Visual Radio Coming to India

morpheus83 writes "India continues to march towards becoming an IT and economic super power. The Indian capital of New-Delhi will become the the third city in the world to have a commercial Visual Radio service after Singapore and Helsinki (Finland). The technology developed by Nokia allows audiences to interact with the radio programs. The audio is received via a regular analog FM radio whereas graphics and text are streamed over a data connection. It will be available to Hutch and Airtel subscribers who have compatible Nokia handsets."

Visual Radio???

[steveo777]

How is this not television? I read TFA and there's really no information. So as far as I can tell, it's just radio that lets you watch their commercials? Can someone clarify if this isn't just radio plus advertisements you can see? Is there a /.er that has or has seen this?

Otherwise it's just MTV without the 'V'.

Re:Visual Radio???

[justshawnf]

FTA: "Visual radio offers the perfect way out by allowing users to download the song if they like it and also get additional information about the album / movie on the screen." Sounds similar to the display system that satellite radio already has. Show me the song and artist on the display while it's playing. This system is for your cell phone and allows more options.

This already exists.. minus graphics

[jjthegreat]

I forget the exact name of the protocol, but for years now, radio stations in my area have encoded a short message in the audiostream. It shows up on the receiver as a short message of a sort either advertising the station name and/or the current song that is playing. Quite handy at times.

Re:This already exists.. minus graphics

[displaced80]

That's RDS.

It's been around here (the UK) for about 15 years if not more.

It also provides services such as searching for stations based on genre, and automatic switch-over to channels when they broadcast travel news (road updates, etc). When the news about the travel finishes, the radio switches back to your previous station or (if you were listening to one) a CD -- all on standard FM. This is great for car radios, all of which have featured RDS for what seems like forever.

I wonder if DAB Digital Radio has similar abilities?

Re:uh...

[Coneasfast]

No. It's not. It's radio that allows you to get additional info about the song. I agree it's not the most advanced piece of technology, but you can't just simplify it as being 'TV'.

It's also interactive, while TV is just streaming.

Hint, hint: RTFA :)

Re:This already exists.. minus graphics

[westlake]

I wonder if DAB Digital Radio has similar abilities?

It does: Digital Audio Broadcasting [wikipedia.org]

This is about try #4 for this concept

[Animats]

This is about try #4 for this concept. In the 1980s, there was "Silent Radio", which drove LED signs with text messages. These used to show up in bars and restaurants, so you could watch the news and sports scores scroll by. Then there was sending song info on FM subcarriers of broadcast stations, which many car radios understand. XM satellite radio has a fancier system for doing the same thing, as does the on-band-in-channel digital broadcast system.

The main feature of this new system seems to be ads. Yawn.

Indian capitalism:

[OriginalArlen]

Capitalism, with Indian characteristics.

There was a very interesting piece on BBC Radio's "From Our Own Correspondent", by a journalist who lived in Beijing for four years, then found himself in Delhi for six months. At the end of the six months he's on a flight back to Beijing. The flight leaves at 3am, the ticket agent tells him "Yes, it really is 3am - the airport's too small, so many flights leave at night." Sure enough he arrives to find Delhi airport a heaving mass of people, with that implies in Indian cities. After takeoff he fell into conversation with the Indian passenger sitting next to him. "Have you been to Beijing before?" "Yes, I lived there for four years." "Great! So tell me, what can I expect?" "I think you can expect to be surprised."

Sure enough, they arrive at the brand new, huge, ultramodern airport (OK, it may have been Shanghai...) and his Indian travelling companion's jaw hits the tarmac. No heaving crowds... no beggars,... picks up a car straightfowardly and soon finds himself on the zooming along 8 lane motorway back to town...

It should still be up on bbc.co.uk/FOOC, let's look for a link.,.. Well wouldn't you know it, the full text is here [bbc.co.uk] and will expose my summary above as hopelessly inaccurate, but do check it out anyway, it's great :)