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.
