[Sleepypete]

Have no fear. There are alternatives that don't involve unscrewing the dash, pricey modules or adding things like a Pure audio DAB retransmitter which crooks might take a fancy to

If you have an Android or other smart phone (there's apps for other phones but I don't have the chance to test them) then you're probably already hooked up with Bluetooth pairing. So you already have a way of streaming audio from the phone to the car stereo. The next step is to get the audio to the phone.

Enter Tune In Radio : Mobile Devices

I came on this app at random a while ago while hoping for a way to get cricket commentary in the car. The issue is that it comes on Long Wave (Radio 4 198kHz) over here, so I couldn't get it without being creative as the AM radio only does Medium Wave. What Tune In will do is give you an easy way of getting you to internet radio stations. Bluetooth will then stream it to the car.

Impressions from 3+ hours today :
Keeping the "radio" signal - pretty good. Occasional dropouts mean the buffer is probably just about right (not too big, not too small)
Keeping the signal 2 - if your mobile/cell connection is bad, internet radio will also be bad. I'm on the H3G network in the UK, which has decent coverage hence not many dropouts.
Quality - is probably as good or better than the AM Medium Wave in the car
Keeping the bluetooth signal - occasionally the BT connection would blip and I'd get 10 secs or so of cricket commentary from the phone instead of the car. No biggie.
Data greed - about 3 hours took about 80MB of my 500MB data allowance (cheap contract) ... And I have almost a month until I get my next allowance ! Might need to buy a data package if I end up listening to too much cricket
Radio stations - dunno about what's available on DAB but DAB wouldn't give me the chance to listen to international radio stations. If it's on the internet you should be able to pick it up.
Phone defaulting to playing music as well as internet radio. That's probably phone misbehaviour rather than car/app misbehaviour.

So there you have it. If you wished you'd asked for a DAB module but don't have one, there are viable alternatives ...

PS Tune In is a free app (that I don't have anything to do with!) but I'm impressed enough with it I'd consider buying it ...

 

[lostchild]

I have been using TuneIn Radio Pro on my iPhone 3G for 3 years now. The Pro (paid) version let you record the station too. And it will let you skip (smart detect breaks) songs in recordings. There are a lot of other apps that do the same thing though and tune into the same stations. One thing you have to watch out is your mobile data usage. If you are streaming music on the road for hours daily, the data usage will add up fast. I have unlimited data with my plan, but my wife was exceeding her 200mb/month usage streaming radio.. I had to upgrade her to the 2Gb/month plan on AT&T.

The paid version recording is nice because you could record it at home using WiFi and then play it during driving without using any data. That is if you are not trying to listen to something Live. You can even schedule it to record on timer. It works out great for foreign countries stations because usually the best shows are on when you are sleeping.