How To Keep On Blasting On Older Roku Devices

For those of you Blasting on older Roku devices, you may have noticed that TheBlast.FM app is no longer supported on those units.   Roku has updated some of its standards, which makes TheBlast.FM app no longer usable on those old Roku units.

Our Roku app developer says There is no way to make the app backward compatible… and a new app has to be developed.”

He also says “The new app will still work on the older Roku 3 (from 2013) devices… not sure about anything before that.  This is more than just a minor update and tweak.  This will be a brand NEW app and I will have to charge some development fees.

It would cost $1,500 one time for Roku channel development.

Here are a couple of other ways you can listen to TheBlast.FM on your television if you are using an older Roku device:

1) You can still listen to TheBlast.FM’s four radio stations via the Tune In Radio aggregator app.  The Tune In Radio app is free in the Roku store.  Search for TheBlast.FM or for whichever of our radio stations you are looking for by name and you can listen for free in the Tune In Radio app.

2) Are you using a smart TV?  If so, keep in mind that the HTML5 players on our website work in the browsers of smart TV’s.

If you’d like to contribute to the radio stations’ efforts to upgrade its Roku app to make it compatible across all Roku platforms, click here and give via MyWell if you live in the USA and via Givengain if you live outside the USA:  https://www.theblast.fm/home/donations/

Long Live 80’s Christian Hard Rock And Metal! Our First All 80’s Weekend Now Blasts!

The Blastozoic Era is doing an all 80’s weekend (Saturday through Monday) in honor of the Immortal Rock Festival which is happening at the same time in Ohio.  See the separate story for that here:

 

https://www.theblast.fm/home/2022/07/17/theblast-fm-co-sponsors-immortal-christian-rock-festival/

The Blastozoic Era Co-Sponsors Immortal Christian Rock Festival

Christian metal and hard rock legends are playing at the first annual Immortal Christian Rock Festival in Ohio in September:  Barren Cross, Whitecross, (Classic) Petra (which means Greg X. Volz as lead singer), Daniel Band, Saint, Les Carlsen of Bloodgood and Fear Not all rock the house!

Get tickets and more information here:

https://www.bmieventcenter.com/christian-rock-festival/#ARTIST

 

Barren Cross Interview Starting Today On The (Early) Blastozoic Era Radio Show

Colin Cruz, host of The Blastozoic Era, recently interviewed Michael Drive (aka Mike Lee) of the bands Gale Force and M24, and of course he is most well known as the lead singer of top 80’s Christian metal band Barren Cross.

The first few segments of the interview air on Tuesday September 21, 2021 in the 3 pm hour, USA/Canada Central Time, and focus on the band Barren Cross.   More segments will air on this weekly show over the next few weeks.

The show is rebroadcast on Saturday nights on Sunny Radio, 93.3 FM and 1520 AM Sioux Falls and on http://www.SunnyRadio.com  at 6 pm (USA/Canada Central Time).

Alternate Blastozoic Stream To Use During San Diego Data Center Power Outage

A car accident near the San Diego data center where our main streams are hosted caused a block-wide power outage, knocking our main streams off the air.

Use this stream address in Winamp or VLC Media Player to get Blasted in the meantime:

http://208.85.240.85:80/128

This stream is now in our Android, iOS, and Roku apps in the third position, notated as 128k!!!

So the others may have dead air, but this is hosted on the other side of the USA and has live streaming audio.

All Christmas 80’s And 90’s Show Today on The Blastozoic Era, 3 PM CT

The Blastozoic Era goes all Christmas today for 2 hours, from 3 to 5 pm USA/Canadian Central Time.

 

 

The Blastozoic Era Stream Address Changes

TheBlast.FM stations recently changed streaming addresses for better connectivity from our main encoding site in Portland.

Streams are now hosted in San Diego and are much smoother, as internet routing changes had made the connection from Portland to the Washington, D.C. metro much less stable.

If  you are listening on a third party media player, app or system on which TheBlast.FM stations don’t seem to be working anymore, and you can load our new streaming addresses manually, those are found here:   https://blastozoic.theblast.fm/home/other-streams/

Please notify us of any stream aggregators you use that need to be updated with streaming addresses.

HTTPS Streaming Is Here: Stream On Chrome, Brave, Etc Again With HTML5 Players

If you had trouble recently listening to TheBlast.FM radio stations with our HTML5 players labeled 128k, 64k and 32k on our websites, those troubles are gone, as we have upgraded our streams to make them HTTPS-compliant. 

The streaming addresses have also been updated in our Android, iOS, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Blackberry apps so you may need to restart those apps to make sure the new stream addresses are loaded.  The old streaming addresses will go away soon. 

We have a request in to our Windows/XBox/Alexa Skills app developer to change the addresses in those apps.

CHROME 80 WON’T BLAST; HERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER BROWSERS AND OPTIONS THAT WILL!

So, Google has decided to make life difficult for streaming radio and its listeners.  The station won’t play in our HTML5 players on Chrome 80.

Well, guess what?   You CAN listen to TheBlast.FM radio stations via our HTML5 players in these browsers: Brave, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Microsoft Edge, and probably a host of others.

On on any Windows 10 desktop or laptop computer, download the free TheBlast.FM Windows 10 app.

The Windows 10 app now supports our lyrics, album art and song ratings features!

If you are trying to listen on a phone or tablet, use Duck Duck Go, Firefox or download TheBlast.FM app in lieu of using the HTML5 players.

35-Year Old Treasure Discovered At The End Of The 1984 Prodigal Album Electric Eye

Like a deep sea diver scouring a sunken ship for buried treasure, a Canadian classic computer aficionado has discovered treasure buried at the end of Christian new wave band Prodigal’s 1984 album called Electric Eye:  a Commodore 64 program.  Yep, software that will work on one of those ancient computers called the Commodore 64!   Polygon 64 has more on the story:

https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/20/20923280/christian-rock-band-commodore-64-easter-egg-prodigal-program-download