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On This Week In Tech History Chris took us back to events including the first traffic light in the United States.
Into Tomorrow listener Don in Mountain View, California listening on KLIV 1590 wants to replace his FM radio with a WiFi device and he sent us the following question:
I want to listen to a FM radio station, the problem my house is in a black hole for that station. Their programs are available on the internet. Is there a way to listen without using a computer. I thought of using an old unused, unprovisioned phone that can be connected to WiFi. I hope you have a better idea. Something with better fidelity.
If you want to connect to an radio station using their web stream you will obviously need a device that can access the web.
Now, your options are somewhat limited, you can use the computer you’re trying to avoid using, the phone you don’t feel has good enough fidelity, or a dedicated device.
Dedicated Internet Radios vs Homemade Options
They’re getting rarer and rarer, but you can still find some internet radio, you could spend the money and buy one of those. Unfortunately, some will let you add custom stations and some will not, so there’s no guarantee that you will be able to listen to the particular station you want to listen to, a dedicated radio will also cost you a good amount of money, it can easily be in the hundreds.
It sounds to us like your best option is to use the phone you already have laying around, and pair it to a set of speakers. You can either plug it physically into a set of speaker or a radio you may already have using a stereo cable, or get a set of bluetooth speakers. Either way the sound quality issues should go away as soon as you give your phone some better vocal chords, and you will probably save money doing it this way.
You may even be able to get it all working for free, today.