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Listen to Internet Radio over Wifi
wildumut writes "There's an article on the Register about new WIFI radio tuners, worth a look. 'Wi-Fi is not only freeing up notebook and PDA users to connect to the Internet from anywhere in the home, it's also making Internet radio work (almost) like the real thing.'" The company website has some more information, but these aren't available for sale yet.
Tune in later this year to hear "This is WIFI Radio, a Clear Channel Partner."
Wait - isn't there a serious lag and quality issue?
Since when lag is an important thing for a one way transmission?
As for quality, a 96Kbps MP3 stream sound a lot better than FM radio.
I'd still like to retrofit my house for wireless connectivity.
I don't get it. Are your walls lined with lead or something that would hinder wireless connectivity? Go buy a router and a wireless NIC already. The future is now!
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
On the other hand, internet 'radio' lets just about anyone broadcast audio to anyone willing to listen. I'd say that's a major advantage, even if the quality isn't as high as ordinary radio.
I think mp3/ogg streams are especially nice for voice, since the quality only needs to be high enough to make it understandable, while music requires the listener to appreciate the actual sound.
I can buy a radio, listen, enjoy.
only what's available locally, i.e. your 5 ClearChannel stations.
there's no place like ~
So it's like shortwave radio?
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Another way to do this on the cheap is to just plug in a standard analog wireless headphone or speaker transmitter into the back of your soundcard.
900 Mhz is typically used for this application, so you can keep 2.4 GHz free for WiFi.
and it will be because of the descendants of things like this.
One day you'll be able to tune into a radio station based on URL, and it will be *the* true revolution for music delivery. Information may or may not want to be free...but it definitely hates coming from central sources.
Newspaper cartoons are to Strongbad as top 40 is to the bands of the future.
Radio revolutionized communications, especially as it became more available to smaller companies. It made a wider range of ideas, music, and personalities available to the common person. Radios eventually became omnipresent - a nearly free (minor cost for a radio and power/batteries) outlet for on-demand contact with the outside world.
Radio's core problem, though, is that there is only a limited spectrum that's both electromagnetically effective and safe for human exposure at high power levels. Otherwise we'd be pulling power from the air instead of wire.
It's still in it's infancy, but I wouldn't be at all suprised if today's clumsy fledgling attempts at digital network-based radio will later be seen as heralding the birth of a whole new medium - same concept as radio, but even more available.
Cable tv, encrypted compressed signals over wire, made it possible to host hundreds (thousands?) of channels, and far cheaper to run them (no broadcasting, less infrastructure per station, etc). The end result: hundreds of channels of purile crap. And mixed in with all that crap are a good number of true gems that never would have seen the light of day in a world of pure airwave broadcasting. The public is now exposed to history, culture, technologies, and news that it never would have had access to before.
I think wifi radio is just one more step in the direction of providing a denser and low-cost medium for propagation of signal. Satelite radio as well (I say let em target regions - even neighborhoods, and let Clear Channel and others be-damned).
Any broadcast medium that brings down the cost of operation for the same general service is inherently a good thing - while it will introduce new content that isn't worth much, it will also allow a wider range of content, and make large-scale advertising income less of a driving survival requirement.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. KORP radio: 30 minutes of continuous top 10 big-studio hits, every hour on the hour.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
yes, yet another piece of vaporware. but this one isn't even close to revolutionary.
But your radio never performed encryption/decryption or balanced your checkbook. Nor was your computer regulated by the FCC. But now that your data processing device has become a communications device, the FCC (or non-US equivalent) has jurisdiction over your computer.
This is why Wi-Fi should never be integrated with the motherboard chipset (a la Centrino). Keep it as an optional add-on. Let the FCC regulate a PC Card or USB device, not the entire computer.
Down with non-optional bundling of law with convenience.
Upstate NY - most stations are now owned by ClearChannel except for NPR and a couple tiny independant stations. I give money to the small independent jazz station that can barely survive (WGMC). My point is that web radio offers a *vast* array of choices compared to what's available on the dial in most locales.
You decide if I'm trolling.
there's no place like ~
I've been considering a mini-itx box hooked up to the TV to replace my laptop... it would be very cool indeed.
there's no place like ~
Let me just check.
I can buy a radio license and transmitter for more than I make a decade.
Or, I can set up my computer and existing hardware to broadcast my own radio free and legal.
That's really is progress!
Now it's true, if you want to listen to my station, you'll have to do more work. Maybe you don't mind that Clear Channel controls free speach in this country, but I'd like a little more freedom. I've been wanting to set up my own local TV station this way. BirdBathTV. I doubt anyone will watch though.
I've been listening to this station for several months now, and it beats the hell out of anything I've heard on the airwaves. Lots of indie bands, and yes, lots of bands that are not from the US.
I look forward to the day when I can put one of these devices in my car and listen to internet radio as I drive around town. Of course, corporations like Clear Channel will use their money and political clout to prevent this from ever happening.
Or I can buy a computer, buy a wireless lan card, buy a wireless lan radio, configure everything, PAY for a reasonable intenet connection, listen, enjoy (within a small area around my hub)
Point noted.
But, you forget something: that computer, LAN card, (or hard-wired LAN), and internet connection has more uses than just serving as a home portal for "wireless internet radio". So, while the observation that the overhead of such a device is significant, one should really be amortizing it over all the useful functions it can perform:
1. Web, email, and news: that's a no-brainer. Most people use a computer for just that. Anything else, therefore, is gravy. Though, it is true, that if you're serious about having a home media portal, you'd probably want a dedicated machine, and not one used for interactive purposes. On the plus side, it does not have to be particularly powerful, or have a fancy graphics card, but should have mondo storage (a Terabyte is not ultimately unreasonable, though you can do a lot with 100 GB, if you don''t need to rip too many DVDs.). Whether a dedicated machine, or not, the internet connection is still "justified" by the desire to browse and have email connectivity.
2. Media storage. You can store local media on such a server: pictures, music, and videos.
3. Fax server. you can receive faxes with either an email to fax gateway, or directly with a cheap fax modem.
4. Application storage. A single repository for applications used in the home is handy.
5. Personal data storage. Hello...? "mount -t nfs server:/home /home". 'Nuff said.
6. Email server. (3) kinda makes this obvious, but I don't wanna make this first and renumber, so... If you have an "always on" connection, preferrably with a static IP, why not sink your own email, rather than POP or IMAP it from somewhere on a polling basis (except, of course, your backup MX). This does mean finding an ISP that's willing to let you open port 25 to the world, and like a good mail admin you don't act like an open relay, but, it's worth it.
7. Voice Mail server. If you've got the FAX modem, you might as well get one that does voice as well. Turn the home media server into an answering machine, transcode, and forward messages to the MTA.
8. Home automation control system.
9. Home alarm monitoring system.
10. VoiP gateway. A CISCO ATA-186 does wonders.
When you add up all the possible uses of a home media server/control computer, it actually becomes a bargain. The trick is tying all those functions together. There is a bit more overhead to worry about if you get serious: a UPS is almost essential, and backup device strongly reccomended (though you could opt for RAID or a reciprocal remote rsync arrangement with a trusted friend).
You could've hired me.