Radio on the TV | Hacker News Reader

Radio on the TV

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49 pointsecliptik17 comments

Not radio on the TV, but radio through the TV (cable):

Rogers Cable in Ontario Canada used to push AM and FM signals through their coaxiale lines and you could run a splitter into your stereo to get clean strong signal.

Great for large buildings, fringe areas and basements.

That ended ~ 15 years ago:

https://www.digitalhome.ca/threads/fm-am-radio-over-rogers-c...

I wonder why more TVs which support OTA signals don't also include some FM radio (and now, HDRadio) mode. It seems it would be a pretty easy feature to support. Most OTA antennas are decently sensitive near FM radio frequencies, so the signal is probably already there for those who watch OTA.

These days though since practically all TVs sold are smart TVs I guess its largely seen as a moot feature as the TVs are probably sold with a Pandora app and maybe even an iHeartRadio internet app. I'd still prefer to just be able to tune to the FM radio stations themselves, and not all of them in my area are available by app (or, easily by app).

My first exposure to Radio on the TV was also my first exposure to cable television.

In the early 1970s, a motel in Chincoteague Virginia featured the island's cable TV provider. One station consisted of a b&w camera that swiveled between showing a thermometer, barometer, clock and a written board with the local forecast. It played an audio feed of the island's radio station.

Grade school me was so fascinated by all tech in action, it became a permanent memory.

Hackaday did a story[0] on this type of proto-weather channel.

[0] https://hackaday.com/2022/10/20/retrotechtacular-the-origina...

Dang. That's really cool. I had always assumed this was the cable operator's homebrewed invention.

Some broadcast TV stations in my area have audio-only subchannels. Unfortunately they're not worth listening to (they're Christian talk stations) but it's neat to see.

Cool trip through digital audio broadcast, but I'm left bit puzzled by the last bit about cable vs PON networks. How are coax networks fundamentally better than PON fiber networks? Sure, in a lot of places they have the very tangible benefit of actually existing and covering tons of (potential) customers. But they're often old, require upgrades and retrofits to be DOCSIS 4 compliant. And in places where coax networks don't already exist, I very much suspect that PON fiber is way cheaper to deploy and operate [citation needed].

> Stingray does seem to still exist on a handful of smaller US cable carriers,

It's on AT&T U-verse (although U-verse is considered legacy product by AT&T)

The BBC also broadcast radio on...the TV. It's a TV app for "connected TVs": https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/getting-started-...

The radio channels are carried as audio only channels on basic digital satellite and terrestrial, you don't need a "smart" TV. They're all at the back end of the EPG. I think Sky Digital had them from the start, but On/ITV Digital DTT might not have, I think they were added when Freeview launched. Sky used to have the Music Choice service this article mentions as well IIRC.

I think back in the day various BBC Radio channels were alternate sound channels on UK Gold (which BBC Worldwide had a stake in) on analogue Sky, but I might be wrong about that.

Annoyingly, BBC Sounds app isn't available on Apple TV boxes, although I can just use AirPlay I guess...

No, DOCSIS is not better than PON. PON has been flawlessly delivering 10/10 Gbps for years. What is DOCSIS doing? DOCSIS networks are much more expensive to maintain (in terms of electricity expenditure, copper literally rotting away...) and the technology is lagging and will be lagging behind in speeds and latency forever.

Just yesterday I learned that the inverse of this also existed: TV Radio [0], where you could listen to TV broadcasts (audio only of course) using your radio.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_radio

The North American transition to digital TV also had another little oddity. Analog TV channel 6's audio signal was placed in such a way that some FM receivers (with analog tuners) could tune into its audio at the edge of the dial. A station that broadcast an analog TV signal on channel 6 in Chicago (to direct viewers to rescan/get a digital tuner) put music on the audio, and newer tuners have had the FM band extended to cover this signal. It's labeled "87.7" on digital tuners but if you tune it on an SDR it's actually 87.75 MHz.

It's known as Franken FM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_6_radio_stations_in_th...

Franken FM is preserved in ATSC 3.0! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_3.0

Not sure if this is happening in other countries, but as here in Colombia it seems we won't ever have nice things like DAB radio, they just assigned some frequencies to state-owned radio stations to broadcast to all the territory (plus some additional frequencies on several regions) via DVB-T2. Said TV radio stations are broadcasting with no image whatsoever.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televisión_digital_terrestre_e...

The only "nice" thing about DAB is that it allows for a lot of channels in the same frequency band. The quality, however, is absymal.

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