FM/AM/HD Radio Cards (1 Viewer)

[deamon_knight]

I'm in central Ohio, and I have an HVR 2250, that receives FM radio, but doesn't seem to extract the Radio Data System information. I'd be interested in also getting AM radio and HD Radio, but I can't seem to find any PC hardware that supports this. Looks like no one is making them for HD Radio in the US or AM radio, and even FM tuners are pretty rare, but I was wondering if anyone knew differently.

Thanks!

 

[mm1352000]

Hello

I'm in central Ohio, and I have an HVR 2250, that receives FM radio, but doesn't seem to extract the Radio Data System information.

TV Server doesn't support RDS for the simple reason that there's no standard interface ("API") to enable acquisition of RDS data from tuners on Windows. So, if you want EPG data for FM radio channels, you'll have to acquire the data some other way.

I'd be interested in also getting AM radio and HD Radio, but I can't seem to find any PC hardware that supports this.

I've been associated with the PC tuner scene for 10 years now, and I've never come across any tuners that supported either of those standards. There's probably good reasons for this. At a guess:

• AM radio's modulation scheme isn't particularly robust. My understanding is that it doesn't work very well in combination with the noisy electrical environment that is the modern PC.
• HD radio's market appears to be too small to justify creating tuners for PC.

and even FM tuners are pretty rare

You're unlikely to find FM-only tuners for PC. FM radio support was often tacked onto analog (NTSC or PAL) tuners because analog TV used FM for the sound component, so you may have better luck if you search with that in mind.

Generally speaking there are often better options than using radio tuners unless the content of the radio station(s) you want to access literally isn't available any other way. For example, a lot of radio stations have internet streams and/or audio archives (ie. downloadable/streamable MP3s or whatever) these days.

 

[deamon_knight]

Thanks MM, you are confirming what I suspected. However, as regards to Webstreaming radio, that is great when it works, but if you have a spotty internet connection the OTA broadcasts are a better source. For my setup, internet radio streams work, don't integrate as well either, they become a different set of menus. I was wondering if someone had found a way to do this with a MediaPortal Backend that I was not aware of.