* when the broadcaster screws up their RDS signal after a traffic report leaving you stranded on the wrong station.
* Or FM stations that run at different frequencies from different transmitters (this used to be a massive problem when driving long distances even just 20 years ago but now even the analogue car radios are digital devices that scan multiple frequencies to hop to the next frequency aired by a given station so you don't experience much cutout).
* Then there is the obvious issue of "dead zones" where the signals cannot reach (tunnels, some industrial locations, etc).
* Digital radio also suffers from frequent, albeit brief, cutouts while driving too but I've found that to have fewer dead zones than analogue.
* Bleeding used to be massive problem with analogue radio as well - this is another problem that was solved when radio started going digital.
So this is with 100 years of research and development into a protocol that requires an order of magnitude less bandwidth and yet most of the improvements have only been in the last 20 years when things like RDS (digital packets in analogue signals) and DAB have been introduced. Given that IP streaming video content isn't that far behind, just imagine how good it is going to be when that technology finally matures.
> but now even the analogue car radios are digital devices that scan multiple frequencies to hop to the next frequency aired by a given station so you don't experience much cutout
Wait, is this really a common thing? How would I know if a car radio does this, because I'm 99% sure my car doesn't.
The name of the feature is usually AF (RDS), all my car radios since 90s have supported it and all multi-transmitter FM stations here make use of it. I'm in Finland - no idea if it is less common in US.
Maybe it's not a thing any more? Or maybe it's not as clever as scanning multiple frequencies? I've not listened to analogue radio in the car for long distances in a while but I do remember there used to be a big problem with national radio spanning multiple different frequencies and your signal would drift out as you changed regions. This problem seemed to solve itself when RDS and "smart" radios started becoming a thing. However my experience is with video broadcasting rather than radio so I might have gotten some of the details wrong.
I love things that just work but it's a little unfair to compare radio technology that has been around for over 100 years and backed by huge public infrastructure investments with internet-based live streaming that has been around for (being generous) maybe 10-15 years at the most?
I remember an anecdote from an old school broadcast engineer I knew about 15 years ago. He recalled some sales guy from Real coming in and saying "with this new box we can broadcast to 5 thousand people". Engineer pointed to a picture of crystal palace transmitter that happened to be in the room -- "with that we can transmit to 5 million".
I'm not convinced how muliticast works to mobile devices, but it's a painfully edge case. This type of event occurs in the UK once every 4 years (the olympics doesn't pull in these numbers -- except for 2012 when it was hosted in London), and even then only when England do well (so once every 20 years)
That said, ITV latency seemed far shorter than BBC latency, watching ITV player seemed acceptable. Apart from the lackluster commentary and the adverts.
Not really when theres a good chance its ending up going through radio technology still anyways (wifi).
And its a matter of complexity - its obvious why OTA would have less problems to solve in order to get the same performance and behavior of something more complex.
OTA doesn't have less problems to solve. You have all the same problems of digital encoders etc (since all the media is digital anyway) PLUS the problems of transmission towers, solar events (I kid you not), wildlife, etc. You have the safety and cost problems supporting those hazardous and highly expensive equipment in remote locations.
IP streaming does actually solve a lot of problems. Plus these days OTA transmissions are all digital anyway. So serving that digital content via the internet is a natural progression. Sure things are superficially more complex at the moment but the technology hasn't matured yet.
