Review of the Pure Highway in-car DAB portable

Posted by Dan 

The folks at Pure Radio were kind enough to lend me one of their Highway radios. I was very excited. What is it? It’s an in car DAB radio that you stick to your windscreen like a portable sat nav. It receives DAB radio stations and then re-broadcasts them to your normal car radio via FM.

 

Why would anyone want to do this? Ok, it’s not going to excite Mr and Mrs Radio 3 Golden Ears but it does offer a whole load of extra stations. 

 

So is it any good? Let's get the audio quality issue out of the way. Now, the car is not the best place to judge (or experience) audio quality. I carried out a simple A-B test flicking between Radio 1 FM and Radio 1 DAB (via FM). FM sounded fuller and richer. Nonetheless, to me, DAB (via FM) sounded acceptable. Radio 5 Live sounded way better via the Highway than via AM. Ditto Virgin.

 

Where the Highway really appeals is in clarity of reception. There is no fade as I go under bridges like you get with AM and I can listen to the Today 0810 interview without the annoying hiss/click and RDS retune I get on FM as I whizz past Fleet services on the M3.

 

My daily commute takes me around the M25 and down the M3. Not once on this journey do I get any burble or loss of signal. Neither do I have to retune the FM broadcast. This is pretty incredible because, as you can't actually see from the picture, I haven’t mounted the antenna to the window properly. Instead it is just thrown down on the seat next to me.

 

So it’s simple things that contribute to the Highway’s appeal. Simple things like this: normally I can’t get a decent 5 Live signal once I leave the M25. With the Highway I can. I like listening to 5 Live so this is good.

It's also simple things that provide draw backs. If you are thinking of getting a Highway, ask yourself: can I really be bothered with the faff of sticking, attaching, plugging and unplugging every time I get in the car? 

 

This is turning in to a long post so I’m going to cut to the chase and write a list of things I do like, things I don’t like and then a few things I’d like to see in a Highway II.

 

I do like:

• Excellent, clear reception
  
• Choice of stations
  
• It takes batteries, is portable and you can plug headphones in to it for out of car listening
  
• It has a line in and a line out – useful for plugging in iPods etc. Why don’t all car stereos have this as standard?!
  

 

I don’t like

• Faff! It needs to be set up every time I get in the car (I remove it from my parked car because I park on the street and I worry about disappointing thieves who want a sat nav)
  
• The batteries aren’t charged while it is plugged into the car
  
• Although it’s smaller than I thought it would be...it’s possibly a bit big
  
• One of the oft-quoted advantages of DAB is ‘ease of tuning’ – but the Highway is not as easy to tune as my built in stereo with station presets
  

 

I would change:

Top of my wish list for the Highway II would be an in-car "docking station" as opposed to the current fixing bracket. The difference would be that the docking station would have permanently set up power and antenna connections (possibly line in/out too). Faff would minimised as you only dock the device once rather than fix it to the bracket and then plug in the various wires etc ... so I'd use it on short journeys too.

 

Battery charging and a home docking station would be nice additions to the range.

 

I like the idea of a big red "random" button which you could hit when you are bored . I think it fits the driving use case nicely (but it might just suit me and my short attention span).

Depressing Epiphany for the Day

Posted by Peter

Interesting article on the Today Programme this morning. Basically the economy is knackered but Evan Davis, the BBC's Economics Editor, made a statement about macro economics which pretty much sums up where I'm at in my life right now:

'Probably a lot of us now have to adjust our expectations. It's not the case that the good years are about to arrive. Those were the good years.'

I think I've just got to come to terms with the fact that Moore's law will never apply to me (except perhaps in the inverse).

Passion

Posted by Loz

Don't they get it? I don't care about their passion. 6 interviewees today (for a frankly shitty job any idiot could - and some idiot will - end up doing) and every one of them whined on about their passion. 

I DON'T BELIEVE YOU and if I did, aghhh! sincerity is the way scarier option than cynicism. "I'm just so passionate about blah". Are you? I DON'T CARE. Just tell me you'll turn up on time, don't gibber too much, ideally don't make me feel old by turning up looking oh so fashionable ... and then THE JOB'S YOURS.

What is it with passion right now? I blame XFactor. I'll have weeping and violin sob stories in interviews next "and then my hamster died..."  I thought you Englishers were frigid socks in bed, wet fish, stiff upper lip, limp everything else types. It's all getting very Californian.

Dan P - I get it now, letting off that steam on my blog would have upset someone with sacking powers and it would be me the interviewee. The cat has been relieved of my rantings for tonight and is very grateful :)

and we kick off

Posted by Dan

i've got a problem with blogs in that i start off all labrador chasing a stick and then quickly run out of steam. after that it's all very up and down. i get busy. i get lazy. a very common story. for this reason i'm re-entering the fray with a little help from some friends. i'm hoping that this blog's multiple authors will pick up the slack when i'm in the midst of an off patch and inspire me when i'm in a purple patch.

so this is a blog with multiple authors to prop each other up. the other reason for multiple authors came from a discussion i had with peter. peter is annoyingly successful in everything he does so it follows that peter runs a very successful blog. you might have read it. i won't link to it 'cos that blows the whole point. the whole point for peter is that his blog is so damn successful it doesn't feel like his anymore. he can't say what he wants to say. his spleen can't be vented. people know who he works for. half of his company look to his blog for strategic direction. he watches his words, holds back. what was a relieving outlet is now cripplingly constipated. sorry peter, you put it much better than me...post about it. so this is his part time blog where he can anonymously say what he wants to say without getting sacked/divorced/ostracized

the rest of our little line up liked the idea too. both L and B, the other two initial posters, have established blogs but thought this one could be a good playground for the kind of unformulated, rough ideas they would worry might undermine the credibility of their main blog. i am not mad keen on anonymity generally but if it means this blog is rawer and edgier for it, that's fine by me.

So we are four: Dan; Peter; L; B and we'll be mostly blogging about tech and media stuff. I think that covers everything...just one unresolved issue: 'peter' as a pseudonym???

Posted by Dan