Tech
Toronto Radio on the iPhone
A couple of weeks ago, with the development work of StreamTheWorld, Canadian media company Corus Entertainment released a free iPhone app that allows you to tune in to 52 of their Canada-wide radio stations (both AM and FM). I only caught wind of this the other day, and decided to give it a whirl.
Toronto stations include Corus Entertainment's Q107, 102.1 The Edge, and AM 640, but you can also listen to their live feeds for stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Quebec City, and more. A small ad banner link is displayed once your station is chosen, but it's not terribly intrusive and delivered tastefully enough.
Sound quality isn't that hot (I'm guessing 32 kbps?). It has that flat, lo-fi, highly-compressed sound to it for sure. It's definitely not the "outstanding sound quality" promised in the press release, but considering that it's free (and streaming), we can't really expect much there. The stream is robust on Wi-Fi, and based on my limited use of the app on 3G, it seems to be able to hold he stream there too.
That said, the true test will be to see how the stream holds up outside of 3G network range. If it does stream well on the Edge network, this little app could make for a great backup when on road trips and the aerial station starts to lose fidelity and cutting out on the car radio.
Now if only we could convince a certain quality radio station to follow suit with a similar iPhone app for their stations, it would make for a much more pleasant, informative bus ride/walk to work.
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mms://38.99.208.186/cjcl
Other Canadian radio streams can be found at:
http://www.thestreamcenter.com/canada/
All it takes is a $400 device, plus a gazillion-dollar data contract with Rogers, and it's all free after that! </sarcasm></snark>
The article is simply pointing out something that many Torontonians might feel useful. When satellite radio was introduced into cars did you go on a rant about how for the low price of $30,000 you can listen to commercial-free radio?
This site is getting more and more drama queens. Yikes. Between the this and the guys who debate about the originality of burrito recipes, its actually quite saddening.
And before some dumbass calls me an Apple fanboy, my phone and MP3 are both Samsungs.
You have much better choices out there. MUCH better.
But most importantly, battery usage... 1 AAA will power el-cheapo radio forever, while streaming over 3G on the iPhone absolutely guzzles battery life.
By your own analogy, why pay for cable or satellite TV when you can get channels over the air for free? (And don't tell me how many extra premium channels you're getting, when 90% of their content is reruns originally shown on free channels.)
Conversely, the Corus app mentioned above lets you listen to over 50 stations from across Canada, something your radio cannot do. The FStream app I mentioned gives you access to unlimited stations from anywhere in the world. (Thousands of Canadian and U.S. stations available from the one link I posted.) And FStream lets you record radio too, also something your radio cannot do.
Yup, it's overkill to spend the bandwidth on locally accessible stations. But it also beats carrying a radio around on the off chance that you want to hear what 680News has to say about something.
Is there a point to listen to a homogenized radio network's station in another province? Are you listening to it for different local ads? No one was arguing about Fstream either (you just put that in there so you could chime in). International radio is neat, the internet is great for that but we were talking about the merits of listening to local FM content over the airwaves versus mobile internet. Nice try though!
-G.