European Space Agency to launch satellite radio with PVR features

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 25 January 2007 20:59

Opinion and Analysis

Want to pause, rewind and timeshift live radio in your car? The ESA (European Space Agency) is developing a new satellite radio system that uses existing satellites and needs no new transmission infrastructure on the ground – but it’s only in prototype stage.

Using a cache, be it an automotive rated hard drive that can withstand the rough and tumble of the road, or flash memory that is effectively impervious to shock, ESA’s new satellite radio is claimed to be much cheaper to implement than the Sirius and XM satellite radio systems in the US.

Those systems need additional infrastructure on the ground to receive transmissions in some areas, driving up the already high cost of the services.

A report at Daily Tech, linked above, quotes ESA as saying that: “The car radio of the future works in a similar manner to a satellite receiver for television channels. However, the car has no large dish antenna on the roof, but a specially designed mobile antenna, flattened so that it can be built almost invisibly into the bodywork. The antenna receives signals in the Ku frequency band used by communications satellites”.

Instead of requiring a small satellite dish to be affixed to the roof, ESA envisions flat satellite dishes that can be integrated into the roof of the car, and effectively hidden. ESA also claim you won’t lose reception when travelling through tunnels, although it’s unclear exactly how that will work.

While car manufacturers have expressed interest, only BMW have built the first prototype, signaling much more work still yet to be done before ESA’s satellite radio dreams are a reality.

ESA are also able to use existing communications satellites to transmit the signal, saving on the enormous cost of launching new satellites into orbit.

So while no precise start date is planned for consumers to be able to receive the service, nor is there any indication as to whether or not the service will be offered in the US, the ability for all radios to pause, rewind and replay live radio will one day be reality for all, and while it certainly won’t set the world on fire in the short term, the fact that it’s planned to be offered as a standard feature one day is definitely a good thing.