In car DAB/ Internet radio solutions

[Fabergé Greggs]

Thinking about sorting the sounds in the BX. 

 

This will involve some decent quality component speakers, an amp under the seat and a small sealed sub in the boot. 

 

Soo.. headunit. I was thinking maybe I'd get a period headunit, strip it out so it's nothing more than a volume control and a remote on for the amp. But I do like to listen to the radio though. Bit of Rad 4, bit of 6 music but at home I like to listen to a lot of internet radio. If I got a DAB tuner it would solve 6 music thing but then I started thinking about how good it would be to have internet radio on the move. 

 

Is it possible? I know it doesn't really work on my old iPhone on 3G when moving but does 4G solve that?

 

 

[pompei]

I've been wondering much along the same lines.  My Saab 9-5, I understand,  has the stereo wired up through all the other electronic gizmos so cannot be replaced (* is that technical enough an explanation?) so I suspect it is not possible.  I have no idea whether you can just slot out/slot in a replacement in the BX. Sorry for being so unhelpful.

[Asimo]

Want to say that you will crash using internet on the road but I am old.

I have a DAB radio cd unit you can have for the cost of post. I removed it from the Honda, DAB didn't work as that service requires the correct antenna with it's own booster and the Honda had neither. PM if you want it.

[robinmasters]

Is it possible? I know it doesn't really work on my old iPhone on 3G when moving but does 4G solve that?

Yes, it's possible. I was using a 3g Samsung Galaxy, and it worked fine. The only problem was that it was through your data allowance fairly quickly, and that hasn't occurred to me until I ran out of megabytes.

[Pillock]

Internetty Radioness is perfectly possible on the move - I used to use an app called Tunein Radio (on Android, but it's also on Apple and Windows phones, if you're that person) which gives you thousands of stations - some good, well known, professional ones (all the BBC ones, pretty much everything you'll find on DAB, and then loads of web-only stations). It also has a car mode which just puts some big buttons on the screen for your favourites and whatnot. The nice thing is that you can define how much it buffers, so if you're on a crap network or living in part of the world where signal comes and goes, you can crank it up and go for a minute (or longer) without any signal - it defaults to just five or ten seconds which means that's the longest you can go. You can also hit a button and rewind ten seconds which is good for catching the names of songs.

 

The downside? Even in car mode, the interface is not great for using on the move. Phones just aren't, touchscreens are crap compared to a nice tactile button. I lump in there every single new car with a fancy-pants touchscreen where some buttons were perfectly good.

 

The other downside is the amount of data. A generic OK-quality station might be 128kbps, which means it needs 16KB of data every second. So per minute, that's just under 1MB, or if you're listening to the "radio" for two hours you're going to chew 120MB. Do that five times and you're over most low-end monthly data caps of 500MB, I'd monster that in a week commuting but occasional use might be OK.

 

Sorn me - I know this is cheeky, but if Jacky2S doesn't want the DAB radio, I could take it off your hands? I need one for the MG - the original had an iPod lead, and I'm allergic to Apple products, and the radio wasn't wanting to play either. And I'm addicted to TeamRock, a DAB only station.

[CortinaDave]

Depends where you are. I'm on 3 with an unlimited data allowance and tend to find net radio works find in the city, but is shit once out of town. I just use a cassette adaptor into the headphone jack in my iPhone