Fraunhofer and China pen xHE-AAC & Journaline MOU

Read the article here but the meat of it can be found in this quote:

"The MoU is based on long-term mutual trust established in previous collaborations, and aims to further develop the cooperation with regard to the open terrestrial DRM standard, including technologies substantially developed by Fraunhofer IIS, such as the xHE-AAC audio codec and the Journaline text service. In addition, the two parties will intensify their exchange of information on DRM technology, work on jointly promoting DRM technology, conduct workshops on DRM technology, and conduct field trials to successfully drive the deployment of DRM in China."

It would appear this will simplify the process for DReaM and other receiver software solutions to use xHE-AAC, which has been long-term point of contention with DRM enthusiasts. Moreover, I think this act solidifies China's commitment to DRM. Could this act break the log-jam of affordable receivers?

20191204 CLARIFICATION: Brother Rafael informs me that the xHE-AAC is only a problem for the compiled Windows version of DReaM, the binaries already do contain the codec. He indicates that programmers are needed (not paid, just willing souls) to build Windows compiled versions.

Cool Thesis : DRM decode using mobile device architecture

I know little to nothing about this, and read as much as I could understand - but this seems to be the Thesis of a student that ported DReaM software over to an ARM processor used on a popular mobile platform device. This has huge implications for the development of cheap off-the-shelf DRM receivers.

If you understand more than I do about this (not a difficult task) post about it on our Yahoo Group. I imagine our friends in Brazil and India will be all over this like ants on leftover Halloween candy! Are any of our readers specialists enough to get the basics of this and come up with other ports to things like cheap Android tablets?

Does Earl like DRM30?

I guess we won't know the answer until it is released, but what we do know is listed here. However it shakes-out, this is going to be one killer tool to take on the road.

There are hints from the developers that they will set-up the SDR to allow decoding of some HF data signals and the VHF side should be able to handle SAME from NWS/NOAA.

If nothing more, the "Earl Backcountry Survival Tablet" is a testimony to the power of crowd-source funding. They are already way over their goal and have more than a week until they close pre-orders.

At this point, ordering now ($249 for basic model) will get you 30% off the expected retail price. If you order one, tell them you heard about it on DRMNA and you want DRM decoding as an option! Porting DReaM to Android might just work if they make the IF or  I/Q available to the Apps.