11 ms·

The NICAM Codec replacement project

519 points by dtf 11y ago

rplnt 11y ago
Somewhat related, a few years ago I saw a video of a guy starting up a "live TV studio" from 70s/80s I think at his cottage/cabin. It was quite interesting, unfortunately not in English. I'll try to find it anyway and update this post. edit: Here's the video I had in mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51F7zNWqlgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51F7zNWqlgM I guess it's boring without understanding the audio :) There's more on his channel
acheron 11y ago
Really interesting article, but terrible clickbaity title. I wouldn't have read it if there weren't so many positive comments on HN already. It could work if there were a subtitle. "35 million people didn’t notice a thing: BBC Radio's NICAM Codec replacement project". I dunno. But it is (or should be) very important that the title actually informs you as to what the article is about. "35M people didn't notice a thing" doesn't tell you anything at all. Edit: Upon further consideration I may have been a little harsh. This is really a blog entry more than an "article" per se, and I suppose that's fine for a blog post title. The problem comes when we link to it from somewhere else, e.g. HN; we need the additional context.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  The BBC seem to have moved to this sort of title with the recent updates to their web properties. They do these things seemingly confusing themselves with a commercial enterprise rather than a publicly funded provider.
  - jerf 11y ago
    Being government funded does not mean you don't have to sell yourself. It just means the target audience for the sales job is different.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      Because if they don't have clickbaity headlines the UK government will scrap the license fee?
      - Joeri 11y ago
        It could reduce it, arguing there is a lot of waste at the bbc. As long as the public perceives the value in the bbc's offerings the odds of that happening are reduced.
      - jerf 11y ago
        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477726/BBC-face-cut-licence-fee-unless-rebuilds-public-trust-warns-Tory-Minister.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477726/BBC-face-cut... That's a small example of what I mean, not the full totality of the threat space. Building more readership makes them that much more difficult to cut funding to, in a variety of ways (more people to get outraged if the government tries, more evidence to show the government that they are worth the money, etc.). Clickbait headlines create more readership. We may prefer that to be false, but it's obviously not. From there the logic is simple, almost inexorable. Being government funded does not mean you get to ignore funding issues, it just changes how you play the game. There is no source of unconditional funding in the world.
        SapphireSun 11y ago
        Also, one might argue, funding aside, that increasing readership (without sacrificing quality below some threshold) is the whole point of the enterprise. Click-bait headlines are annoying, but they aren't the actual body of the report themselves.
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        The BBC serves a charter which is managed by the BBC Trust. The Trust effectively interprets the charter. Their interpretation of the goals of the enterprise are (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/): "Make the most creative and distinctive output; Innovate online to create a more personal BBC; Serve all audiences; and Improve value for money through a simpler, more efficient, and more open BBC. " Increasing readership by reducing quality of headlines to match junk media clickbait doesn't appear to fit in there. The actual Royal Charter, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/charter.pdf http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/h..., at Section 4 puts quite succinctly what the aims are: "The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows— (a) sustaining citizenship and civil society; (b) promoting education and learning; (c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence; (d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities; (e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK; (f) in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television." I'd argue that this sort of change goes against the stimulation of cultural excellence, the tail is wagging the dog.
- mydpy 11y ago
  The name of the url is even click-baity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt-notice-a-thing-dot-dot-dot http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt...
  - mydpy 11y ago
    Sorry this should be: http:// http:// www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt-notice-a-thing-dot-dot-dot
- jmtd 11y ago
  Perhaps the title-writer has been infected by the BBC news editorial policy. They seem to be turning clickbait titles into a fine art, combined with renaming articles so you think it's a new piece on the same story, but turns out you've already read it. (If you read BBC News at all that is: my wife still does, I gave it up years ago and haven't looked back.) I love many aspects of the BBC but sadly not their news output anymore. (Sorry I realise this has very little to do with the R&D article.)
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    Agreed. The science section has a fine selection of rehashed press releases.
  - thorin 11y ago
    I used to think the BBC news was definitive 5-10 years ago. I'm not sure what has changed? Have the recent governments and their pressure on the license fee really made the difference or is it just my perception? When I was young the BBC was always seen as pretty left wing (it certainly wasn't at it's inception though) it seems pretty conservative (and sensationalist) right now.
    - a_humean 11y ago
      The Iraq war and David Kelly's suicide is what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry Add things like the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal, and the ongoing threat from the conservative government to turn the BBC into the equivalent of America's PBS (irrelevant on the political landscape, lacking financial heft, and in close to nonexistent viewership) and you have a recipe for a neutered public news broadcaster too afraid to do anything meaningful.
    - vidarh 11y ago
      Both sides of the political spectrum regularly complains about the BBC being biased towards the other side. It's the best evidence that whatever bias there is either is minor or short-lived. In my eyes, the biggest problem with the BBC isn't bias, but that they're terrified of seeming too biased, and as a result they're wishy-washy in ways that ironically makes them seem biased. E.g. the left will accuse them of being right wing because they don't write in more critical terms about the governments willingness to deal with the Saudis, while the right will accuse them of a left wing bias for not writing in more critical terms about Chavez, and so on. Similarly they're often accused of bias for not reporting something, or very carefully reporting something, that either side believe to be fact, but where there's not (yet) actual firm evidence. Of course, if done "against" just one side, this too would be actual bias, but the BBC appears to be pretty consistent about it. So we're left with reporting that is rarely very biased, but often exceedingly unsatisfying for everyone. I'm not saying there's no bias - I don't believe that would be possible. But I do think that the allegations of bias against the BBC tend to be wildly exaggerated.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Maybe people did notice but didn't care enough to complain? Or we're all used to various sound quality depending on what we're doing (cell, skype, voip, etc) that we've just internalized quality changes as not a big deal. It reminds me how satellite radio was supposed to be "mp3 quality" whatever that meant. Everytime I rent a car with SiriusXM, my god, the sound quality is horrible. Its like they're using those early postage-stamp sized quicktime videos from the dial-ups days. Yet people still subscribe in vast numbers.
- frogpelt 11y ago
  The truth is that 7 billion people didn't notice. Why didn't they use that title? BTW, I agree with your edit. An R&D blog shouldn't be held to the same standard of journalistic excellence as a reputable news source, even if it's the BBC's blog.
- kordless 11y ago
  It's interesting you classified it as click bait. Too many attempts to raise interest quickly, in a large number of people with low quality content, results in a small segment of those people "hitting" on the fact it's raising interest quickly and should be flagged. In your case, you "unflagged" it because we started talking about it, which implies some of us shouldn't (or won't) filter long term.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Yeah, the HN title should be more like "Changing the NICAM radio transmission protocol without 35 million people noticing."
  - inanutshellus 11y ago
    I came here (directly to the comments section) to see what the clickbait-title actually meant. Thanks for fulfilling! ;-)
    - SilasX 11y ago
      Yep. For me, at least half of the value of an article comes from the (external) internet discussions about it, which summarize key points and weaknesses much better than the author is able to.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    I don't think the protocol was actually changed. The article just describes an equipment swap.
    - SilasX 11y ago
      I think you're right; when skimming, I read the following section, which made it sound like they were updating it to send additional metadata, based on their mentions of the "codecs" and how they "will" allow radios to do useful things with the metadata. Also, I'm used to codec meaning "software program", not "machine". >>The NICAM distribution system also carries the RDS data. This will enable the radio in your car to automatically retune when you can get a better signal from a different transmitter. It will also display the station name (for example “Radio 1”) and the current song name (for example “Now Playing: Coming With You by Ne-Yo”). RDS will also indicate when a travel announcement is being made on BBC local radio so that a radio can switch to the travel announcement at the right time.
- dtf 11y ago
  Apologies for that, I submitted this and did actually go looking for the HN title guidelines, which seemed to say use the original title. I'll try to be a little braver with title editing in future.
  - lnanek2 11y ago
    Even if you post a more informative title, the mods of HN will change it back to the original site title. It has happened countless times and is pretty much the site policy. The claim is that is prevents posters from making click-bait titles to gain karma, although in this case the original is the click bait. So anyway, no, you did the only thing you could do. Anything else would have been degraded to the current information value by mods anyway.
  - dang 11y ago
    The guidelines say to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. In this case it was linkbait, so a change was in order. We've changed it to what the article says it is about in the second sentence.
- rs999gti 11y ago
  > but terrible clickbaity title. I don't know about that. The clickbait title did its job well and we all clicked on the link and read the article.
ihsw 11y ago
Honest question -- why are they using PATA ribbon cables in the new NICAM codec box? Surely SATA would be more reliable and easier to administer.
- mseebach 11y ago
  They most likely aren't ATA cables, as in, they aren't used to connect hard drives -- so it's not obvious that whatever purpose they serve could be served by a serial alternative. If you look at the photo of the back of the unit, you see a lot of very wide D-Sub sockets that these ribbon cables seem to connect to, so the unit is meant to connect to a bunch of other things. Actually, the need for these sockets seem to account for most of the size of the unit, the box appears pretty empty.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    If you're designing your own boards with ribbon cables connecting them, I imagine that you could save a lot of money on parts by using 40-pin connectors with PATA cables--we're talking entire cents, for each of the 2 units. Also, I'm willing to bet a place like the BBC has boxes filled with spare PATA cables and 16MB SIMMs and 8 GB internal hard drives, and maybe even a room with a bunch of dusty 17" CRT monitors in it. And sometimes, rather than fill out a purchase order, one of the engineers descends into the hoard, returns with a cobbled-together frankenserver, and installs NetBSD on it. So they might actually be PATA cables using PATA connectors, but the signal between cards is not ATA.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      Exactly. And it has to connect to the same system as the original 1980s units, so whatever protocol it's using will be old. DB25-serial? SCSI? IEE-488? It would have been nice to have a few technical details on the system. Random BBC-related anecdote: the Cambridge University computer lab had, up to 1999, an info TV in the lobby driven by a 20 year old BBC micro in Teletext mode. This was apparently because it had an extremely powerful video output (more so than modern hardware) and the display was at the other end of 50m coaxial cable.
jhallenworld 11y ago
I can see from the photos that it's using this board: http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard I'm surprised BBC is not only willing to make custom hardware, but custom RTL design as well. I'm curious what the failure rate of the FPGA will be, I mean they are more susceptible to soft errors than CPUs or ASICs. Maybe BBC will fund making a custom ASIC :-) Well I see two systems, maybe they are redundant that way. Why not make the project open source? Put it up on github.
- doc_holliday 11y ago
  I would doubt an ASIC would be worth it, giving the number of organisations needing this CODEC would be relatively low. An ASIC run is expensive and even more expensive if there is subsequent error in the design. FPGA makes sense for this application. It can always be re-flashed.
  - jhallenworld 11y ago
    They should at least enable the SEU mitigation circuit, which repeatedly performs CRC of the configuration data. Have it reboot if it detects an error. Maybe they already do this. I checked, Zynq-7000 has this capability: http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-property/sem.html http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-property/sem.htm...
- sandGorgon 11y ago
  +1 for the open source part. I would really love to see the RTL for the FPGA. I wonder if they're using the Zedboard or the actual 7000 soc.
pjc50 11y ago
I've always been impressed by the BBC tech people I met, doing a high-quality job in an extremely bureaucratic neophobic environment. As part of making the unit, we had to ensure it complied with all the relevant European directives so that it could be CE marked. We had the Codec tested for both safety and EMC. Interesting, I thought this wasn't required for internal use; probably the BBC corporate structure means it no longer counts as "internal". On "Radio Teleswitch": [Droitwich] transmitter uses a pair of obsolete metre-long valves which are no longer manufactured anywhere in the world.[1] In October 2011, the BBC admitted that the Droitwich transmitter, including Radio 4's longwave service and Radio Teleswitch, will cease to operate when one of the last two valves breaks, and no effort would be made to manufacture more nor to install a replacement longwave transmitter. This is like the Domesday Book (1980s interactive multimedia system on Laserdisc): high-tech and sui generis at the time it was built, but eventually uniquely obsolete. The BBC itself is very much a valve-and-laserdisc organisation in a Google world. We huddle round the warm glow, concerned that eventually some vital element will give out due to lack of money and the whole enterprise will give up. Periodically someone comes up with the idea of shutting down analog FM radio. This is politically inconceivable as half the country has ancient radios that were tuned to Radio 4 in 1967 and have never played any other station (an exaggeration, but only a small one).
- mmosta 11y ago
  CE carries a number of subclasses that can be self-certified. With respect to EMC and safety it is absolutely in their best interest to conform, not merely out of a bureaucratic obligation but out of a need to minimize any interference from or to other equipment housed nearby. Radio Teleswitch stuff is cool.
- philjohn 11y ago
  AFAIK the Droitwich transmitter isn't run by the BBC, but bu another company, so it could have been a requirement of that.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
Will be interested to read the followup article in the year 2048 regarding whether these new boxes lasted as long as their predecessors.
- mikecarlton 11y ago
  Great idea. I tried to set a reminder, but my calendar only goes to 2038.
  - i336_ 11y ago
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TheAppGuy 11y ago
Top on HN, but I can see why. The title tempts you to click through. :)
ssapkota 11y ago
Thats awesome! People easily overlook these things. They hardly realise that its same as upgrading an aircraft in midair.
darkr 11y ago
> In addition, the signalling information for switching Economy 7 electricity meters is carried on Radio 4 LW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch Fascinating stuff.
- comboy 11y ago
  Indeed to allow electricity suppliers to switch large numbers of electricity meters between different tariffs by broadcasting an embedded signal in broadcast radio signals I kind of heavily doubt these are signed broadcasts that cannot be replayed..
  - Piskvorrr 11y ago
    Something akin to this? http://gpsworld.com/wirelessinfrastructuregoing-against-time-13278/ http://gpsworld.com/wirelessinfrastructuregoing-against-time... I believe that operating a rogue transmitter in a licensed band would get you located rather quickly - even though the tech itself may not necessarily be secure, there are other enforcement mechanisms.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      Surely you only need the rogue transmitter to be stronger at the receiver (your electric meter?) than the signal from the transmitter. That doesn't seem like a strong enough signal to easily locate you? Seems a complicated way to do something - doesn't Economy7 operate between fixed times overnight? I wonder if they can cut power using the transmissions - seems like something that could be used for emergency control of demand in times when the National Grid has problems.
      - Piskvorrr 11y ago
        Hm, that's probably the point: there is no threat (to the utility provider) in that model. Worst thing you could do is make someone's appliances run with a more expensive rate; hardly a likely event or one worth preventing. (As for power cutting, that seems unlikely - the system is in place to provide larger power consumption when base production exceeds the load. Around here, the basic low/high rate info is provided by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management#Ripple_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management#Ripple_control , which needs a not-really-smart power meter, but runs on top of the power line, obviating the need for a side channel)
jacquesm 11y ago
Very nice work. What is the rationale behind doing a bespoke design rather than sharing the development cost with all the European broadcasters, is NICAM unique to the UK? What do other broadcasters use for similar services?
- ajdlinux 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAM seems to indicate that while NICAM is used by a few broadcasters here and there, it was initially developed by the BBC, and it's no longer as widespread in Europe as it once was.
  - mrweasel 11y ago
    The wikipedia article only lists the countries that used it with PAL and SECAM, meaning that the lists is only in regards to TV broadcast, not radio.
  - gpvos 11y ago
    See makomk's comment nearby: NICAM's use for stereo sound with analogue TV broadcasts is not the same as the use for the BBC's internal audio distribution system.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  Cool to see that there are still companies that can and will make devices like this in-house, but yes it just seems like something that a radio station would normally just do with an off the shelf solution.
  - stuaxo 11y ago
    I guess the combination of weird-codec, along with other functionality like sending out info to electricity metres is a pretty bespoke one.
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  I assume because "it's a lot easier to bang something like that out with a small tightly focused team in a single location".
linker3000 11y ago
That's some decent BBC engineering from a team that works away quietly in the background and just makes things happen, or keep happening. I don't work in that field, but like many people in my profession (Systems and networking), I also tend to be invisible until something breaks, and then I am the fall guy if it's not fixed within a heartbeat. /I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s technology had been replaced with a Raspberry Pi!
- flurpitude 11y ago
  "I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s technology had been replaced with a Raspberry Pi!" The Parallella computer, which looks a lot like a Raspberry Pi, has a Xilinx Zynq chip similar to the one in the BBC's new codec. So it's almost true.
  - duskwuff 11y ago
    Here's the exact board that's in there: http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc-development-board/ http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc...
    - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
      It is a bit odd that they shoehorned in an existing commercial board rather than just put the FPGA on the main board or even designed a custom daughter card if upgradability was a concern. As it is, they are now tied to the availability of boards with the same board-to-board connector and a similar form factor.
      - Sanddancer 11y ago
        They used a commercial board that implements the Vita 57 bus, which is the standard way to interface with an FPGA [1]. So if they need replacements down the road, they just have to get one that implements the same standard, and standards for industrial equipment tend to stick around for a considerable amount of time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card
king_magic 11y ago
This is one of the most interesting things I've read on HN in weeks. Awesome to see this kind of success story, and it's super fascinating to get insight into how radio works behind the scenes. I'll be honest, I had no idea all of this goes into radio. I thought there were just, err, towers?, that broadcast... radio waves, and that was kind of it? I mean, I knew on some level it had to be a tad bit more complex than that, but you never see or hear about it.
- Piskvorrr 11y ago
  Well, I'd assume that the reason for radio silence (ahem) on broadcasting tech would be various NDAs.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It has been claimed that a literal radio silence of BBC could cause a nuclear strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4 (C-f nuclear)
    - elbigbad 11y ago
      Here's the article it links to, pretty interesting in and of itself: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/radio-silence-puts-subs-on-nuclear-1157478 http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchest... "Secret orders to the captains [of the nuclear subs] say that these deadly instructions are to be opened and acted upon only if the submarine cannot tune in to Radio 4’s Today programme for a given number of consecutive days. That is a reliable sign that Britain has been hit by a nuclear attack."
      - msh 11y ago
        Que new James Bond plot, the bad guy disables radio 4 to launch nuclear armageddon - Bond in race against time to find the spare parts needed to restore the radio.
    - 11y ago
CaseFlatline 11y ago
Truly an impressive feat: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." - Futurama
jnbiche 11y ago
I read the article with interest, waiting with anticipation for them to announce the resulting hardware and software had all been open sourced. And then...nothing. I'm surprised, I thought in the UK these kinds of taxpayer-funded projects were required to be open source. In any case, it's too bad. I was not familiar with the NICAM codec up to now, but I'm sure that software and hardware plans would have been very useful to some developing countries, many of whom apparently also use NICAM in their state-owned broadcast companies.
- toyg 11y ago
  > I thought in the UK these kinds of taxpayer-funded projects were required to be open source. There is no law, afaik, and even the BBC has commercial interests. iPlayer has never been open-source, for example. The BBC has obligations in terms of content reach and content quality, but they're not particularly bound to specific ways of achieving those targets (beyond some stuff about not abusing their position in commercial terms). Actual engineers are mostly pro-OSS and try hard to push for it internally, but they have legal obstacles similar to any other company.
daveguy 11y ago
I appreciate a good success story about major transitions / upgrades / process changes / etc. Those situations where there is usually SOME glitch and you have to engineer the hell out of it to get a perfect transition. The only reference to testing was "We had the Codec tested for both safety and EMC." Was that in house or external? Surely there was some major transition testing low power broadcast tests, etc to make sure everything went smoothly. Or did they just get really lucky? Seems like there's more story to this.
gpvos 11y ago
What I missed in the article is whether there was an audible glitch at 4:15 AM.
javi2601 11y ago
good !!!!!!!!

519 points by dtf 11y ago

rplnt 11y ago

Somewhat related, a few years ago I saw a video of a guy starting up a "live TV studio" from 70s/80s I think at his cottage/cabin. It was quite interesting, unfortunately not in English. I'll try to find it anyway and update this post. edit: Here's the video I had in mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51F7zNWqlgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51F7zNWqlgM I guess it's boring without understanding the audio :) There's more on his channel

acheron 11y ago

Really interesting article, but terrible clickbaity title. I wouldn't have read it if there weren't so many positive comments on HN already. It could work if there were a subtitle. "35 million people didn’t notice a thing: BBC Radio's NICAM Codec replacement project". I dunno. But it is (or should be) very important that the title actually informs you as to what the article is about. "35M people didn't notice a thing" doesn't tell you anything at all. Edit: Upon further consideration I may have been a little harsh. This is really a blog entry more than an "article" per se, and I suppose that's fine for a blog post title. The problem comes when we link to it from somewhere else, e.g. HN; we need the additional context.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
The BBC seem to have moved to this sort of title with the recent updates to their web properties. They do these things seemingly confusing themselves with a commercial enterprise rather than a publicly funded provider.
- jerf 11y ago
  Being government funded does not mean you don't have to sell yourself. It just means the target audience for the sales job is different.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Because if they don't have clickbaity headlines the UK government will scrap the license fee?
    - Joeri 11y ago
      It could reduce it, arguing there is a lot of waste at the bbc. As long as the public perceives the value in the bbc's offerings the odds of that happening are reduced.
    - jerf 11y ago
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477726/BBC-face-cut-licence-fee-unless-rebuilds-public-trust-warns-Tory-Minister.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477726/BBC-face-cut... That's a small example of what I mean, not the full totality of the threat space. Building more readership makes them that much more difficult to cut funding to, in a variety of ways (more people to get outraged if the government tries, more evidence to show the government that they are worth the money, etc.). Clickbait headlines create more readership. We may prefer that to be false, but it's obviously not. From there the logic is simple, almost inexorable. Being government funded does not mean you get to ignore funding issues, it just changes how you play the game. There is no source of unconditional funding in the world.
      - SapphireSun 11y ago
        Also, one might argue, funding aside, that increasing readership (without sacrificing quality below some threshold) is the whole point of the enterprise. Click-bait headlines are annoying, but they aren't the actual body of the report themselves.
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        The BBC serves a charter which is managed by the BBC Trust. The Trust effectively interprets the charter. Their interpretation of the goals of the enterprise are (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/): "Make the most creative and distinctive output; Innovate online to create a more personal BBC; Serve all audiences; and Improve value for money through a simpler, more efficient, and more open BBC. " Increasing readership by reducing quality of headlines to match junk media clickbait doesn't appear to fit in there. The actual Royal Charter, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/charter.pdf http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/h..., at Section 4 puts quite succinctly what the aims are: "The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows— (a) sustaining citizenship and civil society; (b) promoting education and learning; (c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence; (d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities; (e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK; (f) in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television." I'd argue that this sort of change goes against the stimulation of cultural excellence, the tail is wagging the dog.
mydpy 11y ago
The name of the url is even click-baity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt-notice-a-thing-dot-dot-dot http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt...
- mydpy 11y ago
  Sorry this should be: http:// http:// www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt-notice-a-thing-dot-dot-dot
jmtd 11y ago
Perhaps the title-writer has been infected by the BBC news editorial policy. They seem to be turning clickbait titles into a fine art, combined with renaming articles so you think it's a new piece on the same story, but turns out you've already read it. (If you read BBC News at all that is: my wife still does, I gave it up years ago and haven't looked back.) I love many aspects of the BBC but sadly not their news output anymore. (Sorry I realise this has very little to do with the R&D article.)
- SixSigma 11y ago
  Agreed. The science section has a fine selection of rehashed press releases.
- thorin 11y ago
  I used to think the BBC news was definitive 5-10 years ago. I'm not sure what has changed? Have the recent governments and their pressure on the license fee really made the difference or is it just my perception? When I was young the BBC was always seen as pretty left wing (it certainly wasn't at it's inception though) it seems pretty conservative (and sensationalist) right now.
  - a_humean 11y ago
    The Iraq war and David Kelly's suicide is what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry Add things like the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal, and the ongoing threat from the conservative government to turn the BBC into the equivalent of America's PBS (irrelevant on the political landscape, lacking financial heft, and in close to nonexistent viewership) and you have a recipe for a neutered public news broadcaster too afraid to do anything meaningful.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Both sides of the political spectrum regularly complains about the BBC being biased towards the other side. It's the best evidence that whatever bias there is either is minor or short-lived. In my eyes, the biggest problem with the BBC isn't bias, but that they're terrified of seeming too biased, and as a result they're wishy-washy in ways that ironically makes them seem biased. E.g. the left will accuse them of being right wing because they don't write in more critical terms about the governments willingness to deal with the Saudis, while the right will accuse them of a left wing bias for not writing in more critical terms about Chavez, and so on. Similarly they're often accused of bias for not reporting something, or very carefully reporting something, that either side believe to be fact, but where there's not (yet) actual firm evidence. Of course, if done "against" just one side, this too would be actual bias, but the BBC appears to be pretty consistent about it. So we're left with reporting that is rarely very biased, but often exceedingly unsatisfying for everyone. I'm not saying there's no bias - I don't believe that would be possible. But I do think that the allegations of bias against the BBC tend to be wildly exaggerated.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Maybe people did notice but didn't care enough to complain? Or we're all used to various sound quality depending on what we're doing (cell, skype, voip, etc) that we've just internalized quality changes as not a big deal. It reminds me how satellite radio was supposed to be "mp3 quality" whatever that meant. Everytime I rent a car with SiriusXM, my god, the sound quality is horrible. Its like they're using those early postage-stamp sized quicktime videos from the dial-ups days. Yet people still subscribe in vast numbers.
frogpelt 11y ago
The truth is that 7 billion people didn't notice. Why didn't they use that title? BTW, I agree with your edit. An R&D blog shouldn't be held to the same standard of journalistic excellence as a reputable news source, even if it's the BBC's blog.
kordless 11y ago
It's interesting you classified it as click bait. Too many attempts to raise interest quickly, in a large number of people with low quality content, results in a small segment of those people "hitting" on the fact it's raising interest quickly and should be flagged. In your case, you "unflagged" it because we started talking about it, which implies some of us shouldn't (or won't) filter long term.
SilasX 11y ago
Yeah, the HN title should be more like "Changing the NICAM radio transmission protocol without 35 million people noticing."
- inanutshellus 11y ago
  I came here (directly to the comments section) to see what the clickbait-title actually meant. Thanks for fulfilling! ;-)
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Yep. For me, at least half of the value of an article comes from the (external) internet discussions about it, which summarize key points and weaknesses much better than the author is able to.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  I don't think the protocol was actually changed. The article just describes an equipment swap.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    I think you're right; when skimming, I read the following section, which made it sound like they were updating it to send additional metadata, based on their mentions of the "codecs" and how they "will" allow radios to do useful things with the metadata. Also, I'm used to codec meaning "software program", not "machine". >>The NICAM distribution system also carries the RDS data. This will enable the radio in your car to automatically retune when you can get a better signal from a different transmitter. It will also display the station name (for example “Radio 1”) and the current song name (for example “Now Playing: Coming With You by Ne-Yo”). RDS will also indicate when a travel announcement is being made on BBC local radio so that a radio can switch to the travel announcement at the right time.
dtf 11y ago
Apologies for that, I submitted this and did actually go looking for the HN title guidelines, which seemed to say use the original title. I'll try to be a little braver with title editing in future.
- lnanek2 11y ago
  Even if you post a more informative title, the mods of HN will change it back to the original site title. It has happened countless times and is pretty much the site policy. The claim is that is prevents posters from making click-bait titles to gain karma, although in this case the original is the click bait. So anyway, no, you did the only thing you could do. Anything else would have been degraded to the current information value by mods anyway.
- dang 11y ago
  The guidelines say to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. In this case it was linkbait, so a change was in order. We've changed it to what the article says it is about in the second sentence.
rs999gti 11y ago
> but terrible clickbaity title. I don't know about that. The clickbait title did its job well and we all clicked on the link and read the article.

ihsw 11y ago

Honest question -- why are they using PATA ribbon cables in the new NICAM codec box? Surely SATA would be more reliable and easier to administer.

mseebach 11y ago
They most likely aren't ATA cables, as in, they aren't used to connect hard drives -- so it's not obvious that whatever purpose they serve could be served by a serial alternative. If you look at the photo of the back of the unit, you see a lot of very wide D-Sub sockets that these ribbon cables seem to connect to, so the unit is meant to connect to a bunch of other things. Actually, the need for these sockets seem to account for most of the size of the unit, the box appears pretty empty.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  If you're designing your own boards with ribbon cables connecting them, I imagine that you could save a lot of money on parts by using 40-pin connectors with PATA cables--we're talking entire cents, for each of the 2 units. Also, I'm willing to bet a place like the BBC has boxes filled with spare PATA cables and 16MB SIMMs and 8 GB internal hard drives, and maybe even a room with a bunch of dusty 17" CRT monitors in it. And sometimes, rather than fill out a purchase order, one of the engineers descends into the hoard, returns with a cobbled-together frankenserver, and installs NetBSD on it. So they might actually be PATA cables using PATA connectors, but the signal between cards is not ATA.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Exactly. And it has to connect to the same system as the original 1980s units, so whatever protocol it's using will be old. DB25-serial? SCSI? IEE-488? It would have been nice to have a few technical details on the system. Random BBC-related anecdote: the Cambridge University computer lab had, up to 1999, an info TV in the lobby driven by a 20 year old BBC micro in Teletext mode. This was apparently because it had an extremely powerful video output (more so than modern hardware) and the display was at the other end of 50m coaxial cable.

jhallenworld 11y ago

I can see from the photos that it's using this board: http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard I'm surprised BBC is not only willing to make custom hardware, but custom RTL design as well. I'm curious what the failure rate of the FPGA will be, I mean they are more susceptible to soft errors than CPUs or ASICs. Maybe BBC will fund making a custom ASIC :-) Well I see two systems, maybe they are redundant that way. Why not make the project open source? Put it up on github.

doc_holliday 11y ago
I would doubt an ASIC would be worth it, giving the number of organisations needing this CODEC would be relatively low. An ASIC run is expensive and even more expensive if there is subsequent error in the design. FPGA makes sense for this application. It can always be re-flashed.
- jhallenworld 11y ago
  They should at least enable the SEU mitigation circuit, which repeatedly performs CRC of the configuration data. Have it reboot if it detects an error. Maybe they already do this. I checked, Zynq-7000 has this capability: http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-property/sem.html http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-property/sem.htm...
sandGorgon 11y ago
+1 for the open source part. I would really love to see the RTL for the FPGA. I wonder if they're using the Zedboard or the actual 7000 soc.

pjc50 11y ago

I've always been impressed by the BBC tech people I met, doing a high-quality job in an extremely bureaucratic neophobic environment. As part of making the unit, we had to ensure it complied with all the relevant European directives so that it could be CE marked. We had the Codec tested for both safety and EMC. Interesting, I thought this wasn't required for internal use; probably the BBC corporate structure means it no longer counts as "internal". On "Radio Teleswitch": [Droitwich] transmitter uses a pair of obsolete metre-long valves which are no longer manufactured anywhere in the world.[1] In October 2011, the BBC admitted that the Droitwich transmitter, including Radio 4's longwave service and Radio Teleswitch, will cease to operate when one of the last two valves breaks, and no effort would be made to manufacture more nor to install a replacement longwave transmitter. This is like the Domesday Book (1980s interactive multimedia system on Laserdisc): high-tech and sui generis at the time it was built, but eventually uniquely obsolete. The BBC itself is very much a valve-and-laserdisc organisation in a Google world. We huddle round the warm glow, concerned that eventually some vital element will give out due to lack of money and the whole enterprise will give up. Periodically someone comes up with the idea of shutting down analog FM radio. This is politically inconceivable as half the country has ancient radios that were tuned to Radio 4 in 1967 and have never played any other station (an exaggeration, but only a small one).

mmosta 11y ago
CE carries a number of subclasses that can be self-certified. With respect to EMC and safety it is absolutely in their best interest to conform, not merely out of a bureaucratic obligation but out of a need to minimize any interference from or to other equipment housed nearby. Radio Teleswitch stuff is cool.
philjohn 11y ago
AFAIK the Droitwich transmitter isn't run by the BBC, but bu another company, so it could have been a requirement of that.

thrownaway2424 11y ago

Will be interested to read the followup article in the year 2048 regarding whether these new boxes lasted as long as their predecessors.

mikecarlton 11y ago
Great idea. I tried to set a reminder, but my calendar only goes to 2038.
- i336_ 11y ago
  unsigned int epoch;

TheAppGuy 11y ago

Top on HN, but I can see why. The title tempts you to click through. :)

ssapkota 11y ago

Thats awesome! People easily overlook these things. They hardly realise that its same as upgrading an aircraft in midair.

darkr 11y ago

> In addition, the signalling information for switching Economy 7 electricity meters is carried on Radio 4 LW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch Fascinating stuff.

comboy 11y ago
Indeed to allow electricity suppliers to switch large numbers of electricity meters between different tariffs by broadcasting an embedded signal in broadcast radio signals I kind of heavily doubt these are signed broadcasts that cannot be replayed..
- Piskvorrr 11y ago
  Something akin to this? http://gpsworld.com/wirelessinfrastructuregoing-against-time-13278/ http://gpsworld.com/wirelessinfrastructuregoing-against-time... I believe that operating a rogue transmitter in a licensed band would get you located rather quickly - even though the tech itself may not necessarily be secure, there are other enforcement mechanisms.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Surely you only need the rogue transmitter to be stronger at the receiver (your electric meter?) than the signal from the transmitter. That doesn't seem like a strong enough signal to easily locate you? Seems a complicated way to do something - doesn't Economy7 operate between fixed times overnight? I wonder if they can cut power using the transmissions - seems like something that could be used for emergency control of demand in times when the National Grid has problems.
    - Piskvorrr 11y ago
      Hm, that's probably the point: there is no threat (to the utility provider) in that model. Worst thing you could do is make someone's appliances run with a more expensive rate; hardly a likely event or one worth preventing. (As for power cutting, that seems unlikely - the system is in place to provide larger power consumption when base production exceeds the load. Around here, the basic low/high rate info is provided by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management#Ripple_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management#Ripple_control , which needs a not-really-smart power meter, but runs on top of the power line, obviating the need for a side channel)

jacquesm 11y ago

Very nice work. What is the rationale behind doing a bespoke design rather than sharing the development cost with all the European broadcasters, is NICAM unique to the UK? What do other broadcasters use for similar services?

ajdlinux 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAM seems to indicate that while NICAM is used by a few broadcasters here and there, it was initially developed by the BBC, and it's no longer as widespread in Europe as it once was.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  The wikipedia article only lists the countries that used it with PAL and SECAM, meaning that the lists is only in regards to TV broadcast, not radio.
- gpvos 11y ago
  See makomk's comment nearby: NICAM's use for stereo sound with analogue TV broadcasts is not the same as the use for the BBC's internal audio distribution system.
mrweasel 11y ago
Cool to see that there are still companies that can and will make devices like this in-house, but yes it just seems like something that a radio station would normally just do with an off the shelf solution.
- stuaxo 11y ago
  I guess the combination of weird-codec, along with other functionality like sending out info to electricity metres is a pretty bespoke one.
zimpenfish 11y ago
I assume because "it's a lot easier to bang something like that out with a small tightly focused team in a single location".

linker3000 11y ago

That's some decent BBC engineering from a team that works away quietly in the background and just makes things happen, or keep happening. I don't work in that field, but like many people in my profession (Systems and networking), I also tend to be invisible until something breaks, and then I am the fall guy if it's not fixed within a heartbeat. /I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s technology had been replaced with a Raspberry Pi!

flurpitude 11y ago
"I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s technology had been replaced with a Raspberry Pi!" The Parallella computer, which looks a lot like a Raspberry Pi, has a Xilinx Zynq chip similar to the one in the BBC's new codec. So it's almost true.
- duskwuff 11y ago
  Here's the exact board that's in there: http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc-development-board/ http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc...
  - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
    It is a bit odd that they shoehorned in an existing commercial board rather than just put the FPGA on the main board or even designed a custom daughter card if upgradability was a concern. As it is, they are now tied to the availability of boards with the same board-to-board connector and a similar form factor.
    - Sanddancer 11y ago
      They used a commercial board that implements the Vita 57 bus, which is the standard way to interface with an FPGA [1]. So if they need replacements down the road, they just have to get one that implements the same standard, and standards for industrial equipment tend to stick around for a considerable amount of time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card

king_magic 11y ago

This is one of the most interesting things I've read on HN in weeks. Awesome to see this kind of success story, and it's super fascinating to get insight into how radio works behind the scenes. I'll be honest, I had no idea all of this goes into radio. I thought there were just, err, towers?, that broadcast... radio waves, and that was kind of it? I mean, I knew on some level it had to be a tad bit more complex than that, but you never see or hear about it.

Piskvorrr 11y ago
Well, I'd assume that the reason for radio silence (ahem) on broadcasting tech would be various NDAs.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It has been claimed that a literal radio silence of BBC could cause a nuclear strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4 (C-f nuclear)
  - elbigbad 11y ago
    Here's the article it links to, pretty interesting in and of itself: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/radio-silence-puts-subs-on-nuclear-1157478 http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchest... "Secret orders to the captains [of the nuclear subs] say that these deadly instructions are to be opened and acted upon only if the submarine cannot tune in to Radio 4’s Today programme for a given number of consecutive days. That is a reliable sign that Britain has been hit by a nuclear attack."
    - msh 11y ago
      Que new James Bond plot, the bad guy disables radio 4 to launch nuclear armageddon - Bond in race against time to find the spare parts needed to restore the radio.
  - 11y ago

CaseFlatline 11y ago

Truly an impressive feat: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." - Futurama

jnbiche 11y ago

I read the article with interest, waiting with anticipation for them to announce the resulting hardware and software had all been open sourced. And then...nothing. I'm surprised, I thought in the UK these kinds of taxpayer-funded projects were required to be open source. In any case, it's too bad. I was not familiar with the NICAM codec up to now, but I'm sure that software and hardware plans would have been very useful to some developing countries, many of whom apparently also use NICAM in their state-owned broadcast companies.

toyg 11y ago
> I thought in the UK these kinds of taxpayer-funded projects were required to be open source. There is no law, afaik, and even the BBC has commercial interests. iPlayer has never been open-source, for example. The BBC has obligations in terms of content reach and content quality, but they're not particularly bound to specific ways of achieving those targets (beyond some stuff about not abusing their position in commercial terms). Actual engineers are mostly pro-OSS and try hard to push for it internally, but they have legal obstacles similar to any other company.

daveguy 11y ago

I appreciate a good success story about major transitions / upgrades / process changes / etc. Those situations where there is usually SOME glitch and you have to engineer the hell out of it to get a perfect transition. The only reference to testing was "We had the Codec tested for both safety and EMC." Was that in house or external? Surely there was some major transition testing low power broadcast tests, etc to make sure everything went smoothly. Or did they just get really lucky? Seems like there's more story to this.

gpvos 11y ago

What I missed in the article is whether there was an audible glitch at 4:15 AM.

javi2601 11y ago

good !!!!!!!!