Wouldn’t it be possible just to replace the valve transmitter with a digitised version that sent out the same signal?
Comment on Warning RTS electricity meters in 300,000 homes could stop working
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 1 week agoThe issue isn’t the funds, it’s the practicality. The transmitter needs two obsolete valves to operate, and the BBC bought the entire world’s supply in around 2010, which still amounted to less than ten. When one of the final pair blows it’s the end regardless of money.
tenebrisnox@feddit.uk 1 week ago
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 1 week ago
It would cost millions to design and build it and, as it would be the only one in the world ever built, it would again rely on bespoke components, for a service the BBC has been wanting to close for nearly 20 years anyway.
tenebrisnox@feddit.uk 6 days ago
Surely cheaper than enforcing mass installations. (Although it’s customers doubtlessly picking up this cost.)
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 6 days ago
The installations have to happen. Why spend hundreds of millions of licence fee payer’s money the BBC doesn’t have on a temporary kicking of the can?
tal@lemmy.today 1 week ago
Hmm.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Droitwich_Transmitting_Station
en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_longwave_radio_broadca…
According to this, there are only three other longwave transmitting stations in the world at least as high-power as this station: ome in each of Morocco, Algeria, and Poland. So I guess that it’s a pretty esoteric sort of hardware.