DAB Mix-Up... or Confused Continuity?

Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
9.45 this morning, Radio 4: "Now, on Long Wave and DAB, the morning service. On FM, the book of the week continues..."

I was listening on DAB in the car. I could swear what I heard was the book of the week - I don't think the morning service was a dramatisation of Northanger Abbey.
 
I think I've come across this myself - but Book of the Week is always on DAB.
The Radio Times is somewhat ambiguous in its presentation of what will be on the various wavelengths - the service will be on LW, but I have no LW receiver, only FM and DAB, so I wouldn't expect to hear it
 
On DAB I have seen "Parlamnt" [sic] as a linked channel to "BBC Radio 4", often displaying "Station off-air".(cf. BBC R5SX and BBC R5L) I suspect there may be a linked "Service" channel that only exists for the duration of the morning service. You probably need to re-tune your DAB to the linked R4 station. Note that the bitrates often change when these channels are broadcasting.
 
For completeness:
I listened to R4 DAB this morning (on a Pure Evoke-1) and at about 9:44 the bitrate display changed from 128 kbps stereo to 80 kbps mono. Then...
Black Hole said:
"Now, on Long Wave and DAB, the morning service.".
Click to expand...
Turning the tuning knob I found "<<?DService" had appeared. Tuning to that channel gave "Daily Service" on the display at a bitrate of 64 kbps mono.
After 10.00 "Station off-air" appears when tuning into DService and the radio tunes to BBC Radio 4 instead (now at 128 kbps stereo).
Therefore, the BBC did give out the correct information.
 
That's curious. I accept the Daily Service was available on DAB, but I certainly wouldn't have known I needed to retune - so the information was useless (to me, and I would imagine a fair number of others).
 
It isn't obvious and should be explained properly. In that respect, the information is useless, but not wrong.
If you were listening on FM it would be obvious that you need to retune to LW. The BBC need a form of words that informs DAB listeners that they also need to retune.
 
I happened to be in the car today, when In Our Time ended at 9.45 and "now on LW and digital: the morning service", so when DAB continued with the book of the week I went looking for the digital version or the morning service - and found it one click up the "tuning" dial with the ident "DSERVICE" (presumably Daily Service).

On the 10am pips, the transmission finished dead and the channel vanished. My receiver reverted to the R4 stream.
 
We have at least one bus service that terminates at two different locations. One is a church. Giving them totally different identifiers never occurs to the operators.
 
Black Hole said:
I happened to be in the car today, when In Our Time ended at 9.45 and "now on LW and digital: the morning service", so when DAB continued with the book of the week I went looking for the digital version or the morning service - and found it one click up the "tuning" dial with the ident "DSERVICE" (presumably Daily Service).

On the 10am pips, the transmission finished dead and the channel vanished. My receiver reverted to the R4 stream.
Click to expand...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/faqs/help-receiving/digital_radio_Radio4LW_5LX

So unless you store it when it is transmitting, you will not find it in the alphabetical list of stations?
 
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