Linux-based Internet Radio Appliance

sysadmn writes "From CMP Media's Winmag Win Letter, A company called Kerbango has built what it bills as the world's first standalone Internet radio, which can play any of the claimed 4,000 audio streams floating around the Net as well as more conventional AM or FM broadcasts. Tuning is accomplished through the Kerbango Tuning Service, which displays the user interface on a half-VGA grayscale LCD monitor. The radio has a built-in computer, with an 80MHz PowerPC chip running Linux with 8MB of DRAM, 8MB of flash memory, and a whole bunch of codecs. It'll be available in the Spring. They're not saying how much. "

Comments

Freedom from the corporate world, or new master?

[doom]

Look, here's the real problem with this thing, not the ugly purple case:

Tuning is provided by the Kerbango Tuning Service (KTS) with over 4,000 streams to choose from, dynamically updated and graded for quality and reliability.

[...] you are connected to the Internet, and the available stations are displayed by category: Rock & Roll, Classical, Talk Radio, Country, Jazz, and dozens more. By using the tuning knob in much in the way you use a regular radio, you select a category. Individual stations or streams are then displayed. Tune to the one you want to hear, and press 'Select'. The Kerbango radio connects you to the stream and your broadcast begins.

Radio That Gets Better Every Time You Turn It On Your Kerbango tuner always stays up to date with the latest stations, newest music, and current events because every time you turn your radio on it communicates with the Kerbango Tuning Service (KTS). KTS is a sophisticated database that stores information about all the stations that Kerbango finds on the Internet. Each stream is carefully screened for broadcast quality. Once it's added to the available stations, special automated programs, called StreamBots[tm], continually check the station's transmission quality and reliability. [...] StreamBots also detect when a station changes its location on the web, updating the KTS database, and ensuring that your tuning experience is always smooth and seamless.

Get it? One centralized database run by this company is central to the function of this gadget.

This raises some questions:

• Can their servers handle the traffic?
• As someone else here has pointed out: "What if the company goes belly up?"
• How does the company decide what category a signal will be filed under?
• What decides the placement? Will they accept payment from the broadcasters?
• What's their policy on advertising. Will any appear on the display? (Or worse, *in the audio*?)
• Will they make an effort to carry *all* streams, or will they focus on the most popular?
• Will they censor any streams that they regard as "inappropriate for a general audience"?

This is not to say that these aren't *answerable* questions. But they need to be addressed...

What I'm really interested in seeing is a good "internet transistor radio" (when they finally release palm pilots with both Richochet and an audio jack, I'll be happy... you can squeeze listenable audio over a Richochet modem, high-quality audio can come later). Second to that, I'm sure an "internet car radio" would be of interest to all the people stuck in car commuting. This particular type of gadget is third down the list. Certainly it's a drawback that it's stationary, but a webradio for the bedroom/livingroom that's cheaper than a full PC would still fill a niche. At least it has a quarter-VGA screeen on it that allows for *some* flexibility in what you can do with it.

The great advantage of a web radio would be to get people out from under the corporate conglomerate blandness that the world seems to be sinking under.

The great danger is that in the effort to make it simpler to access web radio streams, they'll take away some of your freedom to choose what you hear.