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TiVo For Radio?
An anonymous reader points out this Wired story that says "several electronics makers are releasing new products that promise to do for radio what the TiVo digital video recorder has done for television." (Products that might seem puny to serious time-shifting radio listeners, but cool to see them anyhow.)
I for one would be interested in this. There is a local public station that has a multitude of various radio shows featuring very different styles of music over the weekend. Often times, the shows that I want to hear are on very early or very late. For instance "Just Plain Folk" is on Saturday mornings between 7 and 9 am, while "DIY Radio" (punk rock) is on late Saturday evenings. It would be nice to schedule a "season pass" to these shows so that I could listen to them at my convenience. Granted, I'm certainly in the minority of radio listeners (most people only want to hear top 40), but I think that this product could have a nice niche market.
"Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...." - Abraham Simpson
"Sorry I'm late to work - I had my radio time-shifted by two hours and I thought it was 7am when I woke up"
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I almost never catch Car Talk on NPR on the weekends because it's on before I'm out driving around (I'm in CA, and I sleep in on weekends).
Now, OTOH, on the weekdays I find myself listening to crappy morning shows during my commute if I'm not up for news. I would really like the option of pulling up a show from the weekend (or a Science Friday or whatever) and listening to it rather than putting on Sarah & No-Name and listening to what happened on TV the night before just to have *something* to listen to.
Hell, I spend roughly as much time commuting as I do in front of the TV during the week. If you can see why TiVO has a market, surely you can see one here, too?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
This is the equivalent of "VCR for Radio", or a timer hooked up to a recorder. It's not integrated with a schedule.
People who have never used a Tivo might fail to see the distinction, but it's an important one. With Tivo, I don't have to know what time or channel something comes on - I just say "Record all episodes of the Simpsons" or "Record all movies directed by Stanley Kubrick", and it handles all the scheduling details for me.
These devices sound like you have to tell it to "at 10pm, tune to 101.3 and record for 30 minutes".
I can only imagine this would be useful for talk radio... I mean... what would be the point of using this for a top 40 station?
Wait, are you saying you have a radio station that plays 40 DIFFERENT songs??? Do you mean over a period of 5-10 years, or have you just not listened to the radio in the last decade?
Let's review the differences:
Capacity:
Tape capacity: 60-90mins
Flash card capacity: 256Megs (256 mins at a very good quality mp3).
H/drive capacity: ~5Gig for a protable? (5000mins=83 hours)
Search/rewind/jump capabilities:
Tape: Rewind/FF. ANYONE who ever used a tape player would agree it's very s l o w.
Flash: instant
h/drive: very fast.
Ability for signal processing:
Tape: None
flash or drive: anything our circuits/processor allow. For example, commercial skip.
Size:
Tape: limited to pretty big factor by tape size
Flash: can be VERY small
h/drive: probably same size as tape player for now.
Other capabilities:
For example, ability to record several tracks at once, enabling recording of mmore than one frequency.
Tape: None
flash or drive: ability to write in parallel to multiple files.
Summary:
Tape has no benefits whatsoever (perhaps cost?)
over flash. H/drive is preferrable over flash if capacity is an issue and/or movement is not (i.e. for home as opposed to walkman-like functionality).
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Before moving out of the lovely SF Bay area couple of years ago, I wanted to capture the local jazz station (KCSM) from my FM receiver to my PC.
I found a product called Total Recorder (www.highcriteria.com) - which has a scheduling feature (so I could capture the Jazz Oasis every evening at 7pm).
Besides recording anything that can be played on your computer, I also captured some Internet radio streams, such as www.live365.com, which were otherwise un-capturable. Nice to rip 11 hours of Internet radio to a CD and play it in the car.
BTW - Radio Shack sells an RCA to stereo plug convertor for converting left/right audio plugs to a single line in port on your PC.