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Sets the ex parte status of the C Spire Declaratory Ruling Petiton as permit-but-disclose, and sets comment deadlines. Does not change the restricted status of C Spire's good faith retransmission consent negotiation complaint.

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Leased access rule revisions are effective July 22, 2019, except those rules that require OMB approval. Comments on the Second FNPRM are due July 22, 2019. Reply Comments are due August 5, 2019.

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Platinum Tools debuted its new Waterproof RJ45 Coupler System at InfoComm 2019.

The couplers are intended for use in installs where Ethernet connections need protection due to exposure to water, dust, corrosion, harsh elements, and vibration. Accordingly, the Platinum Tools Waterproof RJ45 Coupler System is rated to IP67 to meet those harsh environmental conditions commonly found at broadcast, emergency and wireless communications, outdoor entertainment venues, industrial manufacturing and other sites.

[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]

The new system is shock and vibration resistant, and is intended for UTP and STP applications. Compatible with Cat-5e and Cat-6 use, the connector uses a screw mating system to ensure a secure connection, and it is RoHS compliant.

The new Waterproof RJ45 Coupler System is now available.

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The post Platinum Tools Debuts Waterproof RJ45 Coupler appeared first on Radio World.

WorldDAB has launched the WorldDAB Excellence in Automotive Award.

WorldDAB Automotive Group Chairman, Laurence Harrison, announced the new award at the WorldDAB Automotive 2019 conference in Turin, Italy.

According to the organization, the award “recognizes outstanding work carried out on the development, innovation and promotion of digital radio within the automotive industry.” It honors significant contributions of individuals, groups or teams working toward optimizing the experience of digital radio in the car, and has particular focus on the “recognition of technical expertise and project collaboration.”

The judging panel consists of a small group from the senior team at WorldDAB, chaired by the WorldDAB president. Areas of consideration include:

• Impact — individual contribution to a product, service or technical development which has helped or improved the current use and/or state of digital radio;
• Personal — leadership, expertise, championing, commitment and success;
• Collaboration – collaborative effort and engagement with the wider industry.

[Read: WorldDAB Automotive 2019 Studies DAB+ in the Dash]

WorldDAB will announce the first winner at the WorldDAB Automotive event in June 2020. The call for nominations for is now open and has a submission deadline of April 1, 2020.

To nominate yourself or a colleague, send the following information to projectoffice@worlddab.org:

• Name, title, company, email, mobile number of nominator
• Name, title, company, email, mobile number of nominee
• 300 words describing the reasons behind the nomination — including projects the nominees have worked on, specific examples of excellence and any other information that is relevant to the nomination

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The post WorldDAB Introduces Excellence in Automotive Award appeared first on Radio World.

GatesAir has won a contract with NOVA Entertainment in Australia to upgrade six FM radio transmission sites on the continent.

The GatesAir Flexiva FAX FM transmitter.

As per the agreement, the company will supply 16 Flexiva FAX air-cooled FM transmitters with in-country partner RaeAir conducting all site evaluations, installation, commissioning and post-sales services.

Specifically, GatesAir will deliver 12 10-kW and four 20-kW models with redundant transmitter configurations and integrated IP-based control and monitoring across the network.

NOVA Entertainment moved into the FM domain in 2001 when it established Nova 96.9 in Sydney. The media house subsequently launched stations in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

GatesAir explains that the broadcaster will first upgrade these five metropolitan sites, beginning with the Melbourne and Perth locations. It will then upgrade the remaining three metropolitan sites, followed by a regional location on the NSW Central Coast.

“The remarkable compact footprint of GatesAir transmitters will take up substantially less space than our existing transmitters, lowering our monthly expenditures and our long-term total cost of ownership,” said Matt Steadman, head of technology, NOVA Entertainment.

[Read: GatesAir Purchases ONEtastic]

“We are also confident that GatesAir’s Australian presence, both through direct personnel and their partners at RaeAir, will efficiently guide us through the installation process and ensure excellent post-sales service and support.”

NOVA Entertainment’s FM radio transmission project is part of a broader strategic initiative that follows a recent upgrade of its studio systems.

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The post NOVA FM Boosts FM Transmission Network With GatesAir appeared first on Radio World.

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Proceeding(s): 19-3 : Reexamination of the Comparative Standards and Procedures for Licensing Noncommercial Educational Broadcast Stations and Low Power FM Stations

Filers(s): Clayton John Leander

Comment Type: REPLY TO COMMENTS

Date Received: 6/19/2019

Date Posted: 6/19/2019

Address: 1624 Silliman Street San Francisco, CA, 94134

If all goes as planned, the 115th local chapter of the Society of Broadcast Engineers will host its first meeting at ARKCON 2019 and begin the process of chartering a new chapter, the Arkansas Broadcasters Association says.

According to the SBE, a new chapter must be authorized by the SBE board of directors, as provided by the society’s by-laws. The new chapter must be formed by a minimum of 10 voting SBE members, and they must apply to the national SBE organization. After approximately three meetings and the adoption of local chapter by-laws, the SBE board of directors will typically authorize the new chapter.

“We are proud to take this step towards better serving our engineers and believe it will provide our engineers the platform they need to network and strategize on advancing their professions and attracting young talent,” ABA Board President Ali Sugg said in a press release.

[Read: SBE Freedom Award Given to Ft. Bragg Chapter Founder]

The most recent local SBE chapter to be added was Chapter 147 of Ft. Bragg, N.C., which achieved this status in January 2016, but began the process with its first meeting in September 2015.

Note that chapter numbers are retired after a chapter is deactivated, but a revived chapter will typically receive its old number. It is not yet clear what number designation the new Arkansas chapter will receive.

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The post Arkansas Plans New Local SBE Chapter appeared first on Radio World.

GENEVA — Radio Data System technology has been providing FM broadcasters with a robust and reliable data channel, using a digital FM subcarrier, since the 1990s. Since that time, the RDS Forum, an international organization based in Geneva, has maintained and expanded the RDS standard.

In 2016, the RDS Forum proposed the standardization of RDS with RDS2 — backward compatible with three additional subcarriers with the same modulation. The IEC approved the proposal and an updated RDS standard version IEC 62106:2018, which includes RDS2, was published in October 2018.

UPDATED STANDARD

The updated RDS standard was restructured into six parts:

• Part 1: RDS system: Modulation characteristics and baseband coding
• Part 2: RDS message format, coding and definition of RDS features
• Part 3: Coding and registration of Open Data Applications (ODAs)
• Part 4: Registered code tables
• Part 5: Marking of RDS and RDS2 devices
• Part 6: Compilation of technical specifications for ODAs in the public domain

Two additional parts will be added later this year. These are:

• Part 7: RBDS (containing U.S.-specific provisions)
• Part 8: Universal Encoder Communication Protocol (UECP)

To put RDS with RDS2 on air required a new kind of RDS encoder. French company WorldCast Systems commercialized the first model in April 2018. The Audemat RDS encoder began shipping in February 2019. It’s plug-compatible with the firm’s previous model and lets the transmission operator switch on the additional subcarriers when needed. For broadcasters interested in RDS2, this is a future-proof investment. Three additional RDS subcarriers mean more data and thus also more business.

The WorldCast Systems Audemat RDS Encoder is suitable for RDS2 broadcasts.

In 2018 the RDS Forum specified a new transmission protocol called RDS2 File Transfer (RFT). This protocol can be used to transfer all kinds of file types up to 163 KB. Applications to be supported can be defined within RDS using the ODA feature.

This tool permits users to add new application features that are totally backward compatible with existing receivers to the RDS system. To decode the new application, existing receivers need to either get a firmware update, which is seldom possible, or a new receiver supporting this feature must be used. The RDS Forum will propose the RFT to be added to Part 2 of the updated RDS standard later this year.

[Read: WorldCast Systems Launches RDS Encoder]

PROGRESS

The RDS Forum held its annual meeting in May 2019 in Glion, Switzerland. The main focus of the meeting was to consider RDS2 use cases for applications of interest to broadcasters. The forum identified the following areas the new public ODAs (openly available and free of IPR) shall support:

• Logo for station identification;
• Slideshow for program related content such as program identification logo and music album cover art, all to be synchronized with the radio program audio;
• Slideshow with information that is a complimentary background to the program such as traffic and weather information in the form of images;
• Breaking news in the form of short headlines;
• Electronic program guide — simple to use such as next and over next item to be broadcast.

Some of these applications are already in an advanced stage of development. For example, Radio France created a live demo on its FIP radio channel during the 2019 European Radio Show in Paris in partnership with WorldCast Systems and Caméon.

To do this, the broadcaster used a specially designed RDS2 prototype portable radio application from Caméon and showed music cover art with a fully synchronized display mode for the music on air. This was a world premiere for achieving this on analog FM radio. Prior to this most people believed it was only possible to do this using digital radio or internet streaming.

During the European Radio Show in January 2019, Olivier Soulié (left) of WorldCast Systems and Vincent Simonacci of Radio France explained the RDS2 demo carried out on Radio France’s FIP station, where music cover art was shown fully synchronized with the music on air.

The RFT is optimized for mobile reception. With RDS in the mobile reception mode there will be errors caused by signal fading and multipath distortion, even if it’s possible to repair these issues to a certain extent by using the repetition of the file to be transferred. It’s still necessary to test this with RDS2 signals that are on air for a longer time period. Also, respective regulators must be involved and agree to such tests, as is expected shortly in Hungary and France.

INFORMATION DAY

The RDS Forum occasionally organizes an information day to outline the latest advances on RDS2. This event is separate from our annual RDS Forum. The first one took place in Berlin in 2015 and the second in Paris in 2016.

We also held an informational conference last May in Budapest. Here WorldCast Systems carried out a similar demonstration to the one in Paris using a transmitter from the Budapest University of Technology. During the meeting, it was suggested that the country organize a countrywide RDS2 test transmission with Antenna Hungaria and national regulator NMHH managing RDS2 signal measurements using the Magyar Radio FM network.

Another issue of interest at the meeting was what the deviation on the upper subcarriers should be, say more or less +/-2 kHz per subcarrier. The University of Perugia (Italy) study (Electronic Letters – Volume 55, Issue 11, May 2019, p. 663 – 665: BER-optimal selection of peak frequency deviation for RDS2 by D. Saveri, G. Baruffa, L. Rugini, D.A. Samo and A. Ladanyi) helped clarify this question.

The RDS Forum invites all interested in RDS2 to attend the next RDS2 Info Day conference on Nov. 7 in Bordeaux, France. During the event, we will again demo RDS2 on air in collaboration with Radio France and TDF, WorldCast Systems and Caméon.

Caméon has also announced that it was planning to lead an RDS2 project involving 10 industry partners, mostly from France. This project began in June and will run about 18 months. The goal of this trial is to promote visually augmented smart radios in the car. “Smart” stands for smart service following on FM over to DAB+ and/or over to internet streaming if the program is lost outside the reception area of terrestrial radio.

DECODING RDS

Another topic discussed at the RDS Forum’s annual meeting in May was the availability of integrated circuits to receive and decode RDS2. This matter is more complex than initially thought. It’s true that RDS2 demodulation won’t require significant extra cost since DSP (already used for FM and RDS demodulation) will manage it. Some chips used today may simply require a firmware upgrade to solve the problem. However, firmware development is only interesting for the chip manufacturer if a large quantity of chips is needed for mass manufacturing of receivers. This is not the case at this stage.

At present, all RDS2 test and demo receivers built thus far make use of a USB receiver / data analyzer from the Dutch company MacBe, namely its RX014, which integrates a patched receiver chip from NXP.  This product has been commercially available since late 2014.

Dutch-based Catena Radio Design, a company specialized in pre-development of chips for car radio platforms produced by NXP, developed the patch code.

MacBe plans to introduce a new module, the RX019, a small, 2.5 x 3.0 centimeter-circuit board later this year. The RX019 is designed for those who wish to easily carry out an RDS2 prototype or test receiver within their own hardware environment/platform. The module’s functions include FM stereo receiver, RF monitor, RDS monitor, RDS2 monitor and API control via UART.

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The post What’s New With RDS2? appeared first on Radio World.


Proceeding(s): 19-3 : Reexamination of the Comparative Standards and Procedures for Licensing Noncommercial Educational Broadcast Stations and Low Power FM Stations

Filers(s): Albert Davis

Comment Type: REPLY TO COMMENTS

Date Received: 6/18/2019

Date Posted: 6/19/2019

Address: 402 Canniff Rd Freehold, NY, 12431


Proceeding(s): 19-3 : Reexamination of the Comparative Standards and Procedures for Licensing Noncommercial Educational Broadcast Stations and Low Power FM Stations

Filers(s): REC Networks

Comment Type: REPLY TO COMMENTS

Date Received: 6/18/2019

Date Posted: 6/19/2019

Address: 11541 Riverton Wharf Rd Mardela Springs, MD, 21837