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Internet Radio

There are a number of different ways that audio content can be sent in "real time" over the Internet, a process called "streaming" that, in the end, resembles traditional radio in a lot of ways. Competing systems include offerings from Microsoft, Real and others. One standard for streaming audio that is easily accessible on your Treo is ShoutCast, an MP3-based system.

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What do I need?

In order to listen to a ShoutCast stream, you'll need a copy of Pocket Tunes∞ which will cost you some money (and be sure to shell out the extra cash for the "Deluxe" version, as the "Basic" version doesn't include ShoutCast support). Once you have Pocket Tunes installed (with the appropriate plugins, and everything), select "Open" from the "Actions" menu and in the upper right hand corner of the following screen make sure that you have "Internet Audio" selected. You can now hit the "New" button at the bottom of the screen to painstakingly enter the address of the ShoutCast stream you want to hear.

What can I listen to?

Anything. ...Okay, almost anything. The source you connect to has to be a ShoutCast stream. A Real Audio stream or a Windows Media stream isn't going to work. How do you tell them apart? Well, it'll start to become obvious. At the very least, you can always just give it a try and if it doesn't work -- hey! don't use that one.

A good place to start looking for ShoutCast streams is ShoutCast.com∞. If you are looking for a ShoutCast stream for a particular real-world radio station, try visiting the website for that station. Many radio stations "rebroadcast" their service over the Internet and if they've got a ShoutCast stream, you're good to go.

Or you're probably good to go, anyway. Your Treo will probably not be able to deal with very high bitrate streams. 1XRTT and EDGE data service is great, but not that great, and the bandwidth you have available is a little low. Streams up to 64kbps should be just fine. If possible, look for a mono stream (because, seriously, what kind of fidelity are we looking for here?) as that should be a little lighter. Again, no worries about simply trying things out -- if that 128kbps stream works for you, hooray!

One final note, also about bandwidth -- ShoutCast is going to be very, very heavy data usage. Data will be downloaded continuously while you're listening to the stream, so you will definitely want to have an unlimited use data plan if you use this function at all. Caveat: While listening to streaming audio, all incoming calls will be forwarded to your voice mail, so consider your telephony needs before listening in on your Treo.

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Stations

Here are some ShoutCast streams that seem to work well through Pocket Tunes on the Treo:

http://mp3stream.wfmu.org:8004∞ - WFMU, 91.1 fm, New Jersey USA

http://azgatekeep.homelinux.com:8000∞ (NOTE: You may need to add "/listen.m3u" to the end of the URL) - Radio Az from my Mac PowerBook G4 in Central New Jersey, USA; streamed in glorious monophonic sound at 24 kbps using Nicecast for Mac OS X (www.rogueamoeba.com∞)

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CategoryUserguide - CategoryTreoGeneral