NASB urges development of simple, inexpensive DRM receivers

At its 2009 annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee on May 8, the National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters (NASB) adopted a resolution encouraging radio receiver manufacturers ‘to develop and produce as a high priority simple to operate, inexpensive DRM receivers.”

The NASB resolution applauded the efforts of the DRM Consortium and manufacturers for introducing several models of excellent receivers to the market, but it added “many of the currently available receivers are priced beyond what the market can bear in Africa, Asia, and other countries outside North America and Europe.”

Therefore, asserted the NASB, “there is an urgent need for the availability in the marketplace of simple to operate, inexpensive DRM HF/MW capable receivers.”

Allan McGuirl Jr of Galcom International, a Canadian company that makes fix-tuned shortwave receivers for many religious broadcasters, announced at the same meeting that its engineers are working to develop a low-cost, no frills DRM receiver, although no details are available yet.

Adil Mina of Continental Electronics gave a general update on DRM and the receiver situation at the joint meeting of the NASB and the DRM USA group. Technical consultant Dr Donald Messer gave the group an overview of the propagation experiments that he plans to undertake with the Digital Aurora Radio Technologies regional DRM project in Alaska.

Source: Media Network, NASB