On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 10:14:22 +0530
sajan venniyoor venniy...@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Gora Mohanty g...@sarai.net
wrote:
Auroville Radio is doing just speech, right? I really do not
think
that music will work on a GPRS connection, but do you have any
plans
of trying?
Auroville Radio streams a fair amount of music, I believe. At
least, I have listened to some excellent classical music on one
of their two channels (though not on my mobile).
[...]
Oh, good. I should note that I have no actual experience of
trying streaming music over low-bandwidth networks. I was
just going by the bandwidth requirements cited by friends
doing Internet music radio. It is possible that they were
serving higher-quality streams.
Another thought: If streaming speech over GPRS is working well, it
ought to be possible to send similar audio back to the radio
station. Thus, one could have a live radio chat, or something
like citizen journalism.
Well, there *is* something called voice telephony, and it's been
around for a while... Radio stations routinely do live chats
(phone-ins, phone-outs) and I don't think data streaming is
really needed for basic stuff like that. The great advantages of
streaming radio over GPRS is that (1) it gets around the
Kafka-in-Pandemonium world of radio regulation in India and (2)
the signal goes a hell of a long way compared to FM radio.
I am not sure, though, if there are any inherent advantages in
using skype-over-mobile or similar applications in favour of
normal voice calls for routine phone-ins or field reports.
Yes, telephony is what I was thinking about. The advantage here
would be cost, as GPRS data should be cheaper than normal voice
data.
Your first point about streaming radio over GPRS is well taken, and
that was also my first thought in the context of community radio.
Regards,
Gora
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