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Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

wired.com

51–60 of 329 posts

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#51
post #39

Australian here, also find it bizarre that this is a problem in the US. Biggest problem I have in my Android phone requires the head-phones to be plugged in to listen to FM...as it acts as the aerial.

FM is a long wavelength (and even more AM) the antenna would take up some space in your cellphone. They might be able to fit it, but yea... costs...

Many phones just use the headset cable as an antenna.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#52

I just bought an internet radio for my stereo (yes, I'm that old, I have a stereo). I was surprised to discover it also had a wire in the box that turned out to be an FM antenna. I thought with internet radio, who needs an FM tuner? (all the local stations have streaming URLs) Turns out I actually like it. It's handy when the internet fails, or when you're nearing data caps, or just want to run it all day without int…

When using a phone, the FM receiver also uses considerably less battery than streaming mobile data.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#53
post #40

I just bought an internet radio for my stereo (yes, I'm that old, I have a stereo). I was surprised to discover it also had a wire in the box that turned out to be an FM antenna. I thought with internet radio, who needs an FM tuner? (all the local stations have streaming URLs) Turns out I actually like it. It's handy when the internet fails, or when you're nearing data caps, or just want to run it all day without int…

It's funny, I really like listening to a number of local stations for the variety of music I get introduced to; but somehow, the fact that there is a real person curating it makes me enjoy it. Listening to spotify, it doesn't do it for me. Something about having someone come on, make a little human conversation, that's part of the experience for me. Algorithms don't cut it.

It's strange to me to read a positive comment about terrestrial radio broadcast amid so many complaints about ad blocking on the web. I stopped listening to radio many years ago and now I have an irrational resentment when I hear car stereos blasting pointless, noisy ads at traffic stops. I always wonder what allows people to mentally tune them out rather than decreasing the volume until music resumes.

This is in no way pointed at you; just something that struck me while browsing comments.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#54

More interesting would be getting the weather radio signal (not on the FM broadcast band, it's AM around 160MHz), and having the phone change which SAME code it's sensitive to as you move around. I know you are supposed to get an SMS or something whenever there is a severe weather event, but after a million amber alerts and a flood warning a few states away, that's the first thing I turn off when I get a new phone. I…

Is this just an american thing? I haven't heard of it over here

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#57
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you happen to be using Firefox, setting the config variable: media.autoplay.enabled To false, disables auto play media everywhere.

Thanks, good tip. That should probably be the default, but oh well. edit: I just realized it also affects youtube in an annoying way (have to skip ahead a bit or the video won't play at all). Would be nice if I could whitelist that.

Yeah, agree. You shouldn't have to skip ahead though, just double pump the play button. A greasemonkey script should be able to do it too.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#58

What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few seconds after page load.

I clicked back instantly. It's idiotic to have a video spew out high volume sound automatically. Almost woke our one year old.

So no more clicking on wired links for me!

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#59

What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few seconds after page load.

Just block the JS. I looked around for a JS blocker, and found ScriptSafe, which makes the web really usable. I turn on JS for the servers I trust, and sites like Wired and NYT just feed me readable text without any ads.

What's the advantage of using an add-on like ScriptSafe against just disabling JS in settings?

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#60
post #40

I just bought an internet radio for my stereo (yes, I'm that old, I have a stereo). I was surprised to discover it also had a wire in the box that turned out to be an FM antenna. I thought with internet radio, who needs an FM tuner? (all the local stations have streaming URLs) Turns out I actually like it. It's handy when the internet fails, or when you're nearing data caps, or just want to run it all day without int…

It's funny, I really like listening to a number of local stations for the variety of music I get introduced to; but somehow, the fact that there is a real person curating it makes me enjoy it. Listening to spotify, it doesn't do it for me. Something about having someone come on, make a little human conversation, that's part of the experience for me. Algorithms don't cut it.

> somehow, the fact that there is a real person curating it makes me enjoy it.

I do this, too, especially when I'm up late at night for my work schedule. Since I'm up well after most channels in the US go to "Paid Programming," I like having international news channels as background noise so I pay for Sling TV. There's something nice, for me, knowing that someone else is awake at the same time.

On the other hand, I really love Spotify in my "more awake" moments. It's grand, especially on my bus commute to work, to have a huge cloud jukebox. But, in the quiet stillness of the dark at 1am, live TV or radio is soothing.

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