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.

Comments

I've had it for years

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had wireless radio for years. It's called... erm... radio.

Hell, I use it for video

[Space cowboy]

I support a football (soccer if you prefer :-) team that has a webcast of all the home matches. Since very few matches are televised per season, it's a good second-best, especially because I've got a nice fast broadband connection. Just take the portable into the front room, link it up to the projector using the VGA input, and watch the match with the video stream being served using WiFi from the router at the back of the house :-)

The quality isn't as good as broadcast TV (!) but it's a damn sight better than radio :-)

Simon

This sounds very scary

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this mean people will be able to drive around pulling radio broadcasts out of thin air? I don't want to live in a world like that.

Re:This sounds very scary

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wearing THREE pieces of tin foil today! One for AM, one for FM, and one for WiFi radio!

With all the Wi-Fi traffic...

[dawg ball]

... how long will it be before we can grill a chicken by hanging out the kitchen window on the end of a stick and cook it with RF?

Re:With all the Wi-Fi traffic...

[MemoryAid]

Well, if a microwave oven is about 2000 watts, and a WiFi access point is about 1 watt, and it takes about 10 minutes to cook a chicken in a microwave (depending on size, of course), then it should take about 20,000 minutes to cook a chicken. Some adjustment needs to be made for the 'gain' of the microwave, because all the energy is trapped inside the box, and WiFi is radiated into free space. An additional adjustment needs to be made for proximity, because it is probably not convenient to have your access point close to your chicken.

Well, I wouldn't try it after reviewing the (rough) numbers, because the chicken would definitely spoil before being cooked.

Just wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tune in later this year to hear "This is WIFI Radio, a Clear Channel Partner."

Radio on WiFi

[sshtome]

Let me just check.

I can buy a radio, listen, enjoy.

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)

Ah that's real progress :)

Re:Radio on WiFi

[Petronius]

I can buy a radio, listen, enjoy.
only what's available locally, i.e. your 5 ClearChannel stations.

The future?

[LithiumX]

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.

Regulating Data Processing

[persaud]

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.

squeezebox

[ignavusincognitus]

A SqueezeBox can do that, no need for a WinXP box. The latest server software even has a module to let you browse ShoutCast with your remote.