A tablet running any decent media player programme, linked to a wifi NAS box which also works as a router. Works for me anywhere at home, within the NAS device count limit, which exceeds the number I use at home. As the NAS box is also linked to the internet, I can also use the system to stream radio and TV stations.
Did just that many years ago with cables. When re-wiring the house ran a
10 pair telephone cable to every room. So 5 stereo balanced circuits. One of which is what's playing on the main system in the living room. So you can select that - if say the TV - and not have a delay or whatever in an adjacent room, like the kitchen. The other four circuits have radio tuners. Rarely listen to more than four radio stations anyway. Currently set to R4, R4 extra, R3 and Magic. A mixture of FM, DAB and FreeView.In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus
A bit like a BBC studio "ring main" ?.....
I think the audio quality is respectable. I know quality can be a moveable feast and what you get depends partly on what changes they have made at the broadcast end and that seems ro happen often. I recall Freeview video (sic) quality can change dynamically and perhaps Freeview audio too. In the same way, perhaps iPlayer audio varies. However it seems more than good enough for the OPs purpose (listening to R2 and R4).
This article suggests the BBC were on the right track with iPlayer radio quality in 2009:
"BBC doubles iPlayer radio quality, DAB weeps" (2009)
I'm lost by the detail below but I get the impression they seem to be taking quality seriously:
BBC Audio Factory
As for audio quality of the Chromecast Audio dongle, it has got itself a very good reputation.
Have you tried iPlayer Radio on Android? It's features and user interface are impressive while being easy to use.
It may depend on how you access it! One of the possible snags of using a closed commercial box for access is that the stream might have been mucked about on the way by a 'third party' paid by the box-maker to provide the access if their device can't directly accept the BBC streams.
Given 'direct' access you should be able to get 128/320 kbps aac for BBC radio *if* you are in the UK. They are moving to this as their common standard.
Jim
It is certainly a tangled web from which they seem to have extricated themselves.
That may well be so, but since I spend much of my time at or near my desktop, it seems a shame that the BBC's rationalisation seems to have removed previously useful features.
Podcasts work well, but I don't fully understand why I have to go to another platform to be able to download other radio programmes.
Chris
If you are at your desk most of the day then you can access iPlayer Radio from your PC. I too am at my desk a lot but I much prefer having my tablet on my desk to play streaming radio.
Podcasts are there on iPlayer Radio for those who want them but I never bother with them.
iPlayer Radio also offers streaming live radio (including Radio 4 and other main BBC stations).
It also offers streaming catch up and this can be useful. For example, if I want to listen to this morning's "Today" programme (or "Woman's Hour" or "Book Club" or whatever) then I find it on my Android screen or PC and then click to hear the broadcast. No downloading required although that option is also available.
Same for yesterday's broadcasts. And other days too.
iPlayer Radio also has a few clips from these broadcasts which are pre- selected. Can be useful.
My suggestion was to "cast" the chosen stream from an Android tablet to your stereo using the the Chromecast Audio dongle but if you use your PC to select the stream then I think you said the PC can output to your stereo and then on your chosen set of speakers.
It's just an idea.
Just hope you don't have a flood or a fire or someone pinches the servers and computers.
I have compromised on a couple of Synology NAS and an encrypted backup on to onedrive. There are a couple of disk images too. At least no single event should be able to destroy the data. Maybe an asteroid can.
Damn. Thought I'd invented it. ;-)
Encrypted discs, password protected, and my offsite backup is wherever I am at almost all times. Then again, there's only a terabyte of data to worry about.
I lost a day's worth of emails when someone stole the laptop once. But I got them back when I logged onto the mail server and undeleted them from the recycle bin when I'd replaced the computer.
That's not a real offsite backup.
I reckon some form of "cloud" backup is a no-brainer these days unless you've got serious paranoia issues.
Maybe we all need to be more paranoid about our data. I won't install Windows 10 due to its documented security problems, starting with the default built in keylogger that sends a lot of your keystrokes to M$ so they can sell the data to advertisers and an always-on-by-default listening post, which sends all it hears back to a server in the USA for the same reason (At the moment, who knows where it will be next year?). All these can be turned off now, but how long before one of the non-refusable updates removes that capability?
All it takes is for your cloud backup provider to go broke (It has happened already for some) or for you to forget to make a payment, and you lose access to your data, because normal human nature will trust a cloud backup to do the job we all used to do locally.
The cloud should be as well as local backup.
Chris
What cr@p. The beta had a key stroke logger in it and everyone that signed up was told so. The released version does not have a key logger and never has had one.
The only sound sent back is when you use cortana as it works the same was as apples system, the speech recognition is done on the servers not the PC/phone.
So use one that isn't going broke and backup to another too.
On the other hand MS are actually quite keen on making their online platforms secure. I don't use them, because the solution I found works better for me, but I've seen the corporate services MS offers and they're actually pretty secure.
If they go bust, yes, I'll have to move to another provider. That's not a big deal.
I get quite a lot of reminders when it's time to pay for another year.
MS admit during Windows 10 installation that "typing and inking data" will be sent back to MS to "improve the recognition and suggestion platform" and although this can be disabled at the moment, it would only take a minor update (Which Windows 10 users can not refuse) to remove this ability, should too many take it up. This is shown on the install screens. If it's not a keylogger, it's a very good imitation. Also by default, it sends your calendar and contact information to MS, and again, the off switch for this could easily be disabled by MS.
By default, Cortana is always on, as is Siri. And as the speech recognition (even for the initial call phrase) is done on a remote server in a country which is not only not governed by EU data protection laws, but one where the security agencies are doing their best to ensure that all data stored there is accessible to them, what guarantee is there of data security? Bearing in mind that MS say that they will use the data they receive to "improve" the user experience by helping third parties interact with you more efficiently, and use this as a marketing point.
To see what information Microsoft admit to collecting, read their own FAQ on Windows 10 privacy, and note what use they admit to making of data received.
Or just use the system I use which isn't noticeably broken and has served me well for the last three decades. One improvement which I'm looking at is to store another data backup on the SD card in my phone, so if I need to evacuate in a hurry, there's a very good chance I'll have a recent backup with me, but I'd need to work on the security of that. Maybe I can run Truecrypt or something similar on a hidden partition.
I'm working on getting Linux to do what I need to do at the moment, as it has a better security record than Windows, and can do 90% of what I want to do out of the box. The other 10% is what's stopping me from using it as my only OS.
"No backups at all" would probably fit that bill for many people :-)
There are mumblings uttered in some discussion groups that multi-casting will be included in a firmware upgrade to Chromecast Audio.
But we all know how unreliable mumblings can be.
Did you mean scrote or is this some slang description for today's yoof that I've missed out on? :)
Whoops! The former :-)
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