Customer Reviews

Belkin TuneCast Mobile FM Transmitter

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(68)

 

 

The Belkin Tunecast is basically a small radio transmitter that plugs into the headphone jack of your iPod. The Tunecast transmits the music from your iPod to one of four selectable frequencies, which you can then listen to by simply tuning your home or car stereo to said frequency.

The most obvious advantage of this little device is the ability to use it anywhere there's a radio. Say you wanted to play your songs on your friend's stereo, or in your friend's car, or on a boombox at the beach: it's practically effortless with the Tunecast. And it's cheap, to boot.

Of course, what you gain in ease of use compared to, say, a direct line into your home or car stereo, you lose in sound quality. The sound is basically FM radio-quailty, with a noticible hiss in the background. Now, it's still more than listenable, and most of the time the music drowns out the hiss, but audiophiles in search of crystal-clear sound quality should look elsewhere (although they probably already know that).

Overall, I would recommend it simply because of its low price and versatility.

Having owned this device for about a month - I would recomend it with some reservations. the first caveat - of course is the limited number of FM bands that it broadcasts in. If you live in an area where one of the bands in the 88s is free - you will probably have decent results with the device. If all the 88s are full - the device still works - but it is like listening to a radio station that is almost out of range. There is noise - and occasionally you will here other broadcasts coming through your speakers.

The second issue is that scince the transmitter is rather weak - you need to turn up the volume on your ipod to at least 75 percent in order to get a strong signal, and this of course eats up substantially more battery life, and unfortunately - means that you get poor results if you use the line out on an ipod dock (which is probably why belkin put a small amplifier on the line out of its car adapter)

My recomendation for this product would really be based on why you want it. If you want it to play your mps in your car only, - and dont really move from city to city much - and all the frequencys in the 88s are taken up locally - then I would recomend trying another way - either a cassette adapter - or seeing if your car stereo can be wired for an audio input jack.

However - if you are traveling alot in rental cars - this is great as you can never be out of luck if you are stuck with a car without a cassette player. nad if the city you live in has one of the 88s open - you will probably be in good shape.

This FM transmitter is nice for feeding your iPod music to your office radio or any stationary radio around the house. It does not work well with the car radio, you should purchase the car adaptor kit for that purpose.

I was hesitant to buy the TuneCast based on some of the other reviews, but I thought I'd give it a shot with the new Nomad Zen Xtra MP3 player I picked up. I was pleasantly surprised. The unit gives you four frequencies to choose from, and luckily, one of them was clear in my area (DC metro). The signal came through loud and clear on my car stereo. It's not CD quality sound, but it sounds as good what my old cassette adapter provided. It works fine with my home stereo, too, but a direct line-in connection sounds better. It's worth a shot if you want an easy connection for your car stereo and have open frequencies in the 88.1-88.7 range. Just get rechargeable batteries!

I recently purchased the Belkin TuneCast Mobile FM Transmitter to add on to my Sony XM Radio module in our cars and at home, because none of my car stereos have a cassette device, and because my XM unit's antenna will not reach from where it enters the house to the stereo units.

In most applications the TuneCast Mobile FM Transmitter performs fairly well as long as it has an unobstructed line of site to the reciever. However if you are in a major metro area where you have the 88.X range is loaded with high powered broadcast stations-- forget it. This cute little postage stamp transmitter can't pump enough wattage out to get a decent signal across a bathroom, let alone broadcast a decent signal to other FM Recievers/Radios around your home.

For my money I'm going back to CCrane and pick up the CCrane FM Transmitter, that can be set to any open FM frequency and can be run off AC or batteries.

If I had truly hated it, I'd have given it 1 star. Anyway, you plug this into the headset jack of the iPod and then, after inserting 2 AAA batteries, set a slide switch on it to one of 4 available frequencies (all on the low end of the FM band), set your FM radio to the matching frequency, and push the big button on the TuneCast to get it to transmit. By the way, of you forget to press the big button again before you exit the car, count on the 2 AAAs being dead when you return.
There is more static, popping and crackling than there is music. I'm sure you get the picture. No matter how I positioned it, it wasn't very clear. I even tried to use it in a car with its radio antenna mounted on the front fender, but it wasn't much better (the TuneCast transmits to your radio's antenna, not to your radio's faceplate).
I got the Griffin iTunes, and this was somewhat better to be sure, but still not good enough to make me give up the headphones or the cassette tape converter.

The reviewers that said it doesn't work in a car are correct, too a point. Out of the box it stinks. But all you need to do is go and buy a 15 ft headphone extention cable and add that. I ran mine under my seat, pushed it under the molding along the floor, thru the crease of the back seat and into the back window area. You cannot see it. It was in my car for 2 weeks before my wife saw the plug (never saw the cable until I showed it to her). It comes in CRYSTAL clear (even with a radio station on that channel). No cutting out/hissing/or static. The unit uses the short plug from the unit to your device as its antenna. So by doing this you add a huge attena to it. This added about $7 to my price, but well worth it! I now can listen to my MD Walkman, a tape walkman (audiobooks), or my PC.

I would recommend this with the above modification.

PRO's
Pop in the batteries, set the channel on car radio and it works!
Extremely simple to use - I have an hour comute 1 way and listen to books on tapes.
I used through my home Bose system and it works perfectly. Great to use with iPod or regular hand held cassette player. But for best results with iPod's use the iTrip, you can choose any frequency available from right on the iPod.
At least now when I get my free Otis player from Audible.com - I don't have to wear ear buds (not very safe at all!) while driving.

Cons
Bleeding FM stations cause havoc -
I drive through mostly rural areas - If you live in the city I can see where "bleeding" from FM stations could make the device useless.

For the first 10 minutes, i hated the thing. But i wasn't going to take it back because i really needed something to play my CD player in my truck with. (My Chevy Colorado doesnt have a tape or cd player). After messing with it i temporarily gave up. The next day i found out, after doing some extensive research by means of disassembling, that the antenna is the 3 inch cord!! I immediately ran in the house and grabbed a 6ft male on both ends stereo cord from my computer speaker set, a female-female joiner and ran back out to my truck. i plugged my belkin in the joiner along with the 6ft cord and plugged the other end in my cdplayer. I then coiled up the remaining wire and put it in my glove box along with the belkin (which was turned on). I pushed play on my cdplayer and it works PERFECTLY! NO static/interference. I thought this product sucked majorly-which it does unless you do what i did. Try it, whatcha got ta loose? ONLY THE STATIC!

the tunecast is not going to satisfy those who want crystal clear music from their car radios. there is a light high pitched hiss at times in the background when using the tunecast; it gets worse when there are stronger radio station signals around using that frequency or something close. it gets better once out of a highly congested area. it helps to try the other preset frequencies once in a while. a weakness is that there are only 4 frequency presets available to use- all in the 88 FM region. it would have helped to have more or for the user to be able to set it manually. that said, this is a simple product that is very straightforward to use. it matches the ipod and is small enough to easily carry around.