Tunein-Rivian Deal Another Evolution Of Car Radio

[Count Orlok]

I'll just leave this here: Tunein-Rivian Deal Another Evolution Of Car Radio

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[frostbit3]

Glad to see I'll be able to use something other than Spotify so that's a step in the right direction.

One interesting tidbit was this:

“Rivian shares a very similar philosophy to say they wanted to have a live audio experience in the vehicle that reflected the design sensibility and the advanced technology of the vehicle, so they built a beautiful experience,”

So he's saying Rivian themselves built the app, not TuneIn. Hopefully they produce some sort of SDK in the coming months/years so that at the very least developers can develop their own app for the Rivian vs Rivian using their limited resources building every single integration.

 

[AdamUCF]

Glad to see I'll be able to use something other than Spotify so that's a step in the right direction.

One interesting tidbit was this:

“Rivian shares a very similar philosophy to say they wanted to have a live audio experience in the vehicle that reflected the design sensibility and the advanced technology of the vehicle, so they built a beautiful experience,”

So he's saying Rivian themselves built the app, not TuneIn. Hopefully they produce some sort of SDK in the coming months/years so that at the very least developers can develop their own app for the Rivian vs Rivian using their limited resources building every single integration.

Would've been a lot easier for Rivian to just build CarPlay/AA and let us use the TuneIn app that way

 

[fotoflux]

just give us a web browser at the least so that we can get to the web app versions of Apple Music, Pandora, whatever. (*cough* also google maps *cough*)

 

[Michaewh]

Anybody else find that Tune-in is horribly slow at loading. Most short trips, its not even up and playing before I get there....

 

[Deleted member 7086]

Having lived with Tune-in for several weeks now here are my impressions. When you have good cell tower reception the quality of the sound is good. Now for the bad. The time lag on the buffering is annoying. AT&T’s towers in Northern Arizona are limited so the music cuts in and out as you loose and gain towers. Driving in town, with good cell tower coverage, in the middle of a song a new song will start playing and you loose the previous song. I assume this is happening when Tune-in switches from one tower to another and the music is not synced from tower to tower. The infotainment unit does not remember settings. The touch screen needs to be kept extremely clean. Even a very small amount of static dust will keep the screen from reacting to finger inputs and prevent changing of stations. For us old farts the station selections do not include easy listening music. Come on Rivian. Stop being so stubborn about satellite radio. Tune-in is a poor substitute for Sirius/XM.

 

[WalnutFarmer]

Let me start by saying, Tune-In Sucks. In general Rivian made the same mistake that a lot of city dwellers make, in thinking that cell coverage is good in the United States everywhere. Not true. I drop phone calls almost daily in good coverage areas. This adventure vehicle I purchased allows music on your adventure as long as you are within city limits. Not where I planned my adventures.

For the other issue, it seems to me that Tune-In isn't switching songs due to switching cell towers. There is a built-in buffer that plays the buffer from your previous drive until it runs out, then it switches to the live feed when the buffer is completed. For example: I arrive home at 8:15 pm listening to talk radio on Tune-In. Plug in the truck, and done for the night. The next morning I get into the truck and... strange... the same conversation is playing. As I drive to work, the announcer mentions the current time of 8:20. I panic thinking I am going to be late for work. But the buffer from the previous night is playing, the announcer's current announced time is 8:20 PM . About 5 minutes later the conversation abruptly changes as the buffer runs out and live radio resumes. Annoying to say the least. Right in the middle of an interesting conversation or your favorite song and BAM, it switches.

To fix this, every morning I manually switch stations to dump the buffer and then switch back to the station I want live. Rivian should have the buffer dump everytime you shut down the vehicle, or at least when the vehicle has been off for a decent period of time.

A better fix is to have an XM Radio option in the vehicle. That way I can listen to music on the way to my adventure after I leave the 10 mile radius of the city limits. My last adventure in Northern California had me driving on Hwy 36 and Interstate 5 for 3 hours with no radio, even with one bar on my phone. Oh, occasionally it got my hopes up, playing for 30 seconds, just to be false hope when it quit again for the next hour.

For reference, I'm an early adopter, and still own a 2014 Tesla P85S, which I love, so I'm used to startup glitches. This one was a serious oversight. Probably some financial incentive from Spotify or Tune-In for exclusivity.

I won't mention that my powered Tonneau Cover already broke, 30 days in. The security cameras video every cat that walks within 60 feet of the vehicle. The driver+ features are not smooth or easy to use, and are way too conservative in traffic. The slow moving safety noise is still to loud even after they softened it. Touch screen controls for cabin air direction, really, they over teched that feature, manual is so much easier and faster.

Oh yeah, Tune-In Sucks.

 

[NY_Rob]

The infotainment system is basically a cluster-f@#$ at this point with terrible provisions for those in poor or no cell coverage areas. How this important issue was overlooked during design is beyond explanation for a supposed "adventure" vehicle.

 

[Khaneric]

I've had TuneIn in multiple cars and have used it for years. With premium the Rivian implementation is amazing. No commercials, no prerolls, everything just works.

All my other cars it was a hassle and it would play commercials most of the time, even though I paid for it. My phone still does it on occasion too but the Rivian, is perfect.

 

[pc500]

Glad to see I'll be able to use something other than Spotify so that's a step in the right direction.

One interesting tidbit was this:

“Rivian shares a very similar philosophy to say they wanted to have a live audio experience in the vehicle that reflected the design sensibility and the advanced technology of the vehicle, so they built a beautiful experience,”

So he's saying Rivian themselves built the app, not TuneIn. Hopefully they produce some sort of SDK in the coming months/years so that at the very least developers can develop their own app for the Rivian vs Rivian using their limited resources building every single integration.

My guess is Tunein gave Rivian a SDK and they built their own app.

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