"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.com...
On Fri, 25 May 2007 14:05:36 +0100, Steve Pardoe wrote:

I'm afraid that there are so many other accurate time sources available
now (GPS for one, internet timeservers for another)

If you are into having seriously accurate time you take all those sources,
compare them against each other and then make your own mind up. And where
do you think internet time servers get their reference from? Standard time
and frequency services and/or GPS.

I'm sure that's right for a lot of users, but surely a landline from
Teddington will be more reliable than MSF?

that MSF is probably only of domestic / novelty interest, and few of any
influence will complain if it's not as reliably received as it used to
be.

Apart from the time encoded into the carrier, the carrier is also a
frequency standard.

Indeed it is, but again I wonder how many bodies now use it ; and of course
a constant sinewave is much easier to lock to than once-per-second
modulation.

While we're on the off-topic of time, it strikes me as perverse that the BBC
(and perhaps others) persist in broadcasting the pips on digital TV, even
though they are a couple of seconds late (I imagine DAB radio is the same,
but I haven't got one).

Steve P