Internet radio in your car?

OnStar "MyNetwork" demo at TED includes Tuner2

2011-03-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

At CES 2011, OnStar debuted their 4G concept car at the Verizon booth. The OnStar service integrated into the vehicle showcases what's possible when you stop thinking about the car as simple phone docking station and start thinking about the car as a uniquely capable Internet delivery platform.

In February, at TED 2011 in Long Beach, OnStar expanded the capabilities of their concept car to include a feature called "MyNetwork." This system, which leverages the Pioneer Platform for the Aggregation of Internet Services, lets the driver use voice control to do things like find the location of their Facebook and Twitter friends in the real world, discover a new restaurant or other business, publish directions to that place on their status wall, check out what Internet radio stations other drivers are listening to, and send a station to their friend.

It's a compelling mashup that shows how thinking beyond app-by-app can create a compelling and safe Internet experience in the car. Of course, though, we are a bit biased since MyNetwork featured Tuner2 as the Internet radio service, including the TunerMap functionality. Even so, the Media Tuners team has been working on Internet radio in devices since 1999 (!), so it is very gratifying to see that someone is finally taking the concept beyond the simple replication of existing service and deciding to put a new an innovative twist on Internet radio in the car. Just like each radio network shouldn't live alone in their own "app", Internet radio itself shouldn't live alone as a separate "app." It should be part of an integrated experience that takes advantage of the unique requirements of a driver heading down the road.

Pioneer's in-car voice-controlled Internet radio mashup

2011-03-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

As I have said many times, the key to usability of Internet radio is integration and intuitive control. Power on, turn the knob, and something good comes out of the speakers. As incredible as it may sound, at CES 2011, Pioneer demonstrated an Internet platform that makes it even simpler. In their case, you just power on, say what you want, and something good happens.

Pioneer's Platform for the Aggregation of Internet Services mashes up Internet radio, social networking, local search, and navigation all wrapped in a natural language voice user interface. It makes the app-by-app experiences announced at CES look a little bit archaic.

Fans of Tuner2 will notice a familiar Internet radio service featured in the demonstration video starting at 2:00 and the use of TunerMap starting at 4:00.

LAX->LAS - 64K all the way!

2011-01-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

For the fourth year in a row, I tested the consumer viability of Internet radio in the car during my drive from the LA area to Las Vegas for CES. As before, I tuned into Radio Paradise via Tuner2 on an iPhone (over AT&T of course, this being early 2011 and all). And unlike previous years, instead of timidly connecting to the 24Kbps stream, I set it to 64Kbps and let it run.

The result was... success!

I enjoyed my music with only a minor hiccup cresting the Halloran summit. Even the canyon area dropping towards the NV border was solid. This milestone marked the start of what will clearly be the year of Internet radio in the car. Toyota finally went public with Entune (more on that in a future post), and a whole boatload of car makers were at CES showing their connected drive wares.

But what about the death of "unlimited" data, you say? The truth is that it was never alive. If you had read the fine print of all your previous plans (regardless of carrier), they capped out at 5GB, meaning that if you exceeded the 5GB limit, then they will either throttle you drastically or cut you off. Now, to get to the pricepoints that people want, they are offering 2GB (nearly everyone with the Samsung Galaxy Tab) and now even 1GB plans (iPad on Verizon) to give you data-only access without paying an arm and a leg.

The reality is that if someone uses Internet radio (32Kbps) in their car to the same level that they currently use broadcast radio in their car, the average monthly usage for Internet radio will be somewhere around 800MB, most likely well below the tolerance threshold in the models used to price the 2GB plans. (It would throw off the "average" weighting the carriers use to price the 1GB plans, though.)

So fire up those connected tablets, dock those phones to your dashboard, Internet radio in the car is upon you!

Toyota, Ford, iHeart, Pandora, and lemmings

2010-11-16T09:53:00.000-08:00

As you probably heard, Toyota issued a teaser news release confirming that they will be integrating iHeart Radio into future models of Toyota vehicles. That is great news. However, the details of exactly how they will do it are still not revealed. Judging from past announcements from Ford about Pandora and Stitcher, BMW about Radiotime, and Smart about the Smart Drive app for iPhone though, it is a safe bet that if it ships in 2011, it will be a tethered solution, requiring the user to "dock" their smartphone with the auto. Now, we all know how I feel about tethering (it is a poor consumer experience that will prevent a truly mass market), but for 2011 it is the only real choice. This is because the car electronics shipping now were defined, at best, 18 months ago and more typically, 36 months ago. At that time, data plans were about $60 per month - far out of band for the typical consumer. Now, driven by the tablet market (thank you again, Steve), dedicated data plans from Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are dropping like rocks. The $20 plan for 1GB from Verizon is very reasonable for a dedicated Internet connection in the car. One that would allow the typical commuter to enjoy off-board navigation, local search, social networking, and, of course, Internet radio. This pricing opens real possibilities, but it is unclear how automakers will leverage the potential.

The route that automakers will take in 2011 is not a mystery. They will use tethering to bring smartphone apps into the dashboard. Resulting in some functionality for the consumer but leaving each car looking eerily like the other while they all ape my smartphone. The question really is, what will automakers do for 2013 and beyond? Will they continue to jump like lemmings off the cliff while they chant the mantras of "tethering" and "app stores"? Or will they push beyond to create unique Internet solutions in the dashboard that present compelling, differentiated Internet radio experiences? As I keep saying, the driver needs to be able to power on, turn the knob, and enjoy great music without having to worry about getting their phone set up before they turn the key. This same ease of use needs to apply to all connected services in the car. A combined automotive experience for the dashboard, including Internet radio, will require about 800MB of data per month. $20 per month is pricey, but it is within the upper bounds of consumer acceptance. It enables a new way of thinking about Internet in the car.

Ford seems to be aggressively trying to rebrand their company as a consumer electronics company. Headlining at CES, CTIA and other unusual venues, Ford wants to become associated with those rocketing markets instead of the PR-impaired auto industry. Judging from the relative valuation CE and mobile companies (think Apple) I think that is a brilliant, if difficult, move. The other automakers see this leap and are marshaling their own effort to tap into the content/electronics/mobile/apps enthusiasm. They are all looking for their own "SYNC killer" in the same way that tablet makers are looking for iPad killers. Toyota's announcement, for example, indicates that this is a teaser for CES 2011, showing their own intention to increase their branding in the consumer electronics market. However, desire and intent do not guarantee success. Will automakers deploy "me too" solutions that stagnate on tethering and apps or will they leapfrog the current Ford SYNC and create solutions for the car that are truly tailored to the unique capabilities of the car platform: unlimited battery power, no weight limits, far more accurate sensors, and, of course, great sound.

Will automakers embrace the possibilities and move towards KITT? or will they shrink back give us Nokia terminal mode at 2 frames per second? The future is being written right now.

Half-baked tethering from RadioTime and BMW

2010-03-10T09:58:00.000-08:00

(image from Wired.com)
OK, so by now you know me. Internet radio in the car is my passion. However, I am also pretty busy and way too practical. I still drive the 2002 PT Cruiser I bought in December 2001 because it runs just fine, thank you very much. (Let's forget about the fact that it needed a new transmission after only 36,000 miles ... ) The result of this practicality is that when I get in the car, I generally just sit down and go. Even though it would only add less than a minute to my departure, most times I don't take the time to get out my iPhone and connect it to the iPod adapter. It is far easier for me to just hit the power button on the radio and listen to our local NPR affiliate, KPCC, so that's what usually happens.

If I, someone who is really motivated to get Internet radio in the car, don't take the time, should we expect others to do the same? Well, when I check around I find that I am not alone in this behavior. People want convenience and will generally take the easy path.

So, now we get to the RadioTime announcement. What bills itself to be an innovation and a "first" is just another half baked attempt to put Internet radio into the car. Similar to the Pioneer AVIC announcement with Pandora earlier this year, users can connect their iPhone to the car and use the Mini's dashboard controls to tune Internet radio. While both solutions do have the benefit of using the in-dash controls to access Internet radio, helping usability, they still fail because they require the user to connect their iPhone. Just like impressions on the second page of Google search results or clicks below the fold, the drop off rate on usage due to this requirement will be huge. People will do it the first couple weeks, but then they will forget one time, then another time, and soon the feature will go unused. Then the iPhone connector in the car will get old and will not be compatible with their new iPhone for next year. The net result will be that they wasted their money buying a feature that they only enjoyed for a couple weeks.

As such, until Internet radio is truly integrated into the dash, it will not take the place of FM radio or even satellite radio in the car. Integration doesn't mean just controls. It means controls and connectivity. It has to be truly built in and "just work."

Until you can sit down, power on, drive off, and enjoy your favorite Internet radio, it isn't viable competition for the user's time in the car.

Only now they get it?

2010-01-26T15:46:00.000-08:00

Through the blinding Internet blizzard that surrounded CES 2010, an interesting article caught my eye. Someone decided to downgrade the Sirius XM stock because of the announcement by Pioneer to integrate control of Pandora's iPhone app into their new line of AVIC navigation products.

I find this fascinating, not because people are seeing finally Internet radio as serious competition to satellite radio (I will temporarily ignore the fact that Pandora is a jukebox and not actually "radio"), but because it took a $1200 navigation system to make them see it. Folks have been able to integrate their mobile phones into their cars for nearly 4 years now, at the cost of a mere $10 for the cassette adapter or even less for a 1/8" stereo cable if they already had an AUX jack. If someone really wanted to go wild, they could splurge $50 for a more complete kit that included a power adapter.

So what's going on here? The answer, methinks, is integration and interface. Once we can use Internet radio in the car seamlessly, it becomes real. The solution by Pioneer, though, is still only a step in the right direction. The label "radio"comes with a specific user experience expectation...

Power on, turn the knob, and music comes out.

Sirius XM in the car delivers that experience. Internet radio in the car still does not. Once it does, then it will be a viable comptetitor to other forms of radio in the car. The good news is that we are almost there. Soon the perfect storm of integration, UI, and affordable connectivity will make Internet radio a truly viable alternative for in-car entertainment.

Solid service on I-75 in Atlanta

2009-09-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

Visiting Atlanta multiple times recently, I have had great success with Tuner2 Internet radio on iPhone each time. Most recently, my rental was some kind of "crossover" vehicle from Chrysler with absolutely no headroom. However, it did have the requisite AUX jack, so I plugged in and listened contentedly getting to my meetings around the city. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, though, AT&T makes its home in Atlanta, so I would hope that in their home city, they would be solid. (Of course, we have seen home town apathy before...)

Side note, during a brief sojourn onto the FM dial, I heard a commercial from Comcast. In Atlanta, are offering their High-Speed 2go (awkward spelling) bundling 4G, 3G, and home cable into a single bill. $50/month for the cable + 4G, $70/month for cable + 4G + 3G for roaming. Pretty good pricing. Of course, it is only available in a couple cities so far.

Stinky Steers Suppliment Stinky Signal

2009-09-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

More local reporting. I continue to be amazed that AT&T has such poor signal down the I-5 corridor. Folks may say it is "just me," but as I drove by the feed lots north of Coalinga, the signal was still a typical jumpy mess. Sometimes, it even read "no service," meaning no voice or data! After about 20 minutes of trying to let it find a stable spot, I gave up and went back to iPod. For those who might think that it is just the car, that seems highly unlikely. I have had the same results in a PT Cruiser and a Toyota Sienna - two vehicles with what I have to imagine are very different EM profiles.

Let's see if AT&T can improve this highly trafficked corridor.

Flash streaming on iPhone?

2009-07-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read the headline right, and it is true. Modulation Index, the folks that have been making radio stations sound better for over 30 years, has released a new version of their Internet radio player on Apple iPhone that supports audio streaming using Flash on iPhone.

So, why is that important? Because it solves three problems: audio quality and reliability, economy of scale, and interactivity.

Problem 1 is audio quality & reliability. Quality is determined by two factors, audio quality per bit and transport overhead. Today, the vast majority of what you hear on iPhone is MP3 over Shoutcast. Some folks have found a way to get HE AAC v1 over Shoutcast using the iPhone built-in decoder. But to get a reliable listening experience on iPhone while driving, you can't send your stream at more than 32Kbps. 24Kbps is even better. And as much as I love HE AAC v1, taking it down to 32Kbps is pushing it (and MP3 at 32Kbps sounds like garbage.) That means you need HE AAC v2, which is only possible if your iPhone app licenses a good codec from a reliable source. (Don't get me started on the low-quality of FAAD2.) That solved the codec problem, but the transport issue was still there. I also love Shoutcast, but it was never intended as a mobile streaming protocol. It works great when the connection is relatively reliable, but it frays at the edges when you get dropouts. HE AAC v2 delivered over RTMP, the Flash Media Server protocol, addresses both issues. You get a high-quality codec delivered on a reliable transport. A solid sound that will make the most demanding station GM proud. Problem 1 solved.

Problem 2 is economy of scale. Even though mobile streaming is becoming popular, it still doesn't have the cume of desktop listeners. That means stations had to either set up a separate server to reach mobile or they had to shoehorn their PC stream. Now that Flash streaming with HE AAC v2 is availble on iPhone, stations don't have to choose. They can have a single stream to serve Windows, Mac, and iPhone, reducing overhead and mangement requirements. It also means that stations can pick from a wider variety of CDNs, giving them control over their own destiny. Problem 2 solved.

Problem 3 is interactivity. As much as it might offend the purists (most of the time, I think I fall into that camp,) radio stations need visuals and interactivity to help differentiate Internet radio. By supporting the Flash streaming protocol and establishing a format for advertising and albumart metadata, the Modulation Index solution gives stations the ability stream album art with clickable "buy now" links as well as synchronized graphics for audio ads, again with click-through on iPhone, on Windows, and on Mac. Problem 3 solved.

The barriers keep falling and the industry is evolving ever more mature solutions to make Internet radio a real business. Given that we are 10 years into this endeavor, I am glad to see it.

Funny Culture of Free

2009-07-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

Walk with me for a moment and consider the following...

Imagine you are a person interested in HD Radio radio (a bit far fetched, I know, but stick with me). You have heard stations in your area talk about their great digital quality on HD Radio and their additional programming choices on HD2 and HD3, and you want to hear it. So you go into Best Buy and head to the car audio section. You see a nice HD Radio receiver and take it over to the counter. The person scans it and says, "$99 plus tax please." "$99? What a deal!"

You also happen to have an iPhone. You visit the app store and see two Internet radio players. One is free but uses old codecs (or pirated open-source codecs) and won't stream anything but the most rudamentary formats. The other costs a few bucks but has professional grade audio quality and supports the wide variety of content formats out there. Which one do you choose? The free one, of course! Because Internet radio should be free, right? Even if it sounds crappy, it is better to be free and crappy than cost a couple bucks and sound good.

What is wrong with this picture? The person is willing to pay for a limited piece of hardware that gives them access to only 30 new low-quality broadcasts that may not even come in clearly where they live, but they are not willing to pay a couple of bucks to get a well crafted piece of software that gives them quality access to 100s and 1000s of stations across the Web.

Let us walk some more and consider this next scenario..

You are the GM of a major broadcast radio station. Your boss at headquarters is all excited about HD Radio, so you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to convert your station to HD even though you know there are more transmitters than radios in the market. People want choice, people want digital quality, so even though HD Radio gives you neither, you do it because HD is the "salvation of broadcast radio." During this process, you scream at your engineers because unless they tweak the HD signal just right, it impacts the quality of your analog FM. And if you have learned only one thing in your career, its that quality is critical.

Soon after, some funny thingamajig called an iPhone comes out. In a short time, nearly 50 million people have this iPhone or its slightly deprived younger brother, the iPod touch. Your boss hears the buzz again and says "get us on the iPhone." You call up the professionals and they say "you should use the modern MPEG-4 HE AAC v2 codec over Flash Media Server or 3GPP. That way you can have high-fidelity sound and reliable delivery to all those iPhone listeners." But after seeing their relatively modest price quote for the encoder or the iPhone software, you say "no way!" The Internet is cheap and the Internet is free. Why should I spend money to stream on the Web and to iPhones? It's not as important as my broadcast signal, so I can cut corners. So to save a couple thousand bucks, you use "free" streaming tools and low fidelity codecs to stream to the iPhone, giving your listeners ear fatigue and and continuous drop outs.

What is wrong with this picture? This GM is willing to spend a huge sum of money to chase the HD Radio wild goose and flames his engineers over FM quality issues but is unwilling to spend a couple thousand bucks to give his listeners a high-quality experience over what is the future of his station - the 500M streaming-ready mobile phones already in the market.

The moral of the story.

The free culture of the Internet is going to kill itself eventually. People get what they pay for. Radio Paradise and SomaFM are only here because their listeners love them enough to pay and support them. Ad supported Internet radio is only here because people listen to and act on the advertising. Adobe Flash CS4 is only around because enough people pay for it.

The irony is that many times people pay for stuff that is crappy and snub paying for stuff that is good, just because they think that everything on the Internet should be free. I am using HD Radio as an example, just because it is easy to knock, but the same faulty logic is being applied to any physical vs. virtual purchase. People are willing to pay $8 for a latte and a muffin, but they gripe at an $8 iPhone app. What's up with that?

Bottom line: if nobody pays, then nothing will get produced.

As the Internet evolves, I hope that quality cheap trumps crappy free because people are willing to pay a little for quality. The world will be a much sweeter sounding place.

Adjusting the signal

2009-06-29T00:49:00.001-07:00

The other day I was driving and I noticed a change in my behavior. On my way to a regular destination, I chose to go a different route. Not really longer, just different. Turns out my reasoning was to avoid a hole in the 3G coverage that I noticed awhile back. I have become seriously attached to my Radio Paradise sessions in the car and I don't want to miss anything, even while running errands. My mental routing engine knows that and plans accordingly.

Internet radio in the car has now become part of my subconscious pattern. Radio has become visceral again, part of my life. I like that.

A funny thing happened on the way to Cupertino...

2009-05-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

Arrived in San Jose and got the standard rental car from Thrifty. This time an exciting Seabring... be still my heart! Anyway, as with the other rentals I have had this month, this one had a AUX jack, so it was "Internet radio ready." I plugged in my iPhone running Tuner2 and headed out.

Driving around the South Bay, I tested 101, 85, 280, Lawrence Expressway, and Montague Expressway. The experience was flawless, with two surprising exceptions. First, it dropped out briefly around 85 at El Camino, center of the commute path for folks heading to Google, MSFT, and the other companies in Mountain View.

The second, however, was even more odd. Heading down 280 south at DeAnza, the radio dropped from 3G to Edge to nothing. Those in the know will recognize the location as being right outside Apple HQ in Cupertino! A friend suggested that the failure was due to heavy usage within Apple. That may be the case, but it is pretty odd. Area in La Jolla near Qualcomm HQ must have at least as much usage, but I haven't experienced failure around there yet.

It appears that Apple and AT&T need a little more cooperation.

Even with the dropouts, though, I must say that they were brief and definitely provided an experience as least as good as satellite radio.

Cruising to Palm Springs

2009-05-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

A brief post for a brief trip. Went out to Palm Springs last weekend. Tuner2 App on iPhone worked great. As usual, signal died at the top of the 241 toll road. Also had brief signal trouble on California Hwy 60 going through the hills outside of Moreno Valley. Overall, though, it was smooth sailing. On a two hour trip, the interruptions accumulated to at most 5 minutes of silence. If only AT&T would get on the job and fix those holes!

For those who find these signal gaps a reason to dismiss the readiness of Internet radio in the car, I offer the following advice. Next time you listen to FM radio, listen carefully. You will soon hear dropouts in those same rural regions where your mobile signal fades. KPCC is the only reason I listen to broadcast radio in LA. As soon as I enter those same hilly areas where I lost signal on my iPhone, the FM signal gets fuzzy and sometimes even drops off. It would be interesting to have a sponsored study where someone drives around and records audio quality and reliability of an FM signal compared to the audio quality of that same station delivered over Internet. I am thinking that they won't be so different on the reliability front and the audio quality front will be heavily in favor of the Internet station.

Celebration in Chicago

2009-04-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

On Monday, the new Tuner2 iPhone app finally showed up on the app store. Very nice! Modulation Index has done a great job putting it together with a focus on high-fidelity, reliability, and ease of use.

The day found me in Chicago driving a rented Ford Focus. Although not equipped with Sync, this one did have the requisite power plug (the politically correct term for a cigarette lighter receptacle present in every vehicle on the planet) and 1/8" aux jack (present now in most modern vehicles.) Driving around Chicago-land, I was streaming 24Kbps and even 64Kbps radio stations on Tuner2 without a hitch. Sweet!

Another city tested positive for Internet radio in the car.

More motion in the Mojave.

2009-04-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

Another month, another trip to Las Vegas. This time to NAB. The best news is that the Tuner2 app for iPhone is now complete, so I got to test the release version across the desert. Being my third time this year (CES, CTIA, and now NAB), I have been able to compare the relative performance of Internet radio on my iPhone across the Mojave desert. Interestingly, each time has been better.

There is still a gap for about 40 miles after Ft. Irwin towards Baker on I-15. However, outside of that gap, it is 3G streaming all the way! I was able to tune into Radio Paradise up the Cajon Pass without a hitch. Starting south of Baker (well before the famous Zzyzx Road), I was able to jam all the way to Las Vegas with only minor breaks a couple times in the deepest parts of the desert. It appears that AT&T is constantly improving their network.

One caveat, (and maybe a minor bit of bragging), you won't get this kind of performance from just any Internet radio app on iPhone. You need one that has a persistent retry mechanism and one that has a high-quality MPEG-4 aacPlus decoder. With those two features, a 24Kbps stream sounds great through your speakers and rides through the bandwidth sags without audible rebuffering. Most of the iPhone apps that claim support for aacPlus (aka HE AAC, AAC+, etc.) use the open source FAAD2 decoder. That decoder has very poor performance and sounds terrible at low bit rates. (Personally, I don't think it even sounds that good at 64Kbps.) Since the Tuner2 iPhone app uses the commercial FhG decoder and the Modulation Index reconnect scheme, the audio quality and reliability are very high.

With all this talk about the desert, I don't want to forget to mention that the app still performs like a champ all around the LA metro area, delivering an experience superior to either satellite or HD Radio. Now that aacPlus is finally starting to show up in iPhone apps, car listening reliability will pass through the critical threshold for a broad audience. Pandora and AOL Radio still use 64Kbps MP3 on the go, so their audio quality in the car is marginal both on the decode and on the bandwidth usage. Once stations start to use 32Kbps MPEG-4 aacPlus, Internet radio in the car will really start to come into its own.

IP Dead Zone: San Joaquin Valley

2009-01-29T17:45:00.000-08:00

Another week, another chance to test 3G Internet radio outside of the metros. This time, I motored north and south on California's main artery, I-5. Given my experience in the Mojave, I was optimistic about the Central Valley. It is more heavily used and shoots like an arrow through flat farmland surrounded by hills and peaks. I thought that this corridor is worth at least the same level of 3G infrastructure investment as I-95 on the east coast.

I was wrong.

I expected spotty connectivity going through the Angeles National Forest beyond Santa Clarita. What I did not expect is that things got even worse past Grapevine.

After you get down into the Valley, the next three hours are pure IP hell, just enough tease to fill the buffer then go dark as soon as you start to enjoy the song. AT&T, Sprint, it didn't matter, both networks had very poor coverage. Someone suggested switching my iPhone to EDGE-only to keep swapping at a minimum, but that didn't help. So I hiccuped my way, teeth on edge, up what certainly feels like the fastest stretch of freeway in the USA.

Turning west at Los Banos, connectivity returned at Gilroy and performed beautifully for the remainder of my time all across the Bay Area.

The moral of the story: Internet radio in the car is ready for prime time in the metros, but not in the rural areas.

Driving to Vegas with Radio Paradise

2009-01-18T22:02:00.000-08:00

We are just about finished with our new iPhone app for Tuner2. (More on that interesting tidbit in a later post.) It performs flawlessly around the LA basin where AT&T 3G coverage is good. The question is, though, how would it perform in the middle of the Mojave? Since I had to head to CES anyway, I got the chance to find out.

Last year going to NAB 2008, I created a baseline for myself using the Sprint phone. Its performance was pretty spotty once you left the metro. The Tuner2 app on iPhone was a completely different story. I won't say it was flawless, but I was able to listen to Radio Paradise (24Kbps aacPlus) with only 1 or 2 hiccups going up the Cajon pass and all the way out to Fort Irwin/Yermo and the agriculture checkpoint.

After that, I had to take a break to make some phone calls. Similar to the Sprint experience, the iPhone was pretty spotty once I returned, but picked up again at Baker and was solid once more when I came into view of the Nevada state line. Driving around Las Vegas to and from the show, it was just as solid as "normal" broadcast radio. (Broadcast radio, BTW, crackles more than you think if you pay attention to it.)

It is interesting to note that the performance of the Tuner2 iPhone app is inverted from Sirius XM satellite radio receivers. In the urban areas, the scatter creates dead zones for sat radio (especially for Sirius, which seems to have a weaker ground repeater network.) I was in a rental car near Washington DC recently and the sat radio in the car went silent as I waited for the light to change under an overpass. In the desert, the lack of obstructions gives you good sat radio reception. For 3G (AT&T and Sprint alike) the urban areas are well covered and things get spotty when you head out into the desert or rural areas.

Of course, in the end there is no comparison since we spend most of our time driving in the metros and more importantly, the variety of what you can get via the Internet far eclipses the programming on satellite radio.

Streaming to iPhone, I guess I have to care

2008-10-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

Technology purist, stand aside! Streaming radio to the iPhone is important.

Back before Apple released the 3G iPhone, I derided the attempts to stream to iPhone. In my defense, my criticism was justified at that time. However, the facts on the ground have changed and now I must sing a different tune.

Case in point, Radio NRI had been streaming for months using standards-based 3GPP format to Sprint and AT&T phones as an off-deck solution. The results were less than stellar and the percentage of total listeners using the mobile streams was negligible.

Then in July, AOL Radio released their AOL Radio app for iPhone. As of October, an estimated 10% of the listeners enjoying the Radio NRI streams on AOL Radio were on the iPhone. 10%! That is a huge percentage considering the relative market share of iPhone. Yes, iPhone shipments are surging, but they still form potential audience that is an order of magnitude smaller than the broader multimedia phone market. At street events this summer, people would walk up to the Radio NRI booth with their iPhone saying "I found you guys here, this is amazing, I was just listening to Bollywood Classic Hits in my car using my iPhone."

What makes the popularity of iPhone radio applications so surprising is that they are generally using MP3 to deliver their streams. In general, MP3 is way too fat for mobile streaming and the streaming protocol it uses is not at all suited for reliable listening. Nonetheless, iPhone users are eating it up.

This audience has two big things going for it. First, the iPhone is dead easy to use. Do a side by side of trying to tune into Tuner2.com on your Sprint multimedia handset (even on the lauded Samsung Instinct!) and then try to use AOL Radio on your iPhone. The comparison is like night and day. Using a dedicated radio app on an iPhone is much easier than navigating through your multimedia phone's clumsy UI.

Second, the iPhone user is motivated. They whole reason they bought the phone was to access the Internet, enjoy media, and to download custom apps. This motivation makes it natural that iPhone users would want to enjoy Internet radio on their iPhone. A perfect match.

So here I am, eating a bit of crow. To repeat the words of Stephen Colbert, "the free market has spoken." Internet radio on iPhone is a key audience for all broadcasters. Now they need to work to deliver iPhone apps that get beyond the crappy MP3 streaming and start delivering quality audio over reliable transports.

Stay tuned...

AT&T's ulterior motive - 3G vs. WiFi

2008-10-30T17:53:00.001-07:00

All hail! AT&T has given all the iPhone users free WiFi access inside their hotspot network at places like Starbucks. Pretty cool, huh?

Not so fast... While this may seem like altruistic behavior, it is just good business. 3G data is pretty darn expensive to deliver. If an AT&T customer with a dual-radio device, like an iPhone, is within range of their WiFi network, then it saves them a ton of cash to move that user onto the WiFi.

So, while it is definitely a nice capability for users, don't think AT&T is doing you a favor. They are just reducing their costs. On the other hand, if they suddenly enable VoIP over that free WiFi, the rules really would start changing.

Ford and embedded Bluetooth streaming

2008-07-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

Even though this video is a blatant ad for Ford Focus, it nonetheless shows what I have been talking about. The built in stereo Bluetooth receiver allows you to establish a stream on your phone (assuming your phone has a data plan) and then play it back through the car speakers.

As a side note, it would be interesting to do some testing on the interaction between the low-quality of the Bluetooth codec (SBC) and low-quality streaming codecs like Windows Media audio. In any case, the buzz is that SBC doesn't quite cut it, so folks like APT, Kleer, and Qualcomm are creating alternative wireless solutions. Both APT and Qualcomm aim to work over Bluetooth transport, which, in my view, makes them more attractive.

Lessons from AM radio

2008-07-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

Why isn't Internet radio more widespread? (both inside and outside the car.) I have heard a number of theories. Too many codecs, too many formats, lack of bandwidth in mobile, etc. However, all of these theories are actually details obscuring an underlying reality.

For Internet radio to become truly widespread, it needs to "just work." The consumer needs to be able to power on, turn the knob, and have good sound coming out. If they don't like what they are hearing, they need to be able to hit the seek button to find something more to their taste. That's it, it needs to be that simple.

Before all the technologists yell foul and complain that that Internet radio is too complex for this to happen, let's look at AM and FM radio. The consumer experience of AM and FM radio is exactly as I describe above, but a lot of moving pieces had to be fixed down before it could happen. AM and FM are complex, they just don't feel that way due to good standardization.

Although first broadcast in 1906, AM didn't become commercially viable in North America until standards were set for carrier amplitude, modulation frequency range, channel spacing, and overall carrier frequency ranges for receivers. This standard stood alone for 30+ years until FM arrived and presented another selection of standardized components which added up to a complete solution. As a result, over 80 years later, we can still turn on an AM radio, tune the dial, and enjoy the broadcasts. You don't need a different type of radio for every single station.

For Internet radio to reach the same robust level, we need a unified standard which covers connectivity, discovery, directory, transport, and playback. The good news is that the nature of the beast already gives us a standard for connectivity, TCP/IP and UDP. Now we need to get to the brass tacks of the remaining items.

Disovery: Internet radios need to have a kind of global UPnP, which makes it automatically aware of relevant directories. It may be as simple as a directory of directories maintained by ICANN, but that's just a quick guess. And the problem remains, who gets listed and in what order? This may be the most difficult part since it needs to be truly neutral for it to work across all vendors and broadcasters.

Directory: Internet radios need a standardized way to get a list of stations which are available. Also that list needs to have some kind of globally relevant set of sorting and grouping tags.

Transport: Once we know what streams are available and where they are, we need a limited set of ways to get access to them. HTTP "Shoutcast" is the most widespread transport method used today, but it doesn't do well in lossy environments like mobile/car. RTSP is used by 3GPP and in IPTV and works great for mobile, but it isn't widely used by today's Internet radio. Although the purists (and you know who you are) wouldn't like it, any standard will need to support both transports. We would also need to implement a standardized backchannel interface for services like Pandora, which takes user preferences into account.

Playback: Now that we have the stream unwrapped, we need to put it out over the speakers and on whatever display is available. That means we need an audio codec. Given its widespread use, MP3 is probably required here. However, the content fees put forward by Thomson coupled with the recent lack of clarity around MP3 patent ownership means that this could be an issue. MPEG-4 HE AAC v2 is the standard in mobile and is also used by Shoutcast. Given its open-standards nature, its bitrate efficiency, and clear patent pool, HE AAC v2 should also be fundamental. Beyond codec, the playback standard also has to have a fixed methodology for metadata presentation, including album art and even advertising.

The parts needed for a true Internet radio standard are nearly all off the shelf. Existing solutions can be quickly adopted or tweaked to match the needs. The only real barriers will be in compromise, cooperation, and will power. Once we come together and establish such a standard, then Internet radio can truly blossom, be free of the PC, and be as ubiquitous as AM & FM.

IP radio = standard car option?

2008-04-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

Sorry to disappoint, but I don't see Internet radio as being a standard feature in US cars anytime soon. However, that doesn't mean that the use of Internet radio in the car won't become widespread. It will just take a different path.

Legal requirements for handsfree operation of phones while driving is pushing adoption of Bluetooth in the car. Conversion kits will give way to standard option Bluetooth, likely with A2DP (e.g. stereo audio) support. This means that instead of native devices, the route for Internet radio into the car is a docked cellphone.

The choice of Bluetooth connecting docked phones is also driven by the economics of alternative solutions. To have widespread adoption, you need a standard. Yes, MPEG-4 HE AAC over RTP is the standard for streaming Internet radio to vast millions of mobile phones. However, the means of getting IP connectivity to the car are varied, causing the need to purchase some kind of custom device for each carrier. If you are going to spend money on a new connection device, why not just dock the phone in the car? I know there is growing interest in 3G to WiFi routers out there which will make your car a roaming hotspot using a 3G dongle or PCMCIA card, but that still doesn't solve the last 3 feet problem of connecting to the car speakers.

A final driver for the Bluetooth A2DP route is that the 3G carriers in the USA don't have a consumer friendly business model for non-voice device connections. In other regions (e.g. Japan), device makers can release a data-only device which uses the wireless data network. I have also heard of these kind of devices in the EU, using GSM for remote monitoring applications. However, the dynamics of the US market don't seem to go that way. WiMax won't cut it, even if it gets deployed. WiMax only works in metros and people want a radio that works at least nationwide - you would need 3G and 2.5G support in the radio. My Sprint or AT&T music phone will that criteria just fine and my flat rate data plan on those phones is $15/month.

Bottom line, unless the carriers make a joint push with device makers for a data-only IP radio and a standards body approves the profile (3GPP in cooperation with NAB would be a good choice), docked phones using A2DP are the most likely near to mid-term scenario. The only real downside with this solution is that the SBC codec used by default on A2DP phones has quality issues. For IP radio, though, the benefit of getting the stream you want will definitely outweigh this quality limitation.

Success! New York to Washington DC

2008-01-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

This week our road test ranged East and with great success. The main test was an epic road trip down Interstate 95 from New York to Washington DC via New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Below are the results.

Equipment: The trusty Samsung a920 music phone with Sprint PowerVision 3G service. No custom software, pure "stock" configuration out of the box.

Station: Radio NRI 24/7 Bollywood & Beyond, accessed through the m.tuner2.com mobile portal.

Monday and Tuesday morning in New York City: Spot checks at various points both outside and inside plus cab-rides. Consistent performance with no drop outs. Didn't work in the subway.

Tuesday driving south on the New Jersey Turnpike via Edison, NJ to Wilmington, DE: In spite of dropouts around Newark airport (Sprints maps show no coverage holes there, btw), we had great performance south to Edison. Worked good during occasional checks during the rest of the drive. Perfect performance in Delaware.

Wednesday driving south on Interstate 95 from Wilmington, DE, through Baltimore, to the DC beltway: Near flawless with continuous listening the entire two hours. One re-buffer as I crossed the first bridge on the upper Chesapeake was countered by my amazement that it didn't drop out at all going through the tunnel in Baltimore! Breezed through the 90-degree route around the beltway and then out on the road to Dulles International Airport.

Conclusion: If satellite radio is the measure, then Internet radio via 3G is absolutely ready for prime time. My XM radio used to drop out when I went under dense pine trees and under some viaducts, even in area where there were ground repeaters (e.g. Palo Alto, CA on San Antonio Road heading towards 101). The continuous listening performance of Tuner2 radio on the Sprint PowerVision 3G network was just as good and the audio quality was much better. (Trust me - this is more than just a subjective statement on my part. Or better yet, don't trust me and take a listen for yourself.) Internet radio in the car is definitely a reality. Now we just need to let people know!

Backlash! 10,000 channels of crap and only 1 button

2007-11-20T09:48:00.000-08:00

Seven years after "AM, FM, iM," Internet radio devices are finally becoming mainstream. Broadband is ubiquitous, cheap, and reliable. WiFi is everywhere. And the bill of materials has reached the sub-$20 mark.

However, all is not well. These devices all seem to promote the fact that you can get "10,000+ stations." While 10,000 stations (and even more if you like) might be good thing on a PC, it is a disaster on a dedicated radio. The reality is that most of those 10,000 stations are just crap. Random playlists, police scanners, and other assorted flotsam. Finding the good among the bad and the ugly takes some work.

If users get frustrated on devices with a remote and multi-line displays like a Noxon, imagine the backlash when the users have only 1 or two buttons to navigate the infinite recursions of dubious "stations" presented by services like vTuner.

On the infinite dial, the value of the editor becomes more and more critical. Tuner2 inherits a philosophy started by Sonicbox back in 1999. Hand pick a selection of top stations, monitor them for reliability, and constantly weed out the bad ones. Couple that kind of tuning service with the ability to add stations that users discover on their own, and you have a winning approach which can easily be navigated by a couple buttons.

Streaming to iPhone - Who Cares?

2007-11-13T15:11:00.000-08:00

On November 5th, WFMU claims to have rocked the world by streaming their radio station to the iPhone. All I have to say is "Who Cares?"

No offense to WFMU (a great independent station), but streaming to the iPhone is a non-event for a few reasons. First, the iPhone is $400, meaning that it is only available to the top tier of early adopters - in no way it is a mass medium for Internet radio. Second, it is only GPRS enabled, meaning that you can at best reliably deliver a 24Kbps stream to it. Third, it is a closed platform which has native streaming disabled. Sure, there are cracks and custom software, but Apple keeps breaking the cracks with updates, meaning that only the most dedicated otakus will have the desire to keep re-cracking and re-loading.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of Apple. It's just that for some reason they don't get streaming. As one of my fellow travellers pointed out, why can't we connect iTouch to an Airport Express? Why can't I click on a song name in the iTunes radio player and purchase the song from the iTunes store (something that was obvious to a company called Sonicbox in 1999!)? And why did they disable streaming on the iPhone and iTouch?

Once the iTouch and iPhone platforms open up in February, then there will be a reason to install streaming software on an iPhone or iTouch. However, even then, because of the bandwidth limit in the iPhone, it will only be useful for in-home or in-coffee-store use. Definitely useless in the car.

Action in the front seat

2007-07-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a video showing how to connect your phone to your car stereo. As a quick note, the data service shown in the demo is the Sprint Power Vision unlimited for $14.99/month. No additional subscription fees or special software on the phone were required for the radio. It all worked out of the box.

List of Sprint phones that work

2007-07-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

Just went to the local Sprint store to check prices and see which phones will work. Tested the available Power Vision phones using Tuner2 Mobile for 3GPP Internet radio streams. All phone prices listed are with the 2 year plan and any applicable discounts. Of course, you would need to have the phones enabled with the $15/monthly Power Vision Access plan as well. Here are the results...

Bottom line: For $29.99 (online deal only), you can get a phone which doubles as an Internet radio (m510 from Samsung), but the proprietary connector prevents you from using it in your car. The LG Fusic, priced at $79.99, has the needed "dual jack" to allow both power and audio to be connected at the same time, or you can use the built in FM xmitter.

Current phones that would work in the car:

LG Fusic: $79.99, connects to stereo via built in FM xmitter or headphone jack, separate power connection
Samsung Upstage: $99.99, connects via stereo Bluetooth (requires stereo Bluetooth adapter for your car)
Samsung m500: $79.99, connects via headphone jack, separate power connection
Sanyo M1 (untested): $199.99, connects via stereo Bluetooth (requires stereo Bluetooth adaper for your car)

Phones that work for personal listening, but not for the car:

Moto KRZR: $79.99, custom connector does not allow simultaneous connection to headphone and power
Moto RAZR v3m: $59.99, custom connector does not allow simultaneous connection to headphone and power
Samsung m510: $29.99, custom connector does not allow simultaneous connection to headphone and power
Sanyo SCP-8400: $99.99, couldn't tell if the audio jack was stereo or not.

I followed up with a trip to the Cingular store, but the demo phones didn't have Internet enabled on them. Ah, well, we will find a way in a later post.

Success with Sprint Power Vision

2007-07-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

May 2006 - I dumped Verizon and got a new contract with Sprint. I had Verizon for over 3 years, but Verizon plays control freak on their network and won't even let you browse to HTML sites off the deck, let alone stream live audio content.

Sprint, on the other hand, gives you unlimited 3G Internet, including streaming, on the phone for just $15/month (Power Vision Access plan). Sure, that price doesn't include Sprint TV, or the other bundled content, but I didn't want that stuff. I just wanted the pure, sweet nectar of free flowing Internet. Sprint delivered. Also, since the EVDO network was just being rolled out in the major metros, the bandwidth would be the real thing.

Since I am a music lover, I purchased the Samsung SPH-A920. $149.99 with a two year contract. Similar phones available now are much cheaper (more on that in a later post.) The cool thing is that all Sprint Power Vision EVDO phones are 3GPP enabled, complete with aacPlus audio. This means that if a content provider knows their stuff, the streaming audio won't sound like it is underwater or coming from a tin-can.

Phone in hand, the next step was connecting it to the car. Since my 2002 PT Cruiser still has a cassette deck (yeah, I know...), I could use a $10 cassette adapter. However, I still needed to connect it to the phone. This is where things get tricky. I needed an adapter to go from the 2.5mm stereo/mic jack to a common 3.5mm (1/8") stereo jack. Sprint didn't carry them at the time, but luckily I was able to pick one up from the local Cingular store.

Adapter in hand, I connected the phone to the car, typed the Groove Salad url into my media player, and blammo, I had high-quality, untethered, Internet radio right in my car! The quality was even better than most XM Radio channels and I didn't have to pay an extra subscription. Listening to streaming radio drained the phone's battery, but a $30 car charger solved that problem. Very nice!

Not bad for May 2006. However, looking at my feature list for the Ideal Internet Car Radio, a couple problems remained:

EVDO wasn't yet deployed wide enough for reliable listening over long distances.
The phone was over $99.
Available free content was pretty limited.
Tuning into a radio station was pretty painful. (send yourself an SMS from the PC, or manually type in the URL. How do I text in a 'slash' again...?)

Fast forward to Summer 2007. Thanks to Sprint, EVDO now covers all major population areas and major transportation corridors. Thanks to Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, and Sanyo, aacPlus 3GPP-enabled phones are available for much lower prices. Thanks to Tuner2, there is a single point of tuning for high-quality Internet radio on the mobile phone. The content list isn't huge, but it is growing. And in the next couple of months it will grow like crazy once stations catch on to the untapped audience. Using Tuner2 mobile on my A920, today I drive around Southern California enjoying Internet radio, free and clear.

Things are looking good, but all is not sun and roses. In the next posts I will share some specifics about my LA driving tests, a long-distance drive through farm country, share a longer list of compatible phones, and talk about some issues you may encounter connecting the phones to your car.

-fred jackson

Off to the races

2007-06-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

So what is this all about? Since XM burst on the scene in 1999, I have been dreaming of the day when Internet radio would arrive in the car to give the satellite radio duopoly a run for its money. My first experiment was to take a spin around the parking lot at 241 Polaris Avenue, Mountain View, listening to my WiFi laptop through the car speakers.

Worked OK, but the range sucked!

Sprint and Verizon 1xRTT data cards soon arrived on the scene. Those had better range, of course, but the data hand-off was miserable, so driving down the road didn't work so well. Also, who wants to futz with a laptop on the passenger seat?

Smart phones arrived, but they are not a true mass market device and are notoriously short on standards-based multimedia features. Windows Media may be fine for the PC (for some), but stream it over a wireless network and it not only sounds bad, but cannot maintain a reliable stream.

So, now that I have ranted on what doesn't work, let's talk about what will work. The features of the Ideal Internet Car Radio are:

Receiver device is an off the shelf, consumer device ($99 or less when purchased with a plan)
Device supports standards-based mobile streaming (3GPP) out of the box
Device comes with a low-cost, unlimited, 3G data plan
Can access free radio (without additional subscription) from anywhere on the net.
Can connect to the car audio.
Can connect to car power *while* audio is connected (don't want to drain the battery!)
Works reliably for long times & distances (can commute without significant hiccups)
Does not need a special antenna.

This list quickly eliminates a lot of hyped stuff. Slacker fails, iPhone fails, Sansa Connect fails, and anything that only supports WMA or MP3 streaming fails.

The good news is that the list is now satisfied by a number of phones from open-minded carriers like Sprint and AT&T/Cingular. I have conducted experiments using these phones and the results are pretty amazing. More on that soon.

-fred jackson