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Review: PogoProducts' Radio Your Way
An anonymous reader writes "Being a long time TiVo-head and a talk radio junkie, I've been waiting for the first commercially available PVR for radio (PAR?). PogoProducts finally released just such a product, which they call 'Radio Your Way'. After seeing the announcement on Slashdot I quickly placed my order and have now been using it for about a week. The following is a quick rundown of the good and the bad."
Recording is fairly straight forward. There is a red button on the front that is used for manually starting and stopping recording of the current 'mode' (AM/FM/Voice), and a timer function which allows up to 10 scheduled recordings to be programmed. There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to scheduling these recordings, but once you understand the controls it's quite easy to add or modify scheduled recordings. You can set up repeating recordings for a given day (Mon, Tues, Wed., etc.), every day, or Mon-Sat (which I thought was a bit odd - why not Mon-Fri?). A really nice feature of the scheduled recordings is that the device will automatically turn on and off before and after recording stops, meaning you don't have to worry about wasting batteries by leaving the unit on 24/7.
Listening to recordings is a breeze. There are standard next/prev and FF/RW buttons that work like a VCR. If you FF a selection that is not playing it moves extremely fast, and if you FF while playing it scans - allowing you to hear the content zipping along so you know when the commercial is over, for example.
The internal memory holds approximately 4 hours of audio, and can be supplemented with SD/MMC cards giving you up to 1 Gig of storage and days of recording time.
The device comes with a desktop application for transferring, playing, and converting files. I haven't used it much but my first impressions were positive. No complaints here.
The BadGiven that this is a 1.0 product and the first of its kind (as far I know), I fully expected there to be some usability issues and missing features. I was right. The most notable missing feature is the ability to pause a live recording. This is apparently due to the fact that there is no 'always on' buffer ala TiVo. How many times have you been listening to the radio and wanted to rewind 10 seconds because you missed something? Pausing live radio seems like an obvious feature for a Radio PVR, but you won't get it with Radio Your Way. Live recording is strictly a manual option - hit the red button to record, hit the stop button to stop, then back up and listen to what was recorded. This is very archaic for someone used to the power of TiVo. Hitting the red button while recording actually pauses the recording, which I suppose could be useful for on the fly editing of commercials. However, the lack of a true 'pause live radio' feature is a serious drawback that I'm sure will be corrected in future versions, even if it's a small buffer.
Other disappointments:
- No manual 'auto stop' feature. I'd like to be able to hit record and tell it to stop in a given amount of time. Unfortunately if you hit record you have to manually hit stop or it will continue recording until the memory is filled of the batteries run out.
- Uses AAA batteries instead of a chargeable system.
- Reception is so-so.
- Very poor speaker quality - stick with headsets or car adapter.
- No off button! As far as I can tell, once you turn the device on there is no way to manually turn it off other than to wait for it to enter sleep mode after several minutes. Very annoying.
- Overall the device feels a bit cheap, particularly the volume control button. This ain't no iPOD.
- Poorly written manual.
-A bit pricey at $150.
--- Conclusions ---
Despite the drawbacks listed above, Iï½m happy with the Radio Your Way from PogoProducts. It gives me the basic ability to time-shift AM/FM programming in a small, lightweight, portable package. I wouldn't use it for recording FM music - stick with traditional MP3 players for that. But for those of us that are addicted to talk radio (I'm a day one P1 for those of you in Dallas) it's a good solution, and will tide you over until the next generation of devices comes to market.
The Good The product has a decent form factor and intuitive buttons for playback. It has a 3V DC-in so you can keep it powered in your car (a $15 3V car adapter from RadioShack did the trick for me), a line-in port for recording from external sources, and of course a USB port for transferring files to your PC.
Recording is fairly straight forward. There is a red button on the front that is used for manually starting and stopping recording of the current 'mode' (AM/FM/Voice), and a timer function which allows up to 10 scheduled recordings to be programmed. There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to scheduling these recordings, but once you understand the controls it's quite easy to add or modify scheduled recordings. You can set up repeating recordings for a given day (Mon, Tues, Wed., etc.), every day, or Mon-Sat (which I thought was a bit odd - why not Mon-Fri?). A really nice feature of the scheduled recordings is that the device will automatically turn on and off before and after recording stops, meaning you don't have to worry about wasting batteries by leaving the unit on 24/7.
Listening to recordings is a breeze. There are standard next/prev and FF/RW buttons that work like a VCR. If you FF a selection that is not playing it moves extremely fast, and if you FF while playing it scans - allowing you to hear the content zipping along so you know when the commercial is over, for example.
The internal memory holds approximately 4 hours of audio, and can be supplemented with SD/MMC cards giving you up to 1 Gig of storage and days of recording time.
The device comes with a desktop application for transferring, playing, and converting files. I haven't used it much but my first impressions were positive. No complaints here.
The BadGiven that this is a 1.0 product and the first of its kind (as far I know), I fully expected there to be some usability issues and missing features. I was right. The most notable missing feature is the ability to pause a live recording. This is apparently due to the fact that there is no 'always on' buffer ala TiVo. How many times have you been listening to the radio and wanted to rewind 10 seconds because you missed something? Pausing live radio seems like an obvious feature for a Radio PVR, but you won't get it with Radio Your Way. Live recording is strictly a manual option - hit the red button to record, hit the stop button to stop, then back up and listen to what was recorded. This is very archaic for someone used to the power of TiVo. Hitting the red button while recording actually pauses the recording, which I suppose could be useful for on the fly editing of commercials. However, the lack of a true 'pause live radio' feature is a serious drawback that I'm sure will be corrected in future versions, even if it's a small buffer.
Other disappointments:
- No manual 'auto stop' feature. I'd like to be able to hit record and tell it to stop in a given amount of time. Unfortunately if you hit record you have to manually hit stop or it will continue recording until the memory is filled of the batteries run out.
- Uses AAA batteries instead of a chargeable system.
- Reception is so-so.
- Very poor speaker quality - stick with headsets or car adapter.
- No off button! As far as I can tell, once you turn the device on there is no way to manually turn it off other than to wait for it to enter sleep mode after several minutes. Very annoying.
- Overall the device feels a bit cheap, particularly the volume control button. This ain't no iPOD.
- Poorly written manual.
-A bit pricey at $150.
--- Conclusions ---
Despite the drawbacks listed above, Iï½m happy with the Radio Your Way from PogoProducts. It gives me the basic ability to time-shift AM/FM programming in a small, lightweight, portable package. I wouldn't use it for recording FM music - stick with traditional MP3 players for that. But for those of us that are addicted to talk radio (I'm a day one P1 for those of you in Dallas) it's a good solution, and will tide you over until the next generation of devices comes to market.
Every time I hear something on the radio that I want to replay, my hand makes the same motion I use for my PVR and I wonder why this product isn't out on the market already. Now it is... imagine, radio without commercials as long as you are "behind" the broadcast in time.
Time to start hunting the web for the best price!
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Like the equivelant of recoding TV with rabbit ears? To much of pain, even for talk radio. maybe if this came with a subcription to satelite raido.
Another feature that audio players should make use of is time-compressed playback, digitally speeding up the audio without "chipmunking." You might be able to squeeze 20% more time out in addition to commercial skipping. I wouldn't recommend it for music, of course.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
I actually built a basic one of these at home. I bought an ADS Cadet Radio Card (the only one on the planet that gets the AM band) for $7. I bought a $50 PC at a computer show (Dell P200MMX) and installed Linux. I then wrote a Perl program to control recording, etc.
THEN, I found out that AM reception is nearly impossible on the ADS Cadet in certain circumstances (namely mine). Tried just about everything I could without buying a $50 antenna. Anyway, I ended up hooking up my stereo and my wife mostly uses it to record some of her tapes to MP3 (or Ogg) and then from there to CD. And please no flames about compression crappiness...They are voice-only tapes.
Some day I will try to get it working again, but right now I figure my $50 Dell is creating too much noise on the ISA bus for the card to pick up AM. FM works great, but who wants to hear the same 10 songs over and over? If anyone wants my source, I made it a service that starts on Virtual Console 1 and it takes programmable key-strokes for commands. Also will take a USR1 signal from cron jobs. Pretty decent for the hack job it is.
Using off-the-shelf software on Linux (cron, mpg321, etc) I was doing this over a year ago. Talk radio compresses down nicely. Burning the .mp3 (or .ogg, for those so inclined) files to a CD-RW made the show quite portable.
'course, having a portable device is nice, for when you're listening to the radio and hear that a particularly good segment is coming on that you might want to save...
Also goes to show you that buying a head unit for your car that has a line-in port continues to be worthwhile. (Too bad most manufacturers seem to not notice this.)
no, I'll just shake my 20gb iPOD with the 25% longer battery for the same price. gtkpod reports 2,756 songs so far.
Since I bought my iPod, I haven't listened to the radio at all, at home, walking or in the car. I have haunted used CD shops and websites like allmusic.com and discovered how much I've been missing. (explore music on allmusic.com then go listen to samples from tracks on mymusic.com)
I think in many ways, radio, TV, and newspapers are all for people who are unable or unwilling to explore the options and buy exactly what they want: cd's, dvd's, access to specific internet news sites. They prefer the all-you-can-eat buffets of television and radio. Yum yum, heatlamp-warmed leftovers sneezed on by every passer-by.
When you have to choose what you want to consume and pay for it, you do a lot more thinking and you consume a lot less garbage. I suppose recording/time shifting takes you some of the way, but being presented with a menu by NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and all the other American stations is not the same as figuring out what kind of food has ever been made on the planet then going out to sample it. Eating at 5 different roadhouses all who prepare their burgers and fries slightly differently just isn't the same thing as radically different restaurants, or gasp! home-cooked food.
It's a lot like going on a diet but for your head.
And if you listen to a lot of talk radio (vomit populi) boy do you need the diet. A pooling of un-informed opinions does not make one informed.
A lot of companies still fear the words open source.
For them NDA is just how the game is played and *free* isnâ(TM)t really in their business lexicon, I mean who supports it? Does it somehow benefit their competitors? Could it damage their hardware? What if its used in a way not intended? Could this cause liability problems? How can they control it?
I understand your frustration and *really* appreciate your interest in porting it. They'll wake up eventually...(I hope).
Quack, quack.
What do I care? Any decent radio station already archives their shows online anyway.