no more radio commercials!
So this just makes my geeky little heart sing. a couple days ago i discovered that i can stream internet radio stations from my cell phone to my car’s stereo! This heralds a pretty big change in my listening habits since my car was the only place left I listened to commercial radio. now I won’t have to listen to commercials anymore. yay! here’s what i’m using to get it working
- a mobile radio app (this one works on pocket pc phones but i’m sure there are similar apps for other kinds of phones. One nice thing about this one though is that I can set it to record programs at specific times (like Q’s radio show) and it’ll save the recording as an mp3 that i can listen to later…sorta like tivo for the radio)
- a 2.5mm / 3.5mm headset adapter
- a cassette/audio player stereo adapter if you don’t have an auxilary jack in your car. If you have an auxilary jack then you don’t need it.
Of course you’ll also need a data plan with your cell phone company (Sprint charges $15/mo for EVDO). Sound quality and reception are surprisingly good. It does tend to drop in certain places (especially along the 280 where my cell reception is spotty) but in general it works pretty well in the city. Aside from $20 for the radio app, there are no extra fees. Given that XM satellite radio costs about $13/ mo, this is a pretty sweet deal!
You might be better off quality-wise if you go with something like the Monster RadioPlay rather than the cassette adapter. I guess it depends whether you think cassette quality is better or worse than FM radio quality. I could definitely see a case made in either direction.
oh yes, that’ll probably work too! I have one of these for my ipod but am not using it for the phone b/c I have a phone charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter (i think different phones need different chargers)