The Titus II portable SDR
(Source: Radio World via Richard Langley)
Titus SDR, a division of PantronX, says the Titus II multi-standard digital radio receiver is ready for production.
The consumer software-defined radio digital receiver platform, which is the result of collaboration between Titus SDR/Patron X, Jasmin-Infotech, TWR, and Fraunhofer IIS, supports multi-standard radio reception, including DRM, DAB and DAB+ and core data applications. The system is based on a custom Android tablet platform, featuring multipoint touch, WiFi/Bluetooth and stereo sound.[…]
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Hi Thomas! It’s been at least 3+ years that the Titus II has been talked about and it appears nothing is ever going to happen. Yet, the Titus II page on the HFCC website is still up. Have you caught wind of any new info on this?
http://hfcc.org/delivery/receivers.phtml
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Mike
Not a word, Mike. I’m guessing that project is dead–at least, I’ve received no updates in well over a year or more.
20 years ago they could get away with how it looks, but not in 2017. What has happened in the past with DRM receivers will happen again. Fly by night manufactures come along, produce a cheap DRM receiver with poor sound quality, they will sell a few and then it will vanish.
This has been the problem with DRM (Doesn’t Really Matter) from the start. When the consortium was created SONY, Panasonic, Hitachi, Sangean and others were part of the group. But they quickly realized there would be no future market.
DRM’s big failure was when they came alone new technologies were already in the pipeline. That plus they were very slow with getting any kind of product to market, because manufactures were and are not interested.
Also if you look at the current DRM schedule as posted at DRM.org. I counted 9 stations that make up the list. Stations themselves are not interested. The only station that is using DRM to it’s full potential is Radio New Zealand International, but their DRM service isn’t even for listeners. It’s just a distribution platform for FM relays across the Pacific.
I’ve never really understand the objections to “how it looks”. It’s a touchscreen with 2 speakers and an antenna – there’s a limited number of ways to design something that wraps around those restraints, and only one that vaguely represents both “portable” and “radio”. It’s certainly not as ugly or silly as the “fake military style” fad in portable shortwave radio design – and that’s persisted since the 70’s (looking squarely at you, Tecsun S-8800, though you’re far from the worst).
Sure, the grey & purple of the renders/mockups/demo’d versions is an eyesore. But ABS comes in different colours…
Mostly agree with you on the rest though. If DRM30 ever had a window of opportunity, it was 20 years ago. Unfortunately, nobody even started doing anything to take advantage of that window until 10-15 years ago…
Although I’m on the list and looking forward to it – if it lives up to half its promise, it should at the very least be an interesting addition to the collection – I think I’ll just wait and see. It’s been stated as ‘ready for production’ since it was first announced ~12 months ago, and was essentially ‘about one month away’ nearly 6 months ago…
(I’m not really blaming or picking on PantronX though. I do a little engineering/design work for a small local manufacturer, so I do have some appreciation of how long it can take to bring even a fully-functional, compliant, & RTM prototype to market. I guess the constant dripfeed of ‘real soon now’ just gets tiring after a while, regardless of the product…)