91av

A CUT-PRICE aerial that will allow people to listen to digital radio on their
computers goes on sale next month. The Wavefinder, which is being marketed by
Psion, the British pioneer of hand-held computers, will cost
£300—nearly half the price of a digital radio tuner.

The BBC began the world’s first regular digital audio broadcasts in 1995, and
several commercial broadcasters have followed suit. But consumers have shown
little interest in digital radio because receivers cost so much.

Two years ago, the British company Radioscape proposed fitting a radio tuner
inside a PC and using the power of the central processing unit (CPU) to decode
the digital audio signals.
(91av, 30 May 1998, p 20).
Psion bought a licence for the system but changed the concept. “You can’t expect
consumers to open up a PC,” says Geoff Kell, Psion’s commercial director. “And
the power supply inside a PC is not clean enough for a hi-fi device.”

The Wavefinder is a smart aerial that includes a radio tuner and a digital
signal processor. The aerial simply plugs into the back of your PC. The aerial
does 70 per cent of the processing work and the CPU just finishes the job. This
has two advantages. First, because the CPU only carries out a small amount of
signal processing, distortion is negligible. And secondly, tuning into your
favourite radio station will make no difference to the PC’s speed.

Your PC will display the different radio stations as icons, so clicking on an
icon will produce the sound. Users can also convert the signal into the MP3
format and record it on their hard disc.

Web pages can also be broadcast on digital radio. The BBC is testing the
transmission of online news pages on digital radio and other broadcasters are
expected to follow suit. The Wavefinder has a system of embedding active URL
links in station labels. “You can see the business potential,” says Kell. “Click
here to buy online if you like what you hear.”