Sorry if its been mentioned, but dab being only 3 letters, I can't check for it!

Ford to set DAB standard

looks like we might be able to upgrade!!

Yeah ford already got the upgrade ready our area manager mentioned this a few months back to us. This upgrade on the car also may mean like on new focus and cmax that Bluetooth usb may become standard and a sat nav may be an option.

Until DAB gets widespread in cars DAB will never get off the ground IMHO. Plus quality needs to improve, which it should if bandwidth freed up by the digital TV switchover is allocated to it.

digital radio would be brill if ya could upgrade it, signal does my head in so proper clear reception all over place would be minnnnttttt

I would love DAB built in to my car. Lets hope ford charge a sensible price for the upgrade. Maybe via some trade in scheme where they keep your old one!

They don't replace your radio they have designed a bolt on for it. Uses your existing radio

I hope it would be a better reception than the DABs in my house, they are very inconsistent at times and often have to revert to FM for certain stations.

At this moment in time, anyone thinking of buying or up-grading to DAB (in car) for quality reasons should think twice.

There seems to be a thought process that thinks digital = quality. Not always so. It depends on the bandwidth available, the digital format used and the power output from the transmitting station.

DAB radio signals are "compressed", so that lots of stations can be squeezed into the available bandwidth. Because of this compression, some stations on DAB are not in as good a quality as on FM. In particular, the BBC stations are transmitted on a low bit rate to squeeze their range of stations into the available space.

Making matters worse will be the fact that more local stations covering smaller areas will appear meaning the station you are listening to will "drop" much quicker than at present.

And a final thought, coming soon is DAB+, which will replace the existing DAB format in use in the UK. If you're thinking of buying a DAB radio, consider one that supports DAB+, or can be upgraded via a software update.

Like buying a TV (Plasma then LCD now LED), it is best to wait for a while and see what happens over the next few years.

I know what you mean regarding the quality of some stations. My second favourite station had its bitrate reduced to 112kbps last year and it just sounds awful. However 1 xtra and KISS still sound ok at 128k. I guess its like the radio equivalent of digital TV. They went for quantity instead of quality !

Not too fussed about waiting and more especially if this upgrade is cheap. I only plan to have the car for maybe another year or two.

Living in the hills but close to Manchester some local FM signals can suffer from a lot of reflection and the hills take enough strength out of them to make listening on a portable or indoor radio a bit hissy and fuzzy.

DAB provides a nice clean stable signal around here.