (two PDF files in zip file at this link) in which the RIAA and CEA explain their points of view. For example, the CEA said,

You state that you do not wish to limit the ability of consumers
to record over-the-air radio broadcasts. Instead, you apparently want to
force them to buy what they have received for free since Fleming and Marconi
first made it possible for consumers to hear news and music over the public
airwaves. As you know, we have long been concerned about content owners
seeking to change the ‘play’ button on our devices to a ‘pay’ button.

The gloves are off. Let the battle begin.

Content, Policy broadcast, CEA, Consumer Electronics Association, pay-for-play, radio, RIAA

How much media is too much? Will our attention become oversaturated and dependent on media for our “environment,” or will people become outraged and backlash? TiVo is a backlash of a sort: filtering the media, but it allowed in more TV programming. With radio, TV, Internet, public ads, and more, how will we find our own thoughts?

It’s projected that by 2007 the average American will spend 3,874 hours per year with the major consumer media, according to ‘Investment Considerations for the Communications Industry,’ a report released last week by investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson. That would mark an increase of 792 hours per year, or 21 percent, from the 3,082 hours per year that the average person spent using consumer media in 1977, the year that VSS first began tracking such behavior.

Content advertising, Internet, media, overload, radio, TV

The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has published transcripts from their January 30th Ownership in Radio Industry Hearing. The panel represents diverse views (page has links to testimony by participants) and is worth a look. Among the positions, Lowry Mays, Chairman and CEO of Clear Channel, says:

…some say that deregulation has gone too far. They say the industry is too consolidated. And they contend that Clear Channel, as the nation’s largest operator, has too much market power. Let’s stop for a moment and put the numbers in perspective. Let’s generate some light to accompany the heat.

Radio is by far the least consolidated segment of the media and entertainment industry. The ten largest radio operators account for only 48 percent of the industry’s advertising revenues. Compare that to the recording industry, where the top five record companies control 84 percent of all album sales.

It’s also interesting to note that in cable television, the ten largest companies account for 89 percent of the revenues. For movie studios it’s a whopping 99 percent.

And, though the number sounds large, Clear Channel’s 1,200 radio stations represent only 9 percent of all the stations in the country. That means that over 90 percent of the nation’s radio stations are owned by companies other than Clear Channel.

Some telling facts about broadcast and content control overall. (Clear Channel also controls a significant number of highway billboards as well.) But what are the effects of this radio consolidation? Don Henley, representing the Recording Artists Coalition (testimony includes list of coalition members), bemoans the cost of exposure for new or non-standard artists:

But slowly the radio world, and along with it the music industry, changed. As local and independent radio stations were purchased by larger corporations, radio playlists started to contract and become much more uniform. In an effort to gain more control over the music industry, radio conglomerates started to narrow playlists and centralize the radio programming function that had traditionally been done independently by each individual station. Radio consolidation made it increasingly more difficult for an artist to get radio airplay. Radio network programmers became more powerful and demanding. And not only did they erode the vitality of American music, they placed themselves in a singularly powerful position to extract additional concessions from the labels and the artists.

Content, Policy cable, Clear Channel, consolildation, deregulation, market, playlists, radio, senate

The Daily Texan’s story, “FCC forces pirate radio station off air,” describes the closing of a small, pirate radio station:

“Pirate radio’s amazing,” Smith said. “It’s vital that it exists because FCC regulations are biased against small-scheme radio stations. The very founding purpose of micro radio is to diversify in whatever way possible, and KAOS did that.”

Pirate radio exists more often than not for a communal purpose, Smith said. KAOS radio started out to serve a community of hard-core punk kids. Unfortunately, he said, these communities are not recognized by the FCC as deserving of a communal radio station. And without an FCC license, radio stations are forbidden to broadcast over a large radius.

“For a station that had such a small radius, [KAOS] was really well-known,” Smith said. “That dooms any pirate radio station.”

Jason Kane, regional vice president of programming for Clear Channel Communications, agreed FCC regulations have created an environment where large companies like Clear Channel, which owns six Austin radio stations and more than 900 stations nationwide, can be formed. However, he said he sees the situation as a positive one.

“Consolidation has actually created more diversity because we are called on to give each of our radio stations a unique identity,” Kane said.

mm-hmmm…

FCC regulations and its licensing process are essential to keep airwaves organized, Kane said.

“Fundamentally, any society that is going to organize electronic media in some way needs an arbitrating body,” Kane said. “If the FCC is not vigorous in cutting down pirate radios in today’s environment, we will have anarchy.”

Apparently this is very scary stuff, especially to the (are there only two yet?) largest media conglomerates.

Network, Policy FCC, pirate radio, radio

CommsDesign (for comms design engineers, of which I am not one) has an article, “Intel tips plans for reconfigurable radio architecture,” which describes Intel’s work on a software-based radio:

Intel conceives the architecture as a solution to the problem of highly mobile digital appliances that must move not only from cell to cell, but from protocol to protocol and band to band in order to maintain connectivity. In operation, the proposed Intel device would continually query its environment to determine what services were available. It would then switch on the appropriate antenna and analog front-end combination to connect to the service, and configure out of the processor array an appropriate PHY/MAC layer implementation for that standard. This process would be transparent to the user, except for permission and billing issues.

Uh, folks, that last part is kind of important…

Software defined radio (SDR) is a pretty cool idea. It allows your radio to, say, display the title of the song playing or the name of the person speaking. It allows you to upgrade your radio when new facilities or capabilities become available. The nature of SDR is it’s software and hardware technologies. This FAQ will tell you a little more.

Network hardware, Intel, radio, SDR, software