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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
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.
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.
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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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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..."
Stand clear of the doors. The doors are now closing.
You mean Streamripper?
You can also do so in XMMS, just use the disk writer output plugin.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
"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?
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
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
Hi, I'm astroturfing, have we met?
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?