Quote:
Originally Posted by Rillington
Thank you for that reply Nodrog.
I recall seeing an edition of Engineering Announcements on YouTube which featured AM stereo hut as you say it never really got beyond testing. I never saw AM stereo receivers being available, and thinking back the best way to introduce AM stereo would probably have been through car radios.
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When you consider costs only go down through mass production. No other countries in Europe were testing it, let alone promoting it. Who would pay a premium to upgrade their car stereo when a far superior transmission method (FM) was already available & fitted to the cars already. The system was also never tested on national AM network, where phasing between adjacent transmitters on the same frequency could have been a problem. The BBC have always synchronised their transmissions across their AM networks so that audio sync & carrier interference was kept to a minimum. The national commercials have never done this, which is very noticeable in fringe areas. Indeed if you listen to TalkSport at night, even turning a directional radio away from the good signal, you will usually hear out of sync audio coming from adjacent transmitters. It was even more noticeable with Virgin & then Absolute.
Also with more expensive kit going in at transmission sites, there would have been inevitable increases to the IBA rental charges & therefore operating costs for the stations involved.