I've seen the future of car radio - and DAB isn't in it Last month BMW rolled out the first cars to come with a fully integrated on-demand music-streaming service built in. Just before Xmas I took it through its paces to see how it performed and after an hour I was forced to conclude that things look ominous for digital radio, which is likely to be squeezed harder as on-demand …
Cache spotify? spotify will stream in various qualities up at least 320kbps, it can also be set to download the tracks and store them at whatever bitrate you choose. So you can download them as you play/stream or download them before leaving the house, or even download them wherever over mobile. Far superior to this service from BMW.
Ever tried driving outside a city? Mobile internet when switching between cell towers at 70mph+ just doesn't cut it. Take a journey up the M5 and try to sustain a connection. Worse what about Scotland or the Welsh valleys or Cumbria? Sometimes the live chat of a radio station is what you are looking for - not a pre created playlist of music.
Actually, recently switched to EE (because of the appalling Vodafone 3G coverage) and drove down the A1 from Harrogate to London streaming 6Music catchup on the iPlayer radio app on my phone. No problems.
Don't have DAB in the car. Not sure why I would want to?
Makes me think, rather than having a dedicated service like this Rara cloud service, why not just go for a in car system which offers internet and allows people to access what they like? As 4G rolls out, it will offer better service and coverage than 3G (or DAB, come to that), and more to the point, the IP backend connectivity will be more future proof than a DAB service which will just end up with a legacy installed base when we want to move to something better.
Concentrate the money on providing decent nationwide IP connectivity, and then you can dispose of these new "obsolescent" broadcast technologies that they are desperately trying to get people to adopt.
Analogue radio + IP looks like a much better way forward than trying to drag people kicking and screaming to DAB when they can't prise the Trannies out of their clenched fingers.
>why not just go for a in car system which offers internet and allows people to access what they like?
That is what Volvo have just done - their car acts as a WiFi hotspot.
However, will what *you* want to listen to be available through a reliable and sensible interface, suitable for using whilst driving?
The only reason you might want to limit the functionality is if you are trying to wrangle a better deal from the mobile service operators: having the car's 3G tied to a music-only service means that it won't cannibalise data tariff sales to the consumer's mobile phone. Therefore, the operators might offer a Europe-roaming car-music-only tariff at a much cheaper rate (on the grounds that it is better to take some money than no money)
Not round here. I'd be delighted to be rid of the inane babble of DJs, pretend "local" news from pretend "local" radio stations, incessant and irritatingly cr@p adverts for the same businesses over and over again, and worst of all, DJ's reading postings off Farcebook or Twitter. Thank goodness the phone in is mostly dead.
For three miles on my route to work, I have no signal with O2. Not even 2G. Things are a little better with EE, but there are still dropouts. Internet radio would need to cache at least five minutes worth, preferably ten, which makes it useless as "radio" - I may as well listen to the iPod classic. I go through three river valleys and their associated hills which means that signal quality really does fluctuate!
DAB gets a good signal. I only get flutters occasionally and then only in built-up areas. It is like AM used to be before the move to FM, and I don't mind that.
As for streaming music killing radio, I disagree. There are some great stations on DAB now - as well as the oft mentioned 6Music, you have TeamRock Radio, which makes DAB worth it. Commercial-free commercial radio with presenters that know the music and keep out of the way unless necessary. Then the additional Absolute stations (80's, 90's).
Compare to FM with its three non BBC stations - Absolute Radio, a random asian music station and Crapital FM. No choice there.
Leave the arguments about dead technologies or that we should have gone to DAB+ Mk3v2, and remember that there are parts of the country with large populations that the mobile internet simply cannot reach. And that FM radio is crap.
I have a reasonably-priced bluetooth (but not DAB) enabled car stereo from a few years back, and recently I've paired it with an unlimited data mobile deal, and now I can listen to my station of choice (6Music) via the iPlayer Radio app. Service is good enough for my daily commute (there's a few black spots but I only lose connectivity for under a minute) and I didn't need to splash out for anything newer or more expensive.
I'm going to be looking at a new home radio soon and I suspect I'll be looking at IP radio, not DAB.
You have to be joking. Unless all you're doing is pootling about London, or any other large city, then this will be about as much use as a chocolate fireguard in the 'real world', where 3G (and the yet rarer 4G) signals fluctuate like the preverbial prostitutes underpants. If the telcos ever get their acts together to provide at least 75% coverage at a decent enough signal strength then, just maybe.
That said, by that sort of signal saturation, we'll probably be able to stream directly into our cooking brains.
I will agree with you to an extent on DAB though.
Unless all you're doing is pootling about London, or any other large city, then this will be about as much use as a chocolate fireguard in the 'real world', where 3G (and the yet rarer 4G) signals fluctuate like the preverbial prostitutes underpants.
Pootling around London wont be much fun either. I can't get a 3G signal when I'm walking around in Londonbridge, let alone driving around some of the 'burbs.
(By the way, I had a large bag of dried apricots this morning and I now have fluctuating underpants as well).
I tried streaming bbc 6 in my car driving to Cornwall. I expected it to be a failure and drop off as soon as I left London. To my surprise it probably only dropped out 2 or 3 times over 4 hours and each time it restarted before i could reach over to the phone and see what had happened.
It wasn't quite so good on the return journey and needed to be re started but i was amazed how good the 3G was. using threes network if anyones wondering
I recently gave this a try too but using an Android app called Livio Radio (as it includes a station I enjoy from the US) which includes some limited caching ability but I haven't felt the need to enable it yet. I do around 35 miles each way to work and back along a mix of motorway and local roads. The most it has cut out was twice, each time it started streaming again in a few seconds. This was on the 3 network too.
I think the key is that it's a driver experience rather than just a listener one. The driver experience is set up to be safer so that you don't take your eyes and attention off the road longer than necessary. Fiddling with your phone to change stations / tracks, etc., is more dangerous than a system designed specifically with the driver in mind. However as in other posts Bluetooth® can achieve this.
It's not clear from the article whether 48Kb/s is the streaming rate or the compressed data rate of the music. A 128Kb/s file is just about bearable, assuming it's AAC or equivalent compression. I can't imagine how bad a 48Kb/s music track will sound. If it's the streaming rate, I suppose you could download stuff in advance the night before, or perhaps just enjoy the long periods of silence in between tracks from Lady Gaga's latest offering.
The benefit of integrating iOS or Android would be to allow me to use my own music service and in particular apps like TuneIn Pro, rather than BMW's chosen service. I already subscribe to a music service, don't need another, and I have a number of internet radio stations I like to listen to depending on what kind of music I fancy. What I really want is a system that allows me to load whatever music service or internet radio app I want to use.
This system is like buying a car where the radio is tuned to Radio 1 and can't be changed.
I still don't get why we aren't into Satellite radio in the UK.
In the US, every car I've hired has Sat radio built in and gets hundreds of channels, reliably. Makes a huge difference when driving through many states just gives you "both kinds of music" on FM.
DAB is expensive, reception is poor in rural areas limiting the choice of channels, few car manufacturers want to invest in it, and few other countries use it (those that do have limited availability and might be on a different band your radio doesn't support anyway. Sat radio at least might still be available in other parts of Europe and likely you'll get all the same UK stations.
hundreds of channels, reliably.
Hundres of channels, each with a repeating 20 song playlist :(
It's also not reliable. Fine on a wide open freeway, but it drops out every time you go under a bridge, and when driving through forested areas on country roads it's up & down as often as the aforementioned tarts' knickers. Unusable.
POS: Sat Radio "is also not reliable".
Strange. I agree that if you *stop* under an overhead obstacle, then yes the signal cuts out after a few seconds. Happens everyday at one traffic signal on my daily commute. If you *drive* under an overpass at speed, it typically does *not* cut out. Reason being, there are satellites in at least two orbital locations. And the signal also contains temporal redundancy on most channels. Makes it reasonably reliable. As good as FM that sometimes gets into a multi-path null at some traffic lights.
In northern locations with steep hills (e.g. the lovely island of Cape Breton), then the old XM signal from the geostationary belt will be blocked by the mountains. The legacy Sirius satellites are in a very high Molniya orbit and are typically not blocked. Sirius birds are typically not even blocked in the deep canyons (those with roads) of Colorado (been there, done that, lovely drive).
"Hundres of channels, each with a repeating 20 song playlist :("
I'd go for that! The local (NSW) 'Classic Rock - All your Favourite tracks from the 70s 80s & 90s' only ever plays Hotel California, Baker Street and My Baby Is The Centrefold. Although in fairness, they do add Roy Wood's 'Thank Christ it isn't Christmas Every day' (or whatever) into the mix.
So an extra 16-17 songs would be amazing.
I use my iPod daily in the car, and it will work under tunnels, bridges, etc. And it just works. I don't pay a monthly fee for it, and it has all the music I want.
That said, anyone with enough money to buy a new BMW probably won't mind paying £x per month for some music.
"iPod? How quaint!"
It isn't broken so there's no need to fix it. The day they release a solid state drive offering 120Gb of space (size of my iPod) then it'll be boxed away for future generations to enjoy the musical stylings of Bruce Springsteen.
Until then, I'll keep the doylies on the dashboard!
...but I get to hear Planet Rock all the time in my car now instead of never. I even get TeamRock if too much acoustic stuff is on Planet Rock. I had to put my antenna horizontal because Fords heated front windscreens are basically radio opaque in the vertical orientation, however, I still get a good signal almost everywhere around me.
It is disappointing that the quality (in terms of bps) is lower (it is 64kbs and mono now - the most disappointing change) but it is still better by so far to listening to local pop radio that the choice for me is moot - AC/DC sounds okay at lower bit rates compared to Mozart.
Since Planet Rock is not on Freeview, I bought a Bluetooth/DAB thingy for the kitchen so I can have Planet Rock there without the palaver of streaming it via the phone. A WiFi radio would have been nice but not £40 I suspect. Also, the radio works when the internet doesn't.
As for curated radio in the car, like others here, paying that kind of money may suit BMW drivers at the upper end of the spectrum but not ordinary folks I expect. Nokia's curated radio, which I don't use much because of the aforesaid Planet Rock and the lack of an unlimited data package, is excellent, free, permanent and even allows downloading for off-line use.
Besides, having a DJ makes you feel you are part of a group like watching a movie at the cinema instead of a DVD at home. If the DJ doesn't witter on, it is fine. I quite like most of the Planet Rock DJs; they are self deprecating in general, not too full of themselves and one of them is Alice Cooper so the stories are much more interesting! The amount of time they waste is reasonable and the ads are not too bad. The only flaw is they often join ads to news or traffic, good for the DJs toilet/fag break but less good for us - far better to cue up a song guys.
... it would have to come down to £10 a month to start competing with Spotify. In the meantime, I will keep attaching my phones output to AUX IN on the desk for Spotify online or offline; or playing via bluetooth; or playing my own CDs ripped to SD.
But I understand, BMW buyers pay for convenience without much regard to cost. Let them.
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