Five FM iPod Transmitters Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "If you want to listen to your iPod or other audio player in your car, but you don't have a cassette deck or a swanky I.C.E. system, then the answer is to transmit the music over FM to the car's radio. HEXUS.lifestyle reviews five FM transmitters for the iPod and friends, investigating how well these devices cope with broadcasting music over a 2 meter-or-so radius. Some readers will be aware that it's been less than a year since these became legal in the UK, so the majority of iPodding Brits have only recently discovered that they can tune into their MP3 collection on the road."

Comments

Listening to neighboring cars

[dpbsmith]

I occasionally find it amusing to tune my car radio to FM 87.9, which (in the U. S.) is the default setting for most of these FM transmitter gadgets. I commute on Route 128 in Massachusetts so there is plenty of company, and more often than not there is an audible signal on 87.9.

Mostly it seems to be people listening to Howard Stern on Sirius Satellite Radio, but you also get a sampling of other satellite stations and (most likely) iPods.

The signal will usually be audible for the better part of a minute. Oddly enough, I've never managed to identify the car doing the transmission. You'd think you could tell from the positions of the cars around you and the strength of the signal, but I can't.

I discovered this because I have an iPod FM transmitter, set for 87.9 myself (after much experimentation I was never able to find any less-used channel).

What seems perverse that the signals from other cars' transmitters are not only strong enough to hear when my transmitter is off, they are strong enough to produce annoying an audible interference when my own transmitter, inside the car, is on. You'd think a transmitter two feet from the radio would totally overpower that must be at least forty feet away with two car body's worth of shielding in between, but no.