Play AAC Radio on Homepod mini

Third party integrations
1

Hi there,

I’m trying to play an AAC radio stream on my homepod mini.
I managed to get it working with radio streams in mp3 format, but it won’t work with AAC ones.

Here’s my YAML from my testing script:

service: media_player.play_media
data:
  media_content_id: http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_world_service
  media_content_type: music
target:
  entity_id:
    - media_player.alba

If I leave the media content type on music it gives me an error when running. If I change it to something else it just does nothing.

Now, thanks to my location I can’t just play the channel on pandora/tunein since it’s geoblocked.
And the wifey will not approve of me switching the Echo dot with a Homepod if this doesn’t work. :frowning:

I also tried several tutorials and ways to add radio to your dashboard, but the issue remains that the homepod only accepts mp3 streams it seems.

Do I really have to scrap the idea of using a homepod and set up our echo dots instead?

2

Hi

I have just discovered the same issue with my HomePods. I can setup all the radio stations fine using MP3 via a script (using a script to stop playing the stream before start playing a new radio stream otherwise I get the “already streaming to device” error).

All the MP3 streams seem to work fine but AAC streams do not work like you are experiencing. The streams do work on my laptop / phone via airplay no problem.

So is this a HA Issue with AAC and HomePods? Don’t really like the idea of replacing 5 HomePods with something else.

3

An update I found:

Looks like the underlying component of pyatv which is miniaudio, it only supports MP3 / WAV / FLAC so therefore AAC won’t work.

Looks like I will need to replace my HomePods with something else if I want to stream other audio codecs.