mikectm2

Hi there. well i'm about 2 months away from acquiring a '12 ES350 ! i turn 35 and get some $. have driven several in the past few months from Crown, Newport, Tustin, Riverside and South County/mission viejo .

I hope ya all don't mind me picking your brians here. i'm trying to get 102.1FM in San Diego. ....in los angeles county. Standard radio tuner doesn't get it ( '08 Nissan Altima )

I guess i need to dig deeper on what can be acquired with the 'Satellite Radio ' service, right?. just don't know anything yet. didn't know where to start. I've sent an email to KPRI.

At least i suppose, i can get this station with an APP on my phone, and then use the 'Bluetooth' function on the '12 ES350 to play the audio through the vehicle's sound system, right ?

Robert_J

You will get the satellite stations. Nothing local.

They do have a listen live option on their site. An app would probably work better though. Either way, data rates/usage applies to your cell phone contract. Streaming anything to your phone will use up data quickly.

As on '07 owner, I don't have any idea about the Bluetooth option.

mckdaddy

Yes, on the BT.

Kansas

102.1FM in San Diego and about 70,000 other radio stations around the world are available on the free Tunein app ( http://tunein.com/ ) assuming there is a compatible Tunein app for your phone. We use Tunein on about every device we have - PC, iPhone, Android phone and tablet.

Tunein doesn't seem to use all that much bandwidth. I've yet to come at all close to using the 3GB/month included in my basic data plan and about all I listen to in our cars is audio streaming from the Internet: Pandora, Slacker, iHeartradio and Tunein.

If your new '12 ES has the Enform option, iHeartradio will be included but your favorite San Diego radio station is not on it - I just checked. Lexus Enform / Toyota Entune is already way behind what can be done simply by streaming directly from a Smartphone. They need to add a LOT more apps to Enform/Entune to make it worthwhile.

My bet is that SiriusXM will be dead within two years unless a consortium of auto manufacturers rescue it. We dropped XM three months ago from our 2012 Prius but we still have service. I suspect they need all the "subscribers" they can get - even nonpaying ones - just to pump up their numbers.

Mounting your phone in a cradle makes it especially convenient to stream from it. I bought a leather phone console for my LS from Kuda; they have one for the 2012 ES350: http://www.kudausa.com/lexus-es-350-...ite-a1172.html You would need to buy the charging cradle or a simple phone holder separately or you could mount your phone on a bracket like the ones from Pro.Fit.

Just for grins, I went to my garage and streamed "102.1FM in San Diego" from Tunein on my Samsung Galaxy S3 to the aux-in of the radio in my LS. Sound quality excellent - maybe somewhere between over-the-air FM and HD FM. If it works here in Kansas it should work anywhere there is decent cell phone service.

mckdaddy

Very helpful post, KS. Tunein has been my radio app of choice for about 3 years now, particularly at the gym or when traveling and wanting to hear some sports talk from back home. Tunein sold me when they were the first radio app to provide a "rewind" feature, which I really enjoy to this day (the mind wanders at times, ha).