Close Topic Options

GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD!

...WE GET SIGNAL! WHAT!

I'm very excited to inform all of you out there that my test is a success. I have just connected my laptop (3 years old, only 512mb ram and a 1.2 ghz pentium M) to my dad's Motorola Q and used it as a modem. Doing so does indeed allow sufficient broadband bandwidth to support Initial D World Radio's broadcast. The stream plays flawlessly.

This is wonderful news for those of you who were asking how to play this on the go, or in your car. Some cars have AUX ports (they look like headphone jacks) on the front panel or as a separate cable. Most cars have AUX jacks on the back of the head unit (they look like stereo connectors; red and white plugs). And there are both radio-based and casette-based adapters for any car that does not fit into those categories.

All you need right now is a cell phone capable of connecting to a broadband network and capable of using Microsoft ActiveSync + PdaNet. If your phone meets these criterion (the Q, Treo, Razr and iPhone come to mind) and you have a laptop (doesn't even need to be powerful) with audio out... you could very well be in business.

Sadly I will not be able to test the ability of the phone itself to play the stream due to time and equipment restraints. Someone else will have to pioneer that experiment.

But for now... you all know what I'll be listening to!

Cheers,
Phoenix Wright (Nomake Wan)

Hey bay bay !! Congrats. Keep us updated !!

Sweet! I had a feeling this was what you were going to post.

Sweet !!! I am very surprised that using a mobile phone as modem is actually fast enough for the radio. You must make sure your plan includes unlimited transfer data rate or something, because streaming the radio will take up a lot of bandwidth on your side. The data rate is around 11.5Kbytes ~ 12.0Kbytes per second. An hour worth of radio stream is about 43MB.

If you don't have a data rate plan that can handle that, you might have to pay a lot for exceeding the plan limit.

Perry speaks the truth. My father has an unlimited data plan, and I highly, highly recommend it if you plan on doing anything serious with your phone, like for instance, using it as your laptop's modem when you're on the go.

We don't have unlimited data plans here anymore, and that transfer rate would kill the non-unlimited plan.

Edit : I do not mean to knock this in any way, this is excellent news for those who can get ( or have already ) an unlimited data plan.

Edit 2 : I HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE, I MAKE MY TIME.

This post has been edited by Manfred von Karma on Jun 16 2007, 04:43 PM

Yes, sadly, not every country has this plan... I know that Verizon got in trouble a while back for not being clear that the unlimited data plan did not carry over in Canada (well actually it was about how much it cost in Canada but..), so I recall that being true...

Here's hoping the companies start offering such a thing sometime soon...

I believe they call this "limited" but I'm not positive.


My friend has a Macbook and a RAZR that he connects on the road all the time. Next time he comes back to visit GA and we're driving around, I'll pull out his notebook and try out the radio.

Soo, I recall you saying a smartphone with Windows Mobile and WMP should be able to do this, too? It would make sense after learning your dad's Q is powerful enough to act as a modem to the stream, then if it has WMP it should just as easily play on it's own.

It should. On the other hand I can't test it because I don't have an audio interface for the phone and honestly don't know how to get the stream to play off of the phone. I don't know enough about the Q's interface to try it.

Sorry about the offtopic...

What happened over here is that the smaller GSM provider got bought out by the big guys, who scrapped their unlimited plan. No competition for GSM here means higher prices.

I'll take that on a shall we say... more technical side. First of all, you need a device that CAN STREAM SHOUTCASTS. So I don't think Razr qualifies for that, unless the US CDMA/branded GSM Razrs have different features. I'm sure that the Nokia Series 60v3 phones (Nokia N-series, E-series, 5500, 5700, and some others, dunno how about S60v2) can run those. If you're planning to get one of these, I'd suggest the E60, E65, E70, E61(i), as they have nearly all the connectivity options, INCLUDING WI-FI. And having Wi-Fi is kinda money saving, eh? The software can be found here.

Also the UIQ3 phones apparently can work with these. Those are Moto RIZR Z8 (I think), Sony Ericsson P990, P1, M600, W950, W960. Nearly all of these (except M600 and RIZR IIRC) have Wi-Fi too. The aforementioned Windows Mobile can run these too. As for ActiveSync... I dunno how it would affect the whole thing.

If you're not in Wi-Fi range however... I think UMTS (3G) and HSDPA (3.6 Mbits speed usually, though there are faster variations out there) should be enough for comfortable streaming. As for other phones... like the Razr... from what I've heard, streaming in J2ME is a pain... so pretty simply... for mobile listening you'll need a smartphone.

I think you're wrong. I haven't tested it with my mom's RAZR, but it should be capable of connecting to the same 2.4 mbps broadband network as my dad's phone. After all, when the phone's being used as a modem, the phone is an intermediary--not a controller. The phone isn't playing anything, it's just sending and receiving data. Your computer is doing the playing.

Unless you're talking about playing it with the phone directly, in which case I have no clue how to do that so you're the man.

I am talking about doing it with the phone directly... that's pretty much what my whole post is about. The thing is... you'd need a smartphone for that. There certainly are apps for that for Symbian OS (UIQ3 or Series 60v3 flavors, dunno about older versions of these), probably are for Windows Mobile (nobody has a phone with that here, and I'm not really into WM's... they are too much PDA, not enough phone), as for J2ME (the so-called dumbphones)... from what I've heard it's impossible.

My friend has a Nokia N73 Music Edition... I so hate that phone, but I'll try to convince him to test the shoutcast feature. I dunno when I'll meet him (he lives on the other side of the town, and the summer holidays haven't started for me yet), but when I do, I'll tell you guys how does it work. Unfortunately his phone doesn't have Wi-Fi... so guess I'll have to connect with EDGE, or whatever his phone can connect with, other than GPRS, which is far too slow for that.

Now, I haven't yet mentioned how would you be able to transmit shoutcast played directly with a phone to your car's sound system... I think if you have a smartphone with A2DP, and your radio supports that, it'd be possible. FM transmitters... I think there was one by Sony Ericsson, but it's not available... at least here. Some manufacturers also offer cables allowing you to connect to a sound system... and I think that'd work (I'm sure there's an SE music cable). As for Nokia... Nokia US has nothing. Nokia UK has some car setups that make it possible to stream music... but well, I have no way at all to check how and if this works with 3rd party programs (that you'd need to use in order to stream shoutcast). All I can test is wether it's possible and how easy it is to do, and I hope I get a chance to see about that soon.

Why so complicated? There are adapters to convert 2.5mm jacks to 3.5mm aren't there? And there are plenty of 3.5mm adapters for getting connected to a car.

If you go the phone route. Laptops come standard with 3.5mm audio ports.

Clever... forgot about that. But not too many phones have 2.5 mm jacks. Usually they have their own connectors. In that case...
-Sony Ericssons have their HPM headsets (64, 65, 70, 75, 82, etc), the optimal choices are 64 and 70 because they are the cheapest, and you're not gonna use the headset part anyway (the cable is a two part one, about a meter of cable from the phone to the mic/3.5mmjack, and about 30 centimeters to the headset).
-Nokias... N91 has a 3.5mm jack in standard, the rest... some have the AD-46 adapter bundled, some don't. The adapter has a mic too.

Of course answering the calls with such a small mic that's supposed to be a few cm from your mouth wouldn't be too comfortable. In pure theory you should be able to detach it when someone's calling, but I don't think that'd be easy nor safe when you're driving. Now I kinda wonder... if you have a BT headset connected with the headset protocol, and a wired headset/adapter connected to your car hi-fi, and you asnwer the call... would the sound go to the wired or wireless headset? Hmm... too bad I can't check that.

Thought I would do an update on this. I'll be posting a YouTube video showing it off sometime soon, but for now I'll just explain. I got myself a RAZR V3xx and have an unlimited data plan. Nice thing is the phone supports 3G, AT&T's current fastest network. The phone also supports Java, so after a bunch of thinking I figured, there has got to be a Java-based shoutcast app. And sure enough, there is! I'm using an app called "Radio Bee" on my phone. You load it, then add the direct IP address of the station (not the PLS file, but the station... in our case, idforums.net:8000) to your favorites. Then select it and play.

Shockingly, the 96kbps stream does play on my phone as long as I'm in 3G. It's a little glitchy, which I think has something to do with the phone changing IP addresses constantly. The stream pretty much refuses to play if I'm in EDGE. I'm looking into possible fixes to my issues, though.

The RAZR also supports A2DP, so I could get a bluetooth adapter for my car and stream that way if I wanted. For those without A2DP, I see USB->3.5mm adapters all over the place. As well as proprietary->3.5mm adapters. So there's still the option of hardwiring.

It's really neat being able to tune in while I'm at work and stuff.

I tried it with a mock internet connection (bluetooth and my PC as a gateway), and it worked. My phone's a Nokia N73, and the application used was Nokia Internet Radio (works only on Series 60 V3 equipped phones, the ones easiest to get in the US are N75, N95, N82). It didn't seem to lag at all, but it could be because my PC was used as a gateway (that's because of the outrageous data prices here). The app didn't seem to work with the direct address, but after transferring the .pls it worked alright. Some screenies: