I usually miss my favourite TV programmes because i am driving. Why dont car radios have stations that play the soundtrack from what is on the TV at that moment. I will be quite happy to hear it and miss the visuals.
Whats the technical reason why no car maker has installed a radio device that will play the TV soundtrack?
I don’t think that there’s a technical reason why it couldn’t be done; I’ve seen portable radios that had “TV audio” bands, as well as AM and FM (I even owned such a radio when I was a kid, in the 1970s). That said, the changeover from analog to digital TV signals a few years ago may have made this more challenging (I’m not an electrical engineer, so I don’t know this for certain).
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that, at some point in the 1950s or 1960s, such car radios were offered. I also suspect that the reason it isn’t common now is that there’s little demand – the fact that such a radio would be limited to broadcast TV stations, and wouldn’t have the ability to play cable / satellite stations would also likely limit its appeal.
Parenthetically, I’ll also note that Sirius / XM satellite radio carries audio-only simulcasts from several cable TV news stations (CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, at least).
I vaguely remember seeing this in a car radio a long time ago, but I may be confusing it with the memory of my portable radio back in the 70’s which did that. It had FM/AM/TV frequencies.
While it’s a good idea, I doubt there’s enough customers to justify the cost of the extra tuner built in. Especially now that over the air viewing is down, even fewer people would want the capability. However, it should be easy enough for you to add that ability. Get a car radio which has an AUX connector and a standalone portable radio that can receive TV audio. Patch the output from the portable radio into your car radio AUX port and you can listen to TV in the car.
Only wrinkle: “receive TV audio” means “decode a digital HDTV stream from the Over-the-air antenna, pick out the audio stream, decode that, and play is to the audio output.”
TV hasn’t been directly receivable by a normal FM decoder for years now.
It looks that way. I didn’t realize that doesn’t work anymore after the HDTV conversion.
Don’t you guys have PVRs or Video on Demand or whatever? There are very few programmes that we watch live these days, if only to skip the adverts and any time filling waffle.
Digital TV broadcasting definitely makes it a bit more of a technical issue than it used to be – IIRC, radios would usually be able to receive the audio from TV channel 6 on the extreme end of the lower FM band, but the other channels were out of range, though this could easily have been accommodated at little cost. The other major thing that has changed nowadays is that so many of the channels we might feel we want to listen to while driving are not even broadcast channels at all, but cable only.
Anyway, I think the reason there’s not much demand is that the kinds of things one might really feel strongly about watching or listening to will typically be simulcast on regular radio stations. Whenever there is a major sports event like a playoff game, or a political event like a major debate, and I happen to be driving, there is always a radio station or two that is carrying it. If it’s just some silly sitcom, really, who cares – just record the damn thing.
The VHF analog TV frequency range is so wide compared to the range of the audio track…
it may be that people remember hearing the TV stations that also existed in the regular FM area… or perhaps the TV range they could hear was just a few more channels but not all…
The higher end of the VHF band isn’t suitable for car radio use, and UHF is right out.
They do, as long as the TV channel is 6 or 7, which are adjacent to the FM band. If you are near a station on Channel 6, just turn your FM tuner down below 88, if it goes that far, and it will pick the audio band of the Channel 6 TV station. I listened to Sinfeld one night while driving to St. Louis.
The FM broadcast band occupies the space between TV channels 6 and 7. Channel 6 audio is propagated at 87.75 Mhz.
Cape Breton Island/PEI in the summer of 1999. We drove several evenings listening to Seinfeld and other shows being broadcast by a radio station. So it has occurred. I don’t know the circumstances or if it was a regular thing. It was amusing but not a regular thing that I’d watch. Just think of the laughter at Jerry’s looks or trying to figure out who is who if you had never seen a show before (especially for an ensemble cast like a medical or law drama). Radio drama is much faster paced and the dialog clues in a listener to who the characters are.
I know you can’t pick up digital TV (US ATSC) in a moving vehicle. Wouldn’t it also be a problem to pick up the audio part of a digital TV signal if you’re moving?
Until the mid 70s, you couldn’t pick up FM radio in a moving car, but radio engineers solved the problem, and FM was suddenly available in cars, and the number of FM stations exploded. Cars with only AM tuners could add a very cheap (ten bucks) FM receiver, which rebroadcast the signal on AM on very low power , just enough to reach a couple of feet to your car radio antenna. So you could dial your AM radio to a preset frequency, and listen to whatever station was being picked up and rebroadcast by your in-car converter. It was small enough to fit in the slot where you threw your ash tray away. (Do cars still have ashtrays?)
In the '80s, it was not unusual for car stereo receivers to be able to play audio from VHF stations. I took a road trip in the early '90’s in my friend’s late-'80’s Peugeot 505 station wagon from Maryland to New Orleans and back. We often tuned in to listen to Jeopardy, which was just perfect as audio-only car entertainment.
As an aside, we got some weird dirty looks in the deep south. We were two jews and a black kid in a Peugeot turbo station wagon with three racing bikes on the roof. We were a rolling caricature of several Yankee stereotypes.
It’s also questionable whether your average car antenna would get sufficient signal to play much of the digital TV audio. Compare the size/shape of a TV rooftop antenna to a current car antenna.
But not anymore, because TV signals are digital. As noted upthread, you’d have to have a receiver that would decode the audio out of a digital stream.
I’m sure it’s possible, but it would probably be a high-end niche product.
Satellite Radio does broadcast some stations, such as the major news networks.
well, the real reason is “because customers weren’t asking for it.”
there are several technical reasons. while TV broadcast audio was FM (the video was AM):
for terrestrial radio, the FCC allocated 87.8-108.0 MHz carrier frequencies. VHF TV was below that, and UHF TV was well above that.
the optimal antenna design depends on the carrier frequency. if you’re in a “strong” signal area (close to the broadcaster’s transmitting antenna) then it doesn’t matter. But if you’re in the “distant” or “fringe” area, then the antenna design is critical. a car radio antenna designed to be the best all-around for AM/FM radio is going to be not so good for TV audio in distant and fringe areas.
the shift to digital TV/ATSC and HD Radio/IBOC has made the whole thing moot. there’s no longer any notable analog TV signal for an FM radio to pick up. See, the RF spectrum TV occupied was desirable for other purposes, and since digital TV meant you could fit several “channels” in the bandwidth of one analog channel, they wanted to push TV into one band and auction off the desirable spectrum.
nobody’s asking to use the spectrum occupied by FM radio, so when they went digital they used iBiquity’s “IBOC” method to overlay the digital signal on the same carrier.
It has always been possible to pick up FM in a car. Blaupunkt marketed the first FM car radio in 1952.
They weren’t common until the 1970s, but that’s because there wasn’t enough demand from car buyers for the automakers to offer them as standard equipment.
And I had one of those FM converters in the 70s. You plugged your car’s antenna into the back of it, then plugged the coaxial cable from the converter into the antenna jack in back of the AM radio.
If the TV station you want to listen to has a live stream available you can load that up on your phone and plug the phones audio out into your aux input. Of course I’d recommend have a decent data plan before you do that, but it’s a solution.
In more than one location I’ve been able to pick up TV broadcast audio on the car radio. It may have stopped after the HDTV conversion, I don’t listen to the car radio often. I don’t really get the point, there’s plenty of talk and news radio, I can’t think of any regular TV show I’d just want to listen to.