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Digital Radio With Removable Flash Storage
Billy69 writes "In a comment in a story yesterday about TiVo and MS Media Centre, somebody made a comment about being able to store Digital radio straight to a format to use on a MP3 player.
Ladies and Gentlemen (and geeks) I give you The Bug.
It is a DAB digital radio that can timeshift, store as MP2 or MP3 straight to an SD card, and can connect out via USB or SPDIF.
Oh, and it is sexy as hell."
Now that that's out of the way...
Euro broadcasts use slightly different frequency settings and bandwidths (I did have a portable with a switch in it for AM/MW bandwidth, FM was simply being able to dial 98.0 instead of odd intervals like 98.1, 98.3 in North America) Hopefully it's available for US buyers (best check lest it get intercepted at the border by the Federales. You know how Washington listens when RIAA, etc. bark. They know they're Master's Voice*)
This would be wonderful with satellite radio (all these great stations with swing and jazz), but I would probably not use it for broadcast, at least where I live. DJ's talking over the music is probably encouraged to screw with us who made tapes back in the poor days (lived in a paper bag in a septic tank or shoebox in the middle of the road...) Unless, say, I wanted to archive Paul Harvey or something like that. (This would have kicked butt back when J.P. McCarthy was still alive and doing his radio shows on WJR-Detroit)
Sexy? Reminds me of a Martian War Machine
* Arcane reference to Victor, the RCA dog.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Untill the RIAA screws this up...
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
Here
... wouldn't you prefer something like this?
First the US learns that the Brits have all the good sitcoms...and now Slashdot shows me that they have all the good radios as well.
Digital Audio Broadcasts? 85% coverage of the UK? Wicked radios? And it's for FREE!?!? XM ain't lookin' so hot right now...
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
Two comments and The Bug has been squashed by the almighty /. effect.
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
Do people actually expect this to be released without a hitch? Look at all of the controversy currently surrounding TiVo and other PVRs. Now consider the fact that the RIAA will be fighting this flash memory tooth and nail. The Bug will allow people to listen to what they want, when they want. No more inane DJ banter, no more 10-minute commercial breaks between every song, no more screeching pop tarts (unless that's what people want to hear.) There is no way to secure this device against copying, no matter how hard they try. There's a way around every copy protection. This will allow flawless, portable, digital recordings off of the radio. Granted, it's what consumers want, but since when were consumers in control? I have a feeling this will incur the wrath of the RIAA and, therefore, the US government. Just wait, these Bugs will be banned within a matter of days.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
I admit I haven't RTFA since the site is ./ed, but I have a question. Does this digital radio fill in the ID3 tags? Also, are they doing any watermarking of the mp3's?
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Why can't you just do this with the Winamp plugin that records streams to mp3 files (forgot name, sorry) and then transfer to media card via film reader?
I googled for places that sell it, and found it at £150 here: The Bug. It translates to roughly 270 USD.
Oh, and it is sexy as hell.
Step away from the keyboard.
This is a DAB - Digital Audio Broadcasting - not an AM/FM radio. I have no idea whether the DAB standard we have here in the UK/EU is a world-wide standard or not, and whether these things would work in the US or not. Sadly, I suspect that now that DAB sets are coming with the ability to record, that people like the MPAA will be working hard to ensure that they won't...
DAB is great. Got a Perstel Bluenote for Christmas and I'm currently listening to BBC 6Music. You can too via the BBC website.
Stupid bastards. Notice this was never a problem when people were dubbing radio on to tapes. Leave it to the rest of humanity to find a good way of owning, storing, and organizing music, and then the RIAA says, "Hey, this is efficient and high quality. Better stop them while we can..."
we've had digital radio broadcasts for ~6 years now
and currently the amount of sold digital recievers countrywide is 0
honestly, the concept really needs some rethinking
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
There's a bunch of info on it, buried in this very pretty website Near as I can tell the encoding is the same, but I couldn't tell you about what the frequency intervals are, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Stand clear of the doors. The doors are now closing.
In the U.S., I can see recording a talk show or NPR for a later date, but with all the Clear Channel owned crap, what is the point.
The BBC has been pushing its new DAB-only stations quite hard. We have approx 85% DAB coverage now, although the take-up is still only about 2%. However a lot of the DAB stations are also available via webcast and bundled with cable and satellite TV subscriptions.
I believe it's the UK government's ultimate goal to switch off analogue radio transmissions eventually, along with analogue TV and have everyone switch to digital TV and radio. I suspect this is going to take longer to accomplish than they want (by about 2010 IIRC) though.
"Oh, and it is sexy as hell."
Maybe it's just me, but odd-shaped packaging is cute for about 1 minute, then it is just a pain. You can't stack stuff on it, you can't push is flat up against your cubicle wall, etc.
If form-follows-function, fine. But if there is no reason for some odd shape, can't we have something more practical, less fragile and, frankly, less goofy looking? I wouldn't buy one of these things solely based on how it looks.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Ladies and Gentlemen (and geeks)
Are you implying that geeks are neither ladies nor gentlemen?
The legendary British radio manufacturer Roberts, produce a similar device called the Gemini 1. I don't know if it's as "sexy" as The Bug (whatever that means) but Roberts' reputation in the field of portable radio manufacturer is second to none.
So far, the Bug is full of them, bugs that is
The radio has problems reading SD cards sometimes, even the ones that it writes itself. The result is generally garbled filenames or unreadable files.
More seriously, the firmware shipped with the radio is having problems recording more than two thirds of the SD card. After 2/3 of the memory is used up, the recording starts to stutter (as if it's missing packets, which it probably is) or fail altogether.
Times recordings often fail, file deletion is buried in a submenu in a submenu...there's no fast forward or rewind on recordings. The sleep timer is hidden away, the 'joystick' control is unreliable.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it doesn't really record MP3. DAB radio is transmitted as MP2, the radio writes the stream directly to disk. If you want MP3 you have to upload to your computer, then convert. I think it can write mp3
All this will apparently be fixed when the new firmware becomes available. Which will be very soon, imminent in fact, honest.
I would post my sources, but their on PHP message boards, it'll get creamed by the slighest hint of a /.ing. It's easy enough to find if you're thinking of buying The Bug online, in the UK.
BB
Ladies and Gentlemen (and geeks) I give you The Bug.
...and we give The Bug the Slashdot effect! *swat* :)
Now I love to bash clear channel as much as the next guy, but here in LA they launched a station called Indie 103 that is actually pretty damn good and while it does have some repeats, they pull out some deep cuts and b-sides that have impressed me. Much better than the other corporate rock station or NPR style hippie radio... I'm sure it's voice tracked and they are/will be cookie-cutter stations like this all over, but hey, it's still good music. Could it be that they're actually going after a slightly less giant market than the britney spears lovers? Hell must be getting chilly...
I have a preproduction Griffin RadioShark, they only a few days from shipping.
The unit I have works PERFECTLY and is the FASTEST way to switch from AM to FM that I know of. You can have AM and FM mixed in with each other in your presets and you can timeshift record.
I too usually listen to AM - I have been wanting such a product for a very long time.
Griffin will finally deliver VERY soon. They've had a number of problems with manufacturer getting the internals right.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Check out Diva GEM, I recently bought this one for my wife's birthday.
It's as small as cigarette lighter, it has MMC/SD slot supporting even 1GB cards (I tested myself). It also has FM radio, plays AAC/MP3/GSM-AMR/WAV and can record from radio or buil-in mic -- works as a voice recorder too. You can upload/download files from the card via reader, or directly from this device via USB 1.1 (read ~600KB/s, write ~300).
It works from exchangeable li-ion battery over 10h and you can recharge it from (included) USB and wallplug charger.
More expensive models have built-in Bluetooth which enables it to work as a headset for BT-enabled phone -- GEM automagically stops music and receives call.
I bought the model without BT and with only 32M internal flash (plus the MMC/SD slot) for ~$140, Kingston SD 512M card for about $100. Works like a charm.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Hi, I'm astroturfing, have we met?
Yes, and no.
The Hauppaugg! "theater" card has a built in FM radio tuner, (model 401 card) so with the appropriate software or collection of software, you could schedule to record, and re-code to MP3, ogg vobis, WMA, or other audio format at your convienence. However that leaves out AM, and is not a Digital Radio tuner.
Presuming you can find an AM tuner card (the only thing that comes to mind at the moment is a card that acts as a scanner as well, and I can't recall its information) you could do this as well for AM. Again missing the Digital Radio stations. I seem to recall that the card I am thinking of is rather expensive, but it was a couple of years ago that I last looked at the idea, and there may be some of these cards available on ebay for a lot less than I recall.
Also presuming you can find a card that does the digital radio receiver functions you could probably do this as well with that card. I don't know what the availability of drivers for Linux users would be, but you should have no problems under Windows. I see a couple of links in earlier postings that would provide a possible link for you.
The primary problem with plugging a radio into a sound card is not the conversion of analog to digital, or anything like that, it's the fact that you have to manually re-tune the radio if you are going to record something on another station. That may be alright for you, but most others would be somewhat put out by that.
If you do go with the Hauppauge! card, I don't know what you have to do under Windows, but under Linux you will want to install the btaudio module, then you will use something lik Radio, or GTRadio to tune the station, and using either Jack, or one of the other audio tools run an output to whatever software you are going to use to convert from pcm audio to your favorite format. It can all be done as pipes, but I have not been able to do so myself.
Enjoy and take care.
-Rusty
You never know...
The general technology is called "In-Band, On-Channel." The implementation in the US is different from the the one in the rest of the world. In the USA, DAB technology is controlled by a company called iBiquity. It's incompatible with the world standard. In the rest of the world, the standard is Eureka 417. I found this explanation helpful.
Went to the launch (at the Dali Gallery), wasn't completely sold. Got one. Got irritated by the bugs, but lived with them.
Just been upgrading the firmware on it (lets make everyone scream, it needs Windows to update the flash...), so now it has rewind and fast forward when playing back off SD card.
Lovely functionality, still undecided on the ergonomics, and I wish the SD slot was on the front.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
Recording Radio is legal, so would it make the MP3s recorded by the Digital Radio legal too? If some one put them out on P2P, would it be legal to download and play these MP3? How would one differentiate between such MP3s v/s the CD ripped versions?