| World's first Internet radio car stereos being demo'd at CES7th January 2009 The BBC bullies may be trying to kill off Internet radio just as it's about to get going and to force everyone to listen via DAB. But try as it might, the anti-consumer BBC hasn't managed to stop Blaupunkt developing two new head units dedicated for Internet radio, the New Jersey 600i and the Hamburg 600i, pictured below, which are being demonstrated at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The Blaupunkt head units aren't true standalone Internet radio car stereos -- standalone Internet radio car stereos with 3G and mobile broadband receivers built-in are apparently in the pipeline -- because they still require that Internet radio stations be streamed via a mobile phone or laptop that supports 3G / HSDPA / HSPA (the latter two are the standards used for mobile broadband), and the audio must then be streamed to the car stereo for playback via Bluetooth stereo audio streaming (also referred to as A2DP). But what makes these Blaupunkt car stereos a first (to the best of my knowledge, anyway), is that they allow the user to navigate through the menus of Internet radio stations and to tune into stations using controls on the car stereo itself, whereas listening to Internet radio on a car stereo up to now has required the user to tune into the station on a mobile phone or laptop, and then stream the audio via Bluetooth audio streaming, or via a low power FM transmitter -- there's a YouTube video below showing this being done on a Ford car. Blaupunkt New Jersey 600i Internet radio car stereo
Blaupunkt Hamburg 600i Internet radio car stereo
Listening to Internet radio on a car stereoAs mentioned above, it's already possible to listen to Internet radio on car stereos that support Bluetooth audio streaming, and Pioneer and Sony in particular both make a number of head units that support Bluetooth audio streaming, and it's also included as an optional extra on a number of new cars. The following YouTube video shows how this in action, where Virgin Radio is tuned into on a mobile phone, and the audio is then streamed via Bluetooth.
Another way to listen to Internet radio on a car stereo is to tune into an Internet radio station on a mobile phone or laptop, then to use a small, low-power FM transmitter -- which have become popular with iPod users who want to listen to music stored stored on their iPod on their car stereo -- to transmit the audio, and you tune into the FM transmission frequency on the car stereo to hear the Internet radio station. The Pure Highway DAB car adaptor also uses a low-power FM
transmitter to transmit DAB audio to a car stereo. But the audio
quality on DAB is dire anyway, plus the quality of these low-power
FM transmitters can be pretty dodgy, especially the cheap ones, so
the audio on a Pure Highway will consist of DAB's dire audio quality
which is then degraded further by the FM transmitter. Mmm, nice. Put
me down for ten.
| |||||||||||||||
Digg
del.icio.us
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Stumbleupon
Slashdot