The European Space agency has proposed a satellite radio broadcast system for the continent.
It differs from the current US satellite radio system in two ways. First, by using existing satellite transponders rather than new builds and secondly, the audio is designed to be time-shifted from the outset.
Rather than making its way straight to the speakers, the programmes are stored in memory on-board the receiver. This means the whole system is much more like a digital video recorder.
If this is successful, I’m hoping the same will be done for at least one broadcast TV service, to save the large amount of bandwidth wasted repeating programmes on different channels and at different times.
