[newcoppiceman]

The following is from my update in the All-in-one Systems forum today (9 Aug) re the several design faults/problems with the Teac DR-H300DAB DVD receiver - still a current product. Full details here: Teac DR-H300DAB Design Faults/Problems

NON-RANDOM mutes on DAB. You WILL hear mutes (anything up to 5 seconds) even with a decent RF signal level. The DR-H300DAB uses the Gyro 1122 DAB module and - to their credit - its manufacturers have willingly engaged with me regarding the problem of any (and they are actually quite frequent) change of transmitted bitrate on a BBC service (eg Radio 4 from 128kbps stereo to 80kbps mono) causing a mute across ALL BBC services on the same DAB multiplex, so that's Radio 1, 2, 3, 4..., as the little Gyro module has a headache and goes back to square one to sort itself out!

This is not typical behaviour for a DAB radio, indeed some (eg Pure Evoke-1) are very good at handling these bitrate switches and you hardly notice them on the switched service itself. A feature of this shortcoming, is that if you have muted the DR-H300DAB, it will promptly unmute. This is what the nice man from Gyro said in his last e-mail: "While we need more tests to validate, I would like to thank you for understanding and you did help in a way that prompted us in improving next tuners!" You might think that this was more constructive than a confused letter from Teac's UK Service Manager wherein he stated that "...we have absolutely no doubts about the quality or performance of the DRH300DAB unit... ...why not just settle back and enjoy the sound reproduction of the system instead of ghost-hunting for faults with it." (sic)

Hope the above is helpful to owners and prospective purchasers alike.