NEW DELHI: Even as Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer Jawhar Sircar feels there is need to promote FM, which is a terrestrial technology since affordable digital sets are not available, All India Radio (AIR) continues to experiment with DRM in different parts of the country.

A shopping site has also commenced sale of the first India-built DRM set.

The High Power Transmitter of AIR in Panaji (Bambolim) has begun transmissions through a DRM digital receiver made by Avion, AV-DR-1401.

This has been locally acquired by the station and is used for monitoring DRM of AIR Panaji. It supports Digital Audio output, Journaline data, Program recording, EPG (Electronic Programme Guide), MOT Slide show etc.

AIR Panaji - 1297 KHz - 100 KW – is broadcasting on both analogue and DRM mode in nearby frequencies: analogue frequency: 1287 kHz whereas the simulcast DRM Frequency was 1297 kHz.

AIR Mumbai is testing in DRM mode on 1044 kHz and the Asmita channel is available as simulcast on DRM mode at 568 kHz (558 kHz, Analogue).

AIR Jabalpur is also commencing DRM tests next month while AIR Begaluru DRM transmission was clearly heard in Russia.

Radio Kashmir in AIR Jammu earlier this month started simulcast transmission of its primary service programmes with AM on 990 kHz & DRM on 1000 kHz.

AIR Jammu commenced with a discussion on what DRM means to a radio listener, in which DDG (Engineering) Radio Kashmir, Jammu K.K.Singh along with Shailesh Raina explained DRM.
Amazon India has for the first time commenced sale of DRM sets on its Mobile App. The set is made in India by Communications System Inc (Avion) which is the first company in India to manufacture a DRM receiver, one of the world’s largest radio digitisation rolls out countrywide.

The DRM digital radio receiver AV-DR-1401 is now available on Amazon India. The receiver offers the full set of features including: DRM/AM/FM Stereo Reception; MW/SW/FM Bands; DRM Journaline Data; DRM Scrolling Text; DRM Program Recording; Auto Scan and Manual Tuning; DRM Emergency Warning; Unicode Character Support; 100 Station Memory; Music/Photos playback from Micro SD Card; Multiple Language Support; Realtime Clock; MOT Slideshow; Service Mode; DRM AFS and Battery Indicator.