Sep
16
Written by:
T. Carter Ross
9/16/2011 11:24 AM
With HD Radio, the idea of a station’s signal switching
to analog when the fringe of the digital listening area is reached is part of
the package. But imagine if you drove beyond the analog coverage, what if the
signal could switch to an IP stream automatically?
RadioDNS,
which was demonstrated at the Radio Show in Chicago with the help of some Clear
Channel stations, achieves just that. It also can deliver visuals to an enabled
receiver via an IP connection even if the receiver is tuning an analog FM
signal.
In
the video, you can see an Android-based phone (with a built-in FM receiver by
the way) being used to tune two Chicagoland FM stations, as well as stations in
Miami and London. As the FM signal degrades, the Chicago stations switch to an
IP stream back up, with the visuals remaining in synch no matter the technology
used to deliver the audio. When the out-of-market stations are selected, FM static
switches over to IP-delivered audio.
RadioDNS is an open
source project and involves adding some configuration information to a station
Web server and then registering station information with RadioDNS so that enabled
IP-connected receivers can look up which over-the-air signals are associated
with which IP streams.