No more Latest NPR Hourly News Update in the car?

[thecloud]

I've had the "Latest NPR Hourly News Update" stream from TuneIn as part of my Favorites for over a year, so I can catch the news on my way to work. Starting today, it refuses to play unless I'm on WiFi, accompanied by this message:

The issue persisted this evening as well, and once I got home and connected to WiFi, it did actually play. Obviously, this new restriction makes it impossible to listen to this stream in the car while I'm driving. I wonder if it's something TuneIn changed, or perhaps Tesla is making the decision about restricting streams it considers "high bandwidth"? (It's not like NPR news requires a high-quality audio streaming rate, and none of the music streams I tried are restricted in this way.)

Anyone else notice this behavior? (This is on 2.9.154, FWIW.)

 

[kort677]

I've had the "Latest NPR Hourly News Update" stream from TuneIn as part of my Favorites for over a year, so I can catch the news on my way to work. Starting today, it refuses to play unless I'm on WiFi, accompanied by this message:


The issue persisted this evening as well, and once I got home and connected to WiFi, it did actually play. Obviously, this new restriction makes it impossible to listen to this stream in the car while I'm driving. I wonder if it's something TuneIn changed, or perhaps Tesla is making the decision about restricting streams it considers "high bandwidth"? (It's not like NPR news requires a high-quality audio streaming rate, and none of the music streams I tried are restricted in this way.)

Anyone else notice this behavior? (This is on 2.9.154, FWIW.)

I've had the same message pop up on a few stations for awhile going back to 6.xx

 

[Max*]

I had this happen after an update on one of the tune-in stations my wife listens to. I emailed Tesla and needed to bring in my car for something else anyways, so they took a look at this, when I got my car back the same day, the station was working.

I don't know what they did (the station didn't work for more than a week before that), but I think they have the ability to fix this problem.

 

[thecloud]

This morning, I was able to play the Latest NPR Hourly News Update stream in the car again. Didn't reboot anything or have time to contact Tesla about it, so whatever needed fixing most likely happened on TuneIn's end. Still, I wonder if there is some correlation with the 7.1 update as I never had this issue prior to 7.1.

Another thread about this: BBC radio not working via TuneIn

 

[zwede]

This morning, I was able to play the Latest NPR Hourly News Update stream in the car again.

Same thing here. Got the error message Thursday, and today it worked without me having done anything. Maybe it's something to do with the tune-in system rather than the car?

 

[thecloud]

And today I am getting the message again, and it doesn't play. Argh!

 

[liuping]

I have not been able to listen to the NPR hourly update for a few weeks now. Does it work for some people, and not others, or is it broken for everyone?

I've tried rebooting, etc. but nothing seems to help.

 

[thecloud]

I haven't been able to play the Latest NPR Hourly News Update for the last few weeks either. In another thread, someone mentioned that logging in with a different TuneIn account solved the problem, so perhaps our default shared Tesla TuneIn account has gotten blocked for sucking up too much of that particular stream?

Haven't reported it to Tesla yet but it's probably time to do so.

 

[thecloud]

Reported the issue to Tesla's service email address. Hopefully they'll be able to shed some light.

It's not just Latest NPR Hourly News Update that won't play, but all streams under Internet > TuneIn > Talk > News > NPR News now produce the "high bandwidth" message. Very odd.

 

[BertL]

I don't know a lot about this, but have run into similar issues in the past with various streams I attempted to listen to in my MS, so probed around a bit beyond Tesla...

One thing you may want to try is logging into TuneIn via the WWW. Bring up the streams you are trying to play in your MS, and note that different ones have one or more available bit rates available (most but not all are listed in lower right column of the stream you are playing). From my scanning a few NPR stations just now, not all streams have all variations of bitrate (bandwidth) available -- some only lower end, some only high-end, My point being, maybe this is a Tesla issue, but I suspect more that it's an issue with TuneIn and what streams they do or don't have available to transmit to your MS...

 

[thecloud]

As a followup, I did receive a response from Tesla which just stated that some streams use more bandwidth than others. They didn't explain why the same NPR stream that previously worked fine for more than a year is no longer able to be played while driving. However, they did suggest a creative workaround: load the TuneIn app on my phone, then stream its output over Bluetooth to the car's audio. Fiddling with the phone while driving doesn't seem like an optimal solution when my car already has a media app with large buttons, but it's something I might consider when Autopilot is engaged.

It's possible that TuneIn has stopped offering NPR in a lower-bandwidth variant (I don't see any bandwidth info listed, either in the "program information" column when playing in a web browser, or in the iOS app.) It's also possible that Tesla is now using more of the car's 3G bandwidth for its own services and has imposed this limitation. At this point, I've passed along my feedback, and until something changes, I'll just find other things to listen to.

 

[finout]

I am frustrated with this same issue. There is no way that NPR spoken word hourly news is higher bandwidth than the myriad of music stations that play on Tunein. The quality isn't even that great - but it's perfectly fine for voice.

I have confirmed that connecting my car to my phone as a wifi hotspot will play NPR news, but that, as well as the bluetooth workaround, is a lot of garbage for something that is clearly a mistake or a defect...

 

[finout]

Well, I contacted Tunein support to push on this issue. "Matt" from their support told me that earlier this year, NPR "upgraded" all of their audio streaming to 192kbps. And that's above Tesla's 128Kbps limit, so there it is. Why they "upgraded" their spoken word programs like the Hourly News, I don't understand. I submitted a first-world-problem support request to them ("I can't play your free hourly news in my Supercar"), but I am not optimistic that will change.

I guess the next route to go is to ask Tesla to upgrade the limit from 128Kbps to 192Kbps, at least for cars that have LTE. a 128Kbps limitation is silly - it's like 1% of the LTE bandwidth.

As a followup, I did receive a response from Tesla which just stated that some streams use more bandwidth than others. They didn't explain why the same NPR stream that previously worked fine for more than a year is no longer able to be played while driving. However, they did suggest a creative workaround: load the TuneIn app on my phone, then stream its output over Bluetooth to the car's audio. Fiddling with the phone while driving doesn't seem like an optimal solution when my car already has a media app with large buttons, but it's something I might consider when Autopilot is engaged.

It's possible that TuneIn has stopped offering NPR in a lower-bandwidth variant (I don't see any bandwidth info listed, either in the "program information" column when playing in a web browser, or in the iOS app.) It's also possible that Tesla is now using more of the car's 3G bandwidth for its own services and has imposed this limitation. At this point, I've passed along my feedback, and until something changes, I'll just find other things to listen to.

 

[thecloud]

Well, I contacted Tunein support to push on this issue. "Matt" from their support told me that earlier this year, NPR "upgraded" all of their audio streaming to 192kbps. And that's above Tesla's 128Kbps limit, so there it is. Why they "upgraded" their spoken word programs like the Hourly News, I don't understand. I submitted a first-world-problem support request to them ("I can't play your free hourly news in my Supercar"), but I am not optimistic that will change.

I guess the next route to go is to ask Tesla to upgrade the limit from 128Kbps to 192Kbps, at least for cars that have LTE. a 128Kbps limitation is silly - it's like 1% of the LTE bandwidth.

Good to finally know that the breakage was due to NPR dropping 128Kbps support, as opposed to something that got inadvertently broken by TuneIn or Tesla. The regular NPR stream (not the hourly news update) is still playable, so apparently not all their audio got this unnecessary upgrade. To be honest, I was tired of having to crank the volume up to 6 or 7 to hear the famous NPR Sound at freeway speeds, then back down to 3 before switching to any other station. #FirstWorldProblems

How did you find out that Tesla was limited to 128Kbps?

 

[finout]

Good to finally know that the breakage was due to NPR dropping 128Kbps support, as opposed to something that got inadvertently broken by TuneIn or Tesla. The regular NPR stream (not the hourly news update) is still playable, so apparently not all their audio got this unnecessary upgrade. To be honest, I was tired of having to crank the volume up to 6 or 7 to hear the famous NPR Sound at freeway speeds, then back down to 3 before switching to any other station. #FirstWorldProblems

How did you find out that Tesla was limited to 128Kbps?

I found out from a few places, including my service advisor - if you google tesla tunein 128kbps, you'll see it mentioned.

I have an unorthodox solution I'm going to post about shortly.

 

[finout]

If any of you following this thread are interested, PM me for a kludge solution I've built out to get NPR hourly news on my car with a minimum of steps and hassle. (I'm not sure it's completely kosher with NPR so I'm not posting it publicly). It's a way to hear a lower quality stream, on demand, anytime, anywhere (using a mobile phone). And it will play over the Model S sound system without touching the screen.

 

[finout]

Good news everyone on this thread - it appears that NPR Hourly News works again in version 8 of the Model S software. At least it did for me last night and this morning. I'm not a huge fan of the new interface but I do like that NPR News is back.

 

[liuping]

Good news everyone on this thread - it appears that NPR Hourly News works again in version 8 of the Model S software. At least it did for me last night and this morning. I'm not a huge fan of the new interface but I do like that NPR News is back.

It is working for me as well "most of the time".

A few times it seem to be stuck loading, so I hit the next track arrow. With 8.0, that now plays the most recent NPR news hour podcast, which is nice.

 

[tmarcc]

Yep it works for me too. Fantastic.

 

[Three60guy]

For you news folks:

If you have an iPhone, go to the App Store and search for "Hourly News".

Very very simple interface and you will not only get NPR News hourly update but also:

BBC, CBC, ABC, CBS, WSJ, ESPN, VOA, SRN, BMM, RTHK, DW, Marketplace and/or FOX News.

You can also add your own custom podcast sources to the Hourly News!

It automagically plays when opened, plays in background too.

Cheers