The hidden FM radio inside your pocket, and why you can't use i

mprnews.org

12 points·pwenzel··6 comments

"What Americans really want is the ability to stream, download and customize music playlists to meet their personal preferences," Carpenter said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "and that's not what the traditional FM radio offers."

What kind of shoddy defense is that? If Americans don't want to use the FM function, then, well, they won't.

Obviously that isn't their real reason, but is that the best fake reason they can come up with?

You think that's bad? In Japan and other countries their mobile phones can pick up broadcast television for free, no problem. It has been that way for many many years. They had that technology before we even had the iPhone. Imagine if you could just pick up NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX/PBS, etc. on your phone without issue. Verizon would have a pretty hard time selling you on NFL live streaming.

Except terrestrial TV coverages in the US is laughably bad... so it probably requires major revision of infrastructure to begin with. (It's ironic how in Japan you can do that for "free" but broadcasts for fixed TVs are encumbered by a heavy DRM... but that's a completely different story.)

FWIW, 77 comments from 8 hours ago, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395944 .

FM enabled could be a good resource in a emergency.

I lived through a large natural disaster. (I don't want to go into specifics because I like my anonymity.)

The local FM station was the only show in town for about 2 days. The local t.v. stations were back online, but a lot more people had battery powered radios than battery powered televisions. :-)

It definitely makes sense in an emergency, especially if it can be coupled with a low-power mode similar to the one on the new Samsung S6's.

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