
The NICAM Codec replacement project - dtf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt-notice-a-thing-dot-dot-dot
======
linker3000
That's some decent BBC engineering from a team that works away quietly in the
background and just makes things happen, or keep happening. I don't work in
that field, but like many people in my profession (Systems and networking), I
also tend to be invisible until something breaks, and then I am the fall guy
if it's not fixed within a heartbeat.

/I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s technology
had been replaced with a Raspberry Pi!

~~~
flurpitude
"I was half expecting the article to outline how a box full of 80s technology
had been replaced with a Raspberry Pi!"

The Parallella computer, which looks a lot like a Raspberry Pi, has a Xilinx
Zynq chip similar to the one in the BBC's new codec. So it's almost true.

~~~
duskwuff
Here's the exact board that's in there:

[http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-
soc...](http://store.digilentinc.com/zedboard-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc-
development-board/)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It is a bit odd that they shoehorned in an existing commercial board rather
than just put the FPGA on the main board or even designed a custom daughter
card if upgradability was a concern. As it is, they are now tied to the
availability of boards with the same board-to-board connector and a similar
form factor.

~~~
Sanddancer
They used a commercial board that implements the Vita 57 bus, which is the
standard way to interface with an FPGA [1]. So if they need replacements down
the road, they just have to get one that implements the same standard, and
standards for industrial equipment tend to stick around for a considerable
amount of time.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card)

------
king_magic
This is one of the most interesting things I've read on HN in weeks. Awesome
to see this kind of success story, and it's super fascinating to get insight
into how radio works behind the scenes.

I'll be honest, I had no idea all of this goes into radio. I thought there
were just, err, towers?, that broadcast... radio waves, and that was kind of
it? I mean, I knew on some level it had to be a tad bit more complex than
that, but you never see or hear about it.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Well, I'd assume that the reason for radio silence (ahem) on broadcasting tech
would be various NDAs.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It has been claimed that a literal radio silence of BBC could cause a nuclear
strike.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4)
(C-f nuclear)

~~~
elbigbad
Here's the article it links to, pretty interesting in and of itself:

[http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-
manchest...](http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-
news/radio-silence-puts-subs-on-nuclear-1157478)

"Secret orders to the captains [of the nuclear subs] say that these deadly
instructions are to be opened and acted upon only if the submarine cannot tune
in to Radio 4’s Today programme for a given number of consecutive days. That
is a reliable sign that Britain has been hit by a nuclear attack."

~~~
msh
Que new James Bond plot, the bad guy disables radio 4 to launch nuclear
armageddon - Bond in race against time to find the spare parts needed to
restore the radio.

------
pjc50
I've always been impressed by the BBC tech people I met, doing a high-quality
job in an extremely bureaucratic neophobic environment.

 _As part of making the unit, we had to ensure it complied with all the
relevant European directives so that it could be CE marked. We had the Codec
tested for both safety and EMC._

Interesting, I thought this wasn't required for internal use; probably the BBC
corporate structure means it no longer counts as "internal".

On "Radio Teleswitch":

 _[Droitwich] transmitter uses a pair of obsolete metre-long valves which are
no longer manufactured anywhere in the world.[1]

In October 2011, the BBC admitted that the Droitwich transmitter, including
Radio 4's longwave service and Radio Teleswitch, will cease to operate when
one of the last two valves breaks, and no effort would be made to manufacture
more nor to install a replacement longwave transmitter._

This is like the Domesday Book (1980s interactive multimedia system on
Laserdisc): high-tech and sui generis at the time it was built, but eventually
uniquely obsolete.

The BBC itself is very much a valve-and-laserdisc organisation in a Google
world. We huddle round the warm glow, concerned that eventually some vital
element will give out due to lack of money and the whole enterprise will give
up.

Periodically someone comes up with the idea of shutting down analog FM radio.
This is politically inconceivable as half the country has ancient radios that
were tuned to Radio 4 in 1967 and have never played any other station (an
exaggeration, but only a small one).

~~~
mmosta
CE carries a number of subclasses that can be self-certified.

With respect to EMC and safety it is absolutely in their best interest to
conform, not merely out of a bureaucratic obligation but out of a need to
minimize any interference from or to other equipment housed nearby.

Radio Teleswitch stuff is cool.

------
darkr
> In addition, the signalling information for switching Economy 7 electricity
> meters is carried on Radio 4 LW.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch)

Fascinating stuff.

~~~
comboy
Indeed

    
    
         to allow electricity suppliers to switch large numbers of electricity meters between different tariffs by broadcasting an embedded signal in broadcast radio signals
    

I kind of heavily doubt these are signed broadcasts that cannot be replayed..

~~~
Piskvorrr
Something akin to this? [http://gpsworld.com/wirelessinfrastructuregoing-
against-time...](http://gpsworld.com/wirelessinfrastructuregoing-against-
time-13278/)

I believe that operating a rogue transmitter in a licensed band would get you
located rather quickly - even though the tech itself may not necessarily be
secure, there are other enforcement mechanisms.

~~~
leoedin
It depends how strong it is.

The obvious benefit for a malicious person would be to set their meter to the
cheaper tariff by replaying the signal.

It wouldn't need to be a powerful signal - if you were broadcasting right next
to the meter even a few milliwatts would be enough. Build a faraday cage
around the meter to be sure! Just remember to dismantle it before the meter
reader comes round.

~~~
Piskvorrr
That would also disable the legit switching, no?

------
jhallenworld
I can see from the photos that it's using this board:
[http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard](http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard)

I'm surprised BBC is not only willing to make custom hardware, but custom RTL
design as well.

I'm curious what the failure rate of the FPGA will be, I mean they are more
susceptible to soft errors than CPUs or ASICs. Maybe BBC will fund making a
custom ASIC :-) Well I see two systems, maybe they are redundant that way.

Why not make the project open source? Put it up on github.

~~~
doc_holliday
I would doubt an ASIC would be worth it, giving the number of organisations
needing this CODEC would be relatively low. An ASIC run is expensive and even
more expensive if there is subsequent error in the design.

FPGA makes sense for this application. It can always be re-flashed.

~~~
jhallenworld
They should at least enable the SEU mitigation circuit, which repeatedly
performs CRC of the configuration data. Have it reboot if it detects an error.
Maybe they already do this.

I checked, Zynq-7000 has this capability:
[http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-
property/sem.htm...](http://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-
property/sem.html)

------
jacquesm
Very nice work. What is the rationale behind doing a bespoke design rather
than sharing the development cost with all the European broadcasters, is NICAM
unique to the UK? What do other broadcasters use for similar services?

~~~
ajdlinux
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAM)
seems to indicate that while NICAM is used by a few broadcasters here and
there, it was initially developed by the BBC, and it's no longer as widespread
in Europe as it once was.

~~~
gpvos
See makomk's comment nearby: NICAM's use for stereo sound with analogue TV
broadcasts is not the same as the use for the BBC's internal audio
distribution system.

------
rplnt
Somewhat related, a few years ago I saw a video of a guy starting up a "live
TV studio" from 70s/80s I think at his cottage/cabin. It was quite
interesting, unfortunately not in English. I'll try to find it anyway and
update this post.

edit: Here's the video I had in mind
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51F7zNWqlgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51F7zNWqlgM)
I guess it's boring without understanding the audio :)

There's more on his channel

------
daveguy
I appreciate a good success story about major transitions / upgrades / process
changes / etc. Those situations where there is usually SOME glitch and you
have to engineer the hell out of it to get a perfect transition. The only
reference to testing was "We had the Codec tested for both safety and EMC."
Was that in house or external? Surely there was some major transition testing
low power broadcast tests, etc to make sure everything went smoothly. Or did
they just get really lucky? Seems like there's more story to this.

------
CaseFlatline
Truly an impressive feat:

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
\- Futurama

------
ssapkota
Thats awesome! People easily overlook these things. They hardly realise that
its same as upgrading an aircraft in midair.

------
jnbiche
I read the article with interest, waiting with anticipation for them to
announce the resulting hardware and software had all been open sourced. And
then...nothing.

I'm surprised, I thought in the UK these kinds of taxpayer-funded projects
were required to be open source.

In any case, it's too bad. I was not familiar with the NICAM codec up to now,
but I'm sure that software and hardware plans would have been very useful to
some developing countries, many of whom apparently also use NICAM in their
state-owned broadcast companies.

~~~
toyg
_> I thought in the UK these kinds of taxpayer-funded projects were required
to be open source._

There is no law, afaik, and even the BBC has commercial interests. iPlayer has
never been open-source, for example.

The BBC has obligations in terms of content reach and content quality, but
they're not particularly bound to specific ways of achieving those targets
(beyond some stuff about not abusing their position in commercial terms).
Actual engineers are mostly pro-OSS and try hard to push for it internally,
but they have legal obstacles similar to any other company.

------
thrownaway2424
Will be interested to read the followup article in the year 2048 regarding
whether these new boxes lasted as long as their predecessors.

~~~
mikecarlton
Great idea. I tried to set a reminder, but my calendar only goes to 2038.

~~~
i336_

      unsigned int epoch;

------
ihsw
Honest question -- why are they using PATA ribbon cables in the new NICAM
codec box? Surely SATA would be more reliable and easier to administer.

~~~
mseebach
They most likely aren't ATA cables, as in, they aren't used to connect hard
drives -- so it's not obvious that whatever purpose they serve could be served
by a serial alternative.

If you look at the photo of the back of the unit, you see a lot of very wide
D-Sub sockets that these ribbon cables seem to connect to, so the unit is
meant to connect to a bunch of other things. Actually, the need for these
sockets seem to account for most of the size of the unit, the box appears
pretty empty.

~~~
logfromblammo
If you're designing your own boards with ribbon cables connecting them, I
imagine that you could save a lot of money on parts by using 40-pin connectors
with PATA cables--we're talking entire cents, for each of the 2 units.

Also, I'm willing to bet a place like the BBC has boxes filled with spare PATA
cables and 16MB SIMMs and 8 GB internal hard drives, and maybe even a room
with a bunch of dusty 17" CRT monitors in it. And sometimes, rather than fill
out a purchase order, one of the engineers descends into the hoard, returns
with a cobbled-together frankenserver, and installs NetBSD on it.

So they might actually be PATA _cables_ using PATA _connectors_ , but the
signal between cards is not ATA.

~~~
pjc50
Exactly. And it has to connect to the same system as the original 1980s units,
so whatever protocol it's using will be old. DB25-serial? SCSI? IEE-488? It
would have been nice to have a few technical details on the system.

Random BBC-related anecdote: the Cambridge University computer lab had, up to
1999, an info TV in the lobby driven by a 20 year old BBC micro in Teletext
mode. This was apparently because it had an extremely powerful video output
(more so than modern hardware) and the display was at the other end of 50m
coaxial cable.

~~~
fanf2
The display was slaved via coax to, I think, four or five CRTs around the
site. I don't know if there was a separate amplifier/splitter or not.

It lasted a few years past 1999 - it was still in service for some time after
I returned in 2002.

------
gpvos
What I missed in the article is whether there was an audible glitch at 4:15
AM.

------
acheron
Really interesting article, but terrible clickbaity title. I wouldn't have
read it if there weren't so many positive comments on HN already.

It could work if there were a subtitle. "35 million people didn’t notice a
thing: BBC Radio's NICAM Codec replacement project". I dunno. But it is (or
should be) very important that the title actually informs you as to what the
article is about. "35M people didn't notice a thing" doesn't tell you anything
at all.

Edit: Upon further consideration I may have been a little harsh. This is
really a blog entry more than an "article" per se, and I suppose that's fine
for a blog post title. The problem comes when we link to it from somewhere
else, e.g. HN; we need the additional context.

~~~
jmtd
Perhaps the title-writer has been infected by the BBC news editorial policy.
They seem to be turning clickbait titles into a fine art, combined with
renaming articles so you think it's a new piece on the same story, but turns
out you've already read it. (If you read BBC News at all that is: my wife
still does, I gave it up years ago and haven't looked back.)

I love many aspects of the BBC but sadly not their news output anymore.

(Sorry I realise this has very little to do with the R&D article.)

~~~
thorin
I used to think the BBC news was definitive 5-10 years ago. I'm not sure what
has changed? Have the recent governments and their pressure on the license fee
really made the difference or is it just my perception?

When I was young the BBC was always seen as pretty left wing (it certainly
wasn't at it's inception though) it seems pretty conservative (and
sensationalist) right now.

~~~
vidarh
Both sides of the political spectrum regularly complains about the BBC being
biased towards the other side. It's the best evidence that whatever bias there
is either is minor or short-lived.

In my eyes, the biggest problem with the BBC isn't bias, but that they're
terrified of seeming too biased, and as a result they're wishy-washy in ways
that ironically makes them seem biased.

E.g. the left will accuse them of being right wing because they don't write in
more critical terms about the governments willingness to deal with the Saudis,
while the right will accuse them of a left wing bias for not writing in more
critical terms about Chavez, and so on. Similarly they're often accused of
bias for not reporting something, or very carefully reporting something, that
either side believe to be fact, but where there's not (yet) actual firm
evidence. Of course, if done "against" just one side, this too would be actual
bias, but the BBC appears to be pretty consistent about it.

So we're left with reporting that is rarely very biased, but often exceedingly
unsatisfying for everyone.

I'm not saying there's no bias - I don't believe that would be possible. But I
do think that the allegations of bias against the BBC tend to be wildly
exaggerated.

~~~
newjersey
There was a comment here a few months ago which mentioned a term. I have
forgotten the term since but it effectively described a situation where an
expert in subject matter foo reads an article about foo in a well-regarded
news source (like say the Economist) which is either pretty incorrect or
pretty biased and then the subject matter expert goes "wow they know nothing
about foo" and then turns the page and reads about another topic let's say bar
(or maybe let's say Middle East politics) which our subject matter expert
knows little or nothing about and then our subject matter expert says "wow,
this news source is very insightful".

If we read about articles on key escrow or actually anything about
cryptography and surveillance in general, we will find it hard to see BBC is
accurate (neutral is not the same as accurate because to be neutral about
anything -- and here comes Godwin's law -- involves saying that there was a
legitimate excuse governments to act in a way that is not beneficial to
millions of its citizens. Anti-terrorism rhetoric is way overboard and news
outlets like BBC are fully on the bandwagon (although thankfully much less so
compared to CNN, Fox News, and other low lives). Honestly, I think our fear of
terrorists has caused more damage to the world economy than all the "acts of
terror" combined. Ordinary people should not be afraid or even mindful of
"acts of terror" in their daily life any more than they need to be afraid or
mindful of a meteor shower hitting them in the head. Everyone goes over the
top with "security precautions" because they don't want to be seen as doing
nothing. The point here is BBC does not preserve this neutrality at all. I bet
even CNN and Fox could do better if they were organizations that has their
funding guaranteed, as opposed to being under the mercy of its advertisers.
Sorry but what BBC does is nothing exemplary for someone in its shoes.

~~~
jameshart
It's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, a name coined by Michael Crichton:
[http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/07/the-gell-mann-
amne...](http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/07/the-gell-mann-amnesia-
effect.html)

------
javi2601
good !!!!!!!!

------
TheAppGuy
Top on HN, but I can see why. The title tempts you to click through. :)

