Is there a way to broadcast my cable music stations to ..

[SamSpade]

..a device OTHER than a PC? My son loves to listen to music, and it is the ONE thing that always soothes him when he's upset, but it would be great if we had a radio or device that could broadcast the same stations we get on our cable.

We have things like Pandora on his computer, but he can't take his computer everywhere, and since it's a COMPUTER and not a boombox, the sound quality isn't as good as all the other things a computer does well.

I'm sure SOMEONE has thought of something like this, but I can't find a device or means to do this.

 

[Ken King]

I think it would be illegal for you to "rebroadcast" the signal (except maybe if it is confined to your home), but you could get a satellite boombox.

 

[Tilted]

..a device OTHER than a PC? My son loves to listen to music, and it is the ONE thing that always soothes him when he's upset, but it would be great if we had a radio or device that could broadcast the same stations we get on our cable.

We have things like Pandora on his computer, but he can't take his computer everywhere, and since it's a COMPUTER and not a boombox, the sound quality isn't as good as all the other things a computer does well.

I'm sure SOMEONE has thought of something like this, but I can't find a device or means to do this.

I'm not sure what you mean by cable music stations. Are you talking about the music channels that come with your cable TV service? If so, does it have to be those stations or are you just looking for a way to have more mobility with music - or access to music in more rooms - for him?

There are lots and lots of ways to have that. It would take too long to go through the various options. So I think knowing a little more about what in specific your trying to do would help us to point you toward the best solution. But to answer your question more generally - yes, there are lots of options (though not necessarily for cable TV music stations in particular), and fairly inexpensive ones.


EDIT: If Pandora serves the purpose, then yeah - there are other ways of listening to it in other places.

 

[SamSpade]

I'm not sure what you mean by cable music stations. Are you talking about the music channels that come with your cable TV service? If so, does it have to be those stations or are you just looking for a way to have more mobility with music - or access to music in more rooms - for him?

There are lots and lots of ways to have that. It would take too long to go through the various options. So I think knowing a little more about what in specific your trying to do would help us to point you toward the best solution. But to answer your question more generally - yes, there are lots of options (though not necessarily for cable TV music stations in particular), and fairly inexpensive ones.


EDIT: If Pandora serves the purpose, then yeah - there are other ways of listening to it in other places.

I do know there are options with subscribing to Sirius, for example, and Sirius is cheap enough. The cost is low enough to consider it as an option.
Satellite is preferable - to me - than streaming from an already overtaxed wi-fi.

Since we have Metrocast, they have a thing called TV Everywhere. As far as I know, it will broadcast to your PC and to your phone. But I don't know of any other kind of device that can support it. I was hoping there was such a thing, but I'm not aware of it.

 

[GWguy]

Slingbox.

http://www.slingbox.com/

If you have Pandora, you can use a smartphone and a set of blutooth speakers. I use this alot when working around the house. Quality is pretty good.

 

[Tilted]

I do know there are options with subscribing to Sirius, for example, and Sirius is cheap enough. The cost is low enough to consider it as an option.
Satellite is preferable - to me - than streaming from an already overtaxed wi-fi.

Since we have Metrocast, they have a thing called TV Everywhere. As far as I know, it will broadcast to your PC and to your phone. But I don't know of any other kind of device that can support it. I was hoping there was such a thing, but I'm not aware of it.

Sorry Sam, that was rude of me not getting back to respond to this yesterday.

I don't see where Metrocast's TV Everywhere has an app for streaming devices like Roku or Amazon's Fire TV Stick or Google's Chromecast, and I know that it doesn't have one for Apple TV. So it may be that you only have the smartphone and tablet (and iPod Touch) options for those music channels in particular. If I'm recalling correctly your son is fairly young? So you might not want to use a smartphone? You could get an old smartphone from someone that isn't using it anymore and just use it for that, it wouldn't need to have cellular service. And it could connect to any of a large variety of speakers either wirelessly or with a short wire coming out of the headphone jack or as a dock. Those kinds of speakers can be bought for maybe $20 and up, and even the cheap ones do a decent enough job for most people.

But there are lots of other music services that are free or fairly inexpensive. And some of them not only have smartphone and tablet apps but also work through the streaming devices I mentioned above, so they can just be plugged into a TV (e.g. with an HDMI cable). The last time I looked Sirius seemed pretty pricey by comparison.
It does have some advantages, but if all you need is music I suspect there are other better suited services. And some of them allow you to make music available offline so that you don't have to stream it all the time - for times when you don't have internet access or when streaming would use up limited data allowances or bandwidth.

You mention your WiFi already being taxed. You'd know your situation better than I would of course, but streaming music doesn't really use a lot of bandwidth. It's not nearly as bad as high quality video. And with some services you can adjust quality settings to reduce the bandwidth used.

Anyway, I'm still not sure enough about your situation to offer you less general feedback so all of that might be of little help.

 

[SamSpade]

The last time I looked Sirius seemed pretty pricey by comparison.

A co-worker says she pays about $5 a month. Half the price I pay for stuff like Netflix.
I'm looking into the idea largely for my son, and I pay a lot more for other things he has, such as Amazon's Free Time Unlimited.

You mention your WiFi already being taxed. You'd know your situation better than I would of course, but streaming music doesn't really use a lot of bandwidth.

I didn't know that. We have about 10 or 11 computers (I know, way too many, although with only five family members, no more than five in use at a time) and a couple streaming devices, and the situation can be observed to slow down when they're all in use. But it's good to know music doesn't tax it much - it means services such as Pandora becomes a better option.

 

[Tilted]

A co-worker says she pays about $5 a month. Half the price I pay for stuff like Netflix.
I'm looking into the idea largely for my son, and I pay a lot more for other things he has, such as Amazon's Free Time Unlimited.




I didn't know that. We have about 10 or 11 computers (I know, way too many, although with only five family members, no more than five in use at a time) and a couple streaming devices, and the situation can be observed to slow down when they're all in use. But it's good to know music doesn't tax it much - it means services such as Pandora becomes a better option.

It uses more bandwidth than most surfing does, unless the surfing has a lot of media in it. But it's much less than streaming video, at least it can be - it's possible to stream music at varying quality levels which use considerably different amounts of bandwidth.

So I take it the bottleneck is on the incoming internet side? Not on the WiFi side after the data has made its way inside your home? Unless you have a pretty old WiFi router, I would think that would be the case - the WiFi should have plenty more bandwidth available than the internet feed. Assuming that's the case, it wouldn't matter if he was listening to the streaming music on the computer (perhaps through an ethernet connection) or on some other device - like an old smartphone - using WiFi.

 

[SamSpade]

It uses more bandwidth than most surfing does, unless the surfing has a lot of media in it. But it's much less than streaming video, at least it can be - it's possible to stream music at varying quality levels which use considerably different amounts of bandwidth.

So I take it the bottleneck is on the incoming internet side? Not on the WiFi side after the data has made its way inside your home? Unless you have a pretty old WiFi router, I would think that would be the case - the WiFi should have plenty more bandwidth available than the internet feed. Assuming that's the case, it wouldn't matter if he was listening to the streaming music on the computer (perhaps through an ethernet connection) or on some other device - like an old smartphone - using WiFi.

I'm thinking an old phone might actually work, if I can get my hands on one. It's big enough that he wouldn't lose it (I am tired of buying him MP3 players like the iPod shuffle) and phone-like that he might actually take care of it.

We do use a lot of those devices that use your house wiring as an ethernet connection, so anything directly connected to the cable is pretty darned fast - I just know that sometimes with Netflix or Amazon Prime, the buffering can be seriously annoying.

Also, he can get pretty upset in the car if he wants to do something that requires Wi-Fi - and obviously we don't have it in the car. So an old phone that can do BOTH would be a good idea.

Thanks. I think I now have enough ideas to work with.

 

[Hodr]

Heres a low-tech kludgy approach that doesn't use your Wi-Fi. Buy a cheap FM transmitter off of amazon (there are probably 100 of them for less than $10), most are made for vehicles so they are powered by 12v and use a headphone jack for audio input. A male-to-male 3.5mm stereo to RCA adapter ($1-3) will get you something you can plug into your TV audio out or possibly the metrocast box (I don't have metrocast cable, so I don't know the outputs on the box) and a sub $5 110AC cigarette port adaper and you now are broadcasting your TV radio stations over FM.

If you look, you should be able to find a cheapie smart phone (like one tied to Boost Mobile or Virgin Mobile) with FM receiver for under $35. Check sales at walmart/target Usually these require headphones to be installed to get FM as they use them as an antenna.

 

[Hodr]

Also Sam, if your wifi is bogged down, but your wired internet connections are fast, you should look into getting a new router. Preferably dual band (2.4ghz and 5ghz networks at the same time) so that you can move some of your devices to the 5ghz band that will almost certainly be less congested. And if your router is older and does not support 802.11n or 802.11ac, then upgrading should do wonders for your wireless connections.

Neweggflash.com has decent routers all the time at huge discounts. In fact, they have the D-Link DIR-850l today (8/12) which is very well rated and is on at a huge discount ($29 instead of $79).
http://flash.newegg.com/Product/N82E16833127635?icid=WP_5_08092015