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RadioShark for Windows and Mac OS X
Quantrell writes "Ars Technica has done a very thorough review of the AM/FM radio time-shifting device radioSHARK. I was surprised when I read it,
because I thought it was Mac-only. Actually the device has good Windows support, and their review shows that some of the problems experienced by early adopters have been solved
with recent updates to the product. That said, there are actually some considerable flaws with the product, so buyer beware." There's a lot more meat on this review than this story which was a lot more glowing of a review.
I got mine for Chistmas, and it's nice, however I get really bad reception in my house.
They really NEED to get the capability to tune into internet radio as well, then all will be well.
Eschew Obfuscation
Seeing as almost all of our local stations have been consumed by mega-corporations such as Clear Channel. We have nice exciting playlists that repeat about once a half hour.
I guess for sports, national public radio and the like this might be a cool thing. Or for college radio shows that play at odd hours (it always seems that the only shows I like are on at 3 in the morning).
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I set mine to record Howard Stern at 5:30 am and stop at 10:30... then offset it to my ipod and then listen to the whole show at my leisure.
I'm surprised RadioShack isn't suing them over the name.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
It shouldn't be long before the RIAA attorneys start swarming all over this product like angry yellow-jackets that are being squirt with a hose.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Why not get a Happuaguge tv tuner card that comes with a FM reciever? The radio tuner alone would have to be several factors cheaper then the TV card to make this a good buy, and its not.
I had a difficult time reconciling the fact that the following two statements are in the same review:
...
...
Say you're listening to All Things Considered and Nina Totenberg is about to make an especially poignant point about the day's oral arguments at the Supreme Court
If you're listening to your favorite top 40 radio station and the newest Ashlee Simpson tune comes on and you want to save it
Yikes! Still, I think the pause feature may be a nice Tivo-ish thing, but the Season Pass concept will probably be better covered by podcasting. (Actually, there was a feature on podcasting on NPR's Day to Day: you can listen to it here, but alas, not as a podcast.)
I mean sheesh...whatever will they think of next.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
You gotta be kidding, right? No, I don't want to bloody record to AIFF and then have to use applescript to feed it to iTunes etc etc...
Please help metamoderate.
You want to talk about repeats:
1 0/ 1338207&tid=176&tid=1a rticle.pl?sid=04/09/29/ 1521201&tid=141&tid=137&tid=3
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/
http://apple.slashdot.org/
Make this one a threepeat!
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Many radio stations have websites that you earn points on by answering questions about stuff they play/say at a specific time of day.
Mine records all of the countdowns (that happen while I work)
I redeam points, and earn lots of free tickets to concerts, that and it is usefull for recording select radio shows.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
"It cannot be used to listen to satellite radio or broadcasts streamed over the Internet"
One has to wonder why they left this out. It seems like it would be a popular function. It's already hooked upto your computer. There's no reason (other than legal issues?) not to support time-shifting internet streams. I can't image there being any legal issues that prevent it, that don't already apply to time-shifting broadcast radio.
And not supporting satellite radio? I'd think they're be a larger market for this if the included it. Maybe even work out a deal with XM or something, providing time-shifting on all their recievers.
It looks like a good product, and a great idea, but I don't understand why they left those functions out. It can't have simply been an oversight, since it's just to obvious of an idea.
Over at newegg you can buy a WinFast TV2000 XP PCI card for about $36 shipped. It has both a TV tuner and AM/FM radio. You can scedule records for both TV and radio broadcasts. Why would ANYONE spend $70 for the RadioShark? Does looking "cool" really sway people that much?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The RIAA can go to hell. Sony v. Universal clearly established the legality of timeshifting devices such as this.
I was surprised to read that no RDS (Radio Data System) is supported. RDS is used by every radio station in the UK and makes it a darned sight easier to tune in and know what station you're listening to, along with information about presenters / shows and so on.
Do you not have RDS in America, or is it an oversight by the developers?
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Is it just me, or is configuring ALSA a black art?
Do people still listen to AM? Let alone the radio?
what we need is a radio time-shifting device to take us back in time to before Michael Powell and CLearChannel and others completely gutted the antitrust and media-aggregation laws.
now that, i'd buy.
May be a bit offtopic but I bought this annoying program that basically played the audio streams out loud (when you didnt' want to hear it) instead of just recording them. The icing on the cake was the 100 meg mp3 files (which by the way weren't encoded in real time) which contained hours of silence. So it only lets you hear shit when you dont want to.
no Linux drivers...
i do like my GE SuperRadio 3 for AM Talk shows...
has the best reception for an AM internal ferrite rod antenna, for a portable under 100 dollars...
... RadioShack for Windows and MacOS? Man, I thought they only sold Tandys.
The whole reason it costs more is because it needs a case and power supply the PCI card does not have.
The reason why people would pay for this is because there are not that many people who want to install cards in the computer compared to the set of computer users as a whole.
I personally would not buy a Radio Shark, but that's because radio has just about nothing I care to listen to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I dont have this device yet, but when I do buy it I plan on setting it up on an extra PC at my parents house. I am going to have it scheduled to record radio programs (that can only heard in the Boston market), so that I can then access the directory it stores them in via FTP. Finally, I will get to hear my Hillman Morning Show once again.
Peep that
"Clearly"? OK. "Permanently"? Sorry, wrong answer. Any precedent can be overturned if the plaintiff buys the appropriate combination of presiding judge, jury, and venue. And each new "infringing technology" introduced to the marketplace gives *AA another shot at re-establishing its hegemony.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The only two things I listen to are NPR, which pretty much has everything online for you to listen to at your convenience, and a music station which repeats everything every hour anyway.
They need one of these for online radio streams with a comprehensive catalog. The catalog alone would be a great help.
Who give a shite what Radioshack is selling? I don't care if they're selling Windows or Mac OS's for cheap or having Howie Long shill their crap. They blow.
Given that scientists and researchers have recently lobbied for open access to government funded scientific research, can we demand the same open access and eventual public domain status of government funded art, music, TV stations, and NPR programs?
Seems like the market for this is limited. StreamRipper lets me download most radio stations' MP3 streaming audio. Mplayer with some addons allows me to download RealAudio streams which can be converted to MP3. I've got this all automated via cron job to download NPR news, This American Life, plus foreign radio broadcasts for later playback. Plus I can download multiple streams simultaneously, and no worries about poor reception.
Be that as it may, though, Harvard has the best college radio station, and one the best radio stations at all, that I've ever heard. It's WHRB FM out of Cambridge, Mass. It (typically) plays decent classical music during the day, underground rock in the evening, and jazz at night, so there's something for everybody. There's a webstream at the link if y'all feel like listening.
If it were me, I wouldn't buy it. Why? I have several Griffin products and the thing that is common between all of them is that the software sucks to start with and the software never really gets fixed. Case in point - I have a Griffin PowerMate USB rotary controller. To this day it does not work properly with multiple users in Mac OS X. By this I mean *both* there being more than one account on the system with each account logged in to at different times, as well as greater issues with having multiple accounts logged in at the same time (fast user switching.)
In the former case the issue is relatively minor, but still annoying. In some accounts rotating the knob to adjust system volume does not provide visual or audible feedback. In other accounts it does. Relatively minor, but still very annoying.
In the case of fast user switching it's a substantial problem. What happens is that the software continues to run even in the background accounts, the net result is that using the PowerMate produces unpredictable results. You can see the volume go up and then jump to some entirely different volume because it's adjust both in your account, and the one in background, fighting for control. Or you might be rotating to move "play head" in iMovie, but at the same time it changes system volume. Etc. Even more fun with 3 or more accounts logged in!
It's not like Fast User Switching (introduced in 10.3) was just released. They should have had this fixed long ago, and the best I could get out of Griffin's difficult to contact tech support was that they were aware of the problem but couldn't say when (perhaps not even if) it will be resolved.
Buyer beware of anything Griffin makes that involves software that they write. I know I won't be buying any more Griffin products no matter how cool they sound.
--- What?
I have a RadioShark, and the reception is very poor no matter where I place it (other radio receivers in the same area work fine). It is so bad that I haven't even tried the time shifting feature yet, since the sound that you end up getting is very painful to listen to anyway.
They say that plugging in headphones to the RadioShark will improve reception, but it seems to have no effect at all.
Is there some other kind of antenna that can be plugged into it to improve the reception?
The RadioShark is a great piece of hardware but fails in the biggest area that makes TiVo great-the guide. What good is recording radio if you don't know what is on and where it's coming from. The heart of our service is our guide, it covers am/fm, internet, and xm/sirius radio, and soon will have full rss/podcasting support. To quote our website, we have "35,000 stations in 140 countries. 100,000 sports games per year."
We have both mac and pc clients, though the mac client is still very early in development. Recordings are made as simple mp3 files, and even get dumped into itunes. The mac client supports the RadioShark, the pc version will very soon.
We're always looking for great feedback to help us improve the service. Sign up is free for unlimited listening.
Overall a fair review. But at least 2 of the "Cons" aren't really things that Griffin can control. The fact that there is no program listing for radio isn't the fault of the product, nor is the fact that when a Mac is asleep, it's asleep and things don't happen. /K
Assuming we ever manage to get FTL travel, could we travel to the place where 1980's (or 50's or whatever) music would be in space (excluding the fact that it will have faded to almost nothingness) and listen to it? Or perhaps watch the kennedy assassination, or some other major event similar to it?
With,
My Radioshark, if you are listening "live", or rather no time shift involved, the Shark has a tendency to garble the sound which is output to your speakers. Almost like it is having a hard time keeping up or something.
It records the material correctly if you listen to it a second time.
Basically means I wind up trying to listen to everything about 3 minutes behind. But when you change stations you are immediately caught back up so you have to drag the little time shift bar back over to about 2 to 3 minutes of delay to get rid of the garbled effects. Just annoying.
Otherwise I like the gadget.
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
radioSHARK records live radio in temp files and recording radio as a *.mov file until the recording is finished. Then it converts it to m4a format (since I have AAC format selected). The software simply could not convert the temp files under a file vault system (an encrypted home directory under OSX). It wouldn't even convert temp files stored outside of the encrypted home directory. I also noticed terrible skipping in the recordings it did manage to make.
Once I removed file vault these problems went away (except once the other night). I'd say one more revision of the software is needed to get this program ready for prime time.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
"time-shifting" has got to be the most inappropriate meme ever.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
From the article:
On occasion when relaunching the application, I wouldnt be able to get anything other than what sounded like a one-second loop of a broadcast. It didnt matter which station I was tuned to, or how many times I relaunched the application, I wouldnt get any radio reception.
After contacting the helpful tech support staff at Griffin, I was sent an updated version of the application and told to plug the radioSHARK directly into my G5 instead of my Cinema Display. Once the newer version was installed and the radioSHARK was plugged into the USB port on the front of my G5, the problem lessened, although it did not go away. After some trial and error, I determined that unplugging and replugging the radioSHARK would solve the problem.
(My bolding.) I've had this problem too. It's unacceptable to have this on a time-shifting device. What is the magic recipe for making it not get into this broken state when you leave the computer on to record something later?
I'm dissatisfied with this product.
I feel it's almost a concept too late for the show. We're probably not that far from a generation which says, "AM? FM? What are these strange things you speak of? Can I get that at the iTunes store?" where all they know of is what they download or listen to over the web.
What I need is something to record From the Web audio to my HD for later playback, and I'm pretty sure such a thing is out there if I look, or maybe just a few tricks.
What would I want to record radio for? Unless I'm so cheep as to want to make MP3's out of music DJ's blab over.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I lived in the Bay Area, I listened to a LOT of radio stations. There were two full-power NPR stations alone, with very different formats.
New York City and Pittsburgh had a pretty good variety of stations as well.
Portland OR, where I now live, is probably better than a lot of places around the contry, but I really only listen to three or four stations, and only one has stuff I'd be interested in recording.
So, I think I'll give this a pass.
Most people can get a radio, tune it, and connect it to the line-in (or microphone) port on their PC or Mac. Most people aren't using their line-in port. Given that, why not just let it run full time?
Then, the only problem is needing software: software that can record from the line-in port at any time of day, encode it and dump it to a file. Or just play it through the speaker in real-time. It doesn't sound too hard, in fact, it sounds like only a few hundred lines of code, given the right libraries.
So, I guess I'm asking, why hasn't it been done yet, or why hasn't it been made popular yet?
Then they will discover the RadioShark's hidden easter egg: frickin' laser beams!
I've been wanted something like this for awhile now...just not for the computer. I have 45-60 minute commute every to to and from work and have nothing better to do than listen to the radio. Problem is, the shows sucks and the times I go to and leave work.
,you don't have to go into work at 6am to get your Bob & Tom or be forced to listen to sports radio during baseball season.
So, my question has always been: why doesn't someone create a Radio version of Tivo which hooks up to your car stereo a la satellite radio?
That way
... use this http://www.winradio.com/index.htm instead of a stupid plastic fin that calls itself a SHARK
Reading and using a screwdriver are not hard.
Figuring out how to open your case, figuring out you need to remove those metal slots from the back, figuring out which slot you can actually plug a card into. Those are things not everyone can do.
I suppose your mother installs PCI cards for lunch. Mine however needed me to help install a new HD.
Do you honestly think that even half of all PC users know, or would want to, open up a PC case? Get real. Why do you think those clowns at Best Buy repair centers are bristling with people doing repairs. People would rather lug a 25+ lb computer all the way to Best Buy than figure out how to install a card or HD they bought.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I use line-in and Audiograbber. In the morning, I set up the days recordings, and let it run. It dumps directly to MP3. I use 32 kps so each hour is just under 7MB. It works well.
However, according to reviews I've read, the documentation for the TV2000 XP blows. Furthermore, I did not get the impression that the TV2000 lets you record radio, just listen. The RadioShark lets you record (which is my main priority).
I'm sure the original poster will happily note that any old PC user can simply ditch Windows, install Wine, and grab some obscure open source radio PVR that requires "only minor code changes to compile". Even his grandmother could do that before lunch!
Yep, no reason to buy a Radio Shark at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who needs radio when you've got Podcasting?
I produce my own podcast once a week (TinyPodcast) on mobile technology and gadgets, and I subscribe to dozens of other podcasts. I get to listen to what I want, when I want, and it's almost invariably more interesting that what's on the radio. What's more, the only station I usually listen to anyway, NPR, is starting to podcast some of its shows, like On The Media and Tech Nation.
I love picking up my iPod (or any other MP3 player) in the morning, and having fresh content that I've selected, not what the radio station wants me to hear.
...is a device that can allow me to listen to a Lakers game broadcast some 2-3 seconds late. I very much prefer the radio announcers to the TV people, even when the game is on local TV (and don't get me started when it's on ESPN or TNT). Problem is the TV broadcast is delayed a couple seconds, plus about 1 more if I'm running it through my Replay. I can hear the announcers telling me the shot is good before it has left the shooter's hands.
Does anyone know of a device that can allow me to tune signal delay time to that level of precision? Even something as simple as a guitar pedal or effects processor?
Nerd Rock In Progress
Say you're listening to All Things Considered and Nina Totenberg is about to make an especially poignant point about the day's oral arguments at the Supreme Court, but nature is urgently calling. Click on the TS button, hit pause, and walk away. Nina is then cut off in midsentence. Once you take care of business, you can then return to your PC, hit play, and Nina takes up right where she left off.
I often listen to NPR as well, not having a radio in my office I just listen to WBUR's real audio stream. With Real you can also pause the live stream and go take care of business. The buffer seems to be pretty large (I haven't hit any ceiling yet).
I live in Boston so WBUR is my local NPR station, which is perfect. But even if your local NPR station isn't online (I think most are) you can just go ahead and listen to one that is.
I know this product can do more, and not just for NPR, but as for that being a selling point, it just doesn't work. And Real seems to be doing a lot better now in terms of not being jerks and actually adding features that are helpful (I know quick time for windows can't pause and resume live streams... and quicktime still annoys you every time you start the application). The Helix Player and the recent Real Player on Linux is great as well. I actually wish them well these days.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Just because something is not physically hard, does not mean it's reasonable to expect everyone to do it.
Changing oil is also easy but a lot of people do not do that, nor would you expect everyone to do it. In the same way you cannot expect everyone to be able or willing to install PCI cards.
I noted you glossed over my point about what percentage of the PC population you really felt could handle a new card, or Best Buy service centers being full. What are they there for?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most tv card apps can record from FM also, the same way you schedule them to record a tv channel.
So far, the recording industry has not taken too kindly to timeshifting radio. When an enterprising XM Radio subscriber wrote an application that allowed owners of the XM PCR to timeshift and record XM Radio programming, XM killed the PC version of their product. Could the radioSHARK draw that sort of attention? In the short term, it's not likely -- there's no program listing, and while recording music is easy, carving out and sharing individual tracks would be labor intensive. Those shortcomings will likely enable the radioSHARK to fly under the radar of the recording industry.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Judges are very, very wary about overturning Supreme Court precedent. While Sony v. Universal was a 5-4 decision, and so more easily challenged, lower courts are generally loathe to cross their superiors, and I would imagine that most cases where a Supreme Court decision is overturned is done after all lower courts ruled along the original SCOTUS guidelines.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Except in this case, the yellow jackets have the hose. If they weren't soaking us, we'd stop kicking their nest.
Is that really the attitude you have? That people who don't want to spent a whole bunch of time getting something to work, when they can simply pay a few extra dollars to save some time?
I hate to break it to you, but for some of us, our time is more valuable than money.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Because of the last, you must leave somebody logged in and running the software in order for your scheduled recordings to record. If you want to play your files on a non-WMA-enabled device, you have to record as WAV and then write your own automation to convert to MP3. Then you still have to manually import the files into iTunes.
I don't think there's much hope of trying to run the existing software as a service, since it launches the GUI and turns on the audio when you launch it! D'oh!
The packaging is really misleading, suggesting that there is more direct iTunes support.
But it does work if the software is running. But honestly, how much more work would it have taken to make it a true Windows service? Lame.
Unlike you, I actually place value on my own time - time spent installing a stupid PCI card could be better spent talking to a friend or reading.
Furthermore I am smarter than to expect every person on the planet to place value in being able to field-strip a PC in fourteen seconds. Just as everyone is not good at math, science, or writing, not everyone can be handy with PC's.
I myself am quite handy, I'm sure far more capable than you at PC tinkering. But I gave that up long ago when I realize my time was better spent elsewhere in the application of my brain, not mindless manual labor.
I find your value of money above all else to be mind-boggling - you should instead of pondering how much you can save here or there in dollars instead think of what you can do with the life you have that provides value to yourself or others. But then your weird selfish ideas that everyone must be as exactly skilled as yourself undoubtedly leaves little room for compassion or open-mindedness.
You can choose mindless manual labor if you like, as most of the lower class do nowadays - You must feel comfortable with the cars up in blocks on your front lawn. After all, you can fix them so why use a shop for repairs? Why buy a new car at all when you can get most of the parts from Cleetus down at the junkyard and whip yourself up your own General Lee. Yee-Haw!
The difference between myself and you is that I am not only smart enough to do my own PC or car work, but I am smart enough to know when not to - and cases when others may be better off without the manual route as well.
Damn luddite.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your other card costs half as much, takes more time to install, and lacks Radio PVR features - which are kind of the point of the Radio Shark. The thing is - who wants to record over the air TV on teh computer? That is not a PVR, sorry. For most people PVR means Cable.
I'd say if you set out to get a radio PVR and instead managed to get a harder to use crippled Video PVR, that you have an issue.
I'll say it again, you cannot expect even a majority of PC users to actually open a case where they could possibly shock something or accidentally disconnect something, and expect them to install a card. It's not going to happen regardless of them being able to read and wield a screwdriver. Some people are just very afriad of computers, and I know a lot of eople who can read and work tools quite well that should NOT be inside a PC case.
What you are saying is that you expect everyone on earth to be able to do everything you do just as well. It's unreasonable and I think really not very nice to call people that are unwilling to do this an idiot just because it seems natural to you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Bu tthe rest still sands. You cannot realistically expect everyone to do everything manually.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just picked one up at my apple store. It was "refreshed", which means that someone bought and returned it. I know why they did now.
The reception is pretty crappy for me. I'm trying to tune a FM station that is broadcast locally from about 3 blocks away from my house and I mostly get static. I've got the Shark sitting in my upstairs window and am using a Sagean ANT-60, which is plugged into the mic port and unwound about 15 feet creating a "web" in the window (I've also tried various other positions and poses, with and without the Sagean antenna). There are several stations that I pickup with any other radio tuner that I own (even the on tiny FM tuner for my rio mp3 player). I'm also using the latest version of the software for the Mac Version; 1.0.3 (RS59).
I'm going to try the trick mentioned by some of purchasing a USB extension and wrapping it around the unit and see if that helps. If not, I'm returning it myself.
I'm disappointed, and I think that this will turn me off of other Griffin products. I had be considering the PowerWave for some time, but there are other USB audio input devices on the market. The only other "saving grace" would be if the tuning software worked for Internet Radio stations (including Windows media), but it sounds like those plans have been scrapped.
Check the return policy on this item if you buy it.
PS I do think that it is cruel that the only station that the unit will "seek" to is a FM Country station broadcast from several counties away.
I have a RadioShark and it works well. However, I was disappointed when it arrived that I could never get their application to record audio. It somewhat worked on XP, but had stuttering problems. In order to record shows, I ended up getting Audio Hijack and used it to treat the RadioShark as an audio input device. However, once I upgraded from a G3 to a G4, the recording feature worked as advertised. I couldn't find any documentation mentioning this requirement either. I guess they figure anyone would want to buy this already has a G4 or G5.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
From personal experience, I can say this product is SWEET! However! It it very susceptible to static shocks. (Standing up from my chair to move the antenna generated enough static charge to cause the RadioShark to stop receiving. A few times of this actually caused the RadioShark to stop working all together and it had to be sent back.)
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!
It could be that this thing is right on time. It's even possible that it's a little early.
I think that the current state of radio cannot stand and remain profitable forever. It's crap from one end of the dial to the other and that seems to be the general consensus with everyone I speak to. People like the Clear Channel folks have pretty much destroyed everything that made radio stations worth listening to and turned them into boring generic copies of one another. This is in the process of leading to what I think will be a satellite radio explosion in the near future because XM simply kicks the crap out of listening to FM radio.
Eventually they're going to reach critical mass and recievers aren't going to just be options in cars. They're going to be standard equipment and all the owner will need to do is activate the service. Most won't I'm sure but enough will to start to erode the ad revenues. When satellite radio gets big enough then broadcast radio will have to change. I think eventually we'll see a brief period where FM starts to get interesting again.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The refutation is clear. Not every can do that even though it is physically possible. You ignore mental barriers, and thus reality itself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Many, many people then would seem to be installing cards - but they are not. What are all those computers doing at Best Buy? You ignore the point that just because something is physically possible, does not mean people are CAPBLE of doing it. There is a mental component some people cannot get beyond.
If it's so easy, then why is it such a limited skill? Reality says you are missing something, only in your mind is it obviosuly as easy as you think.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Or the MB decides your IRQ's are not happy, or you find you actually don't have a spare slot, or you forget to ground and POOF goes the grpahics card.
I cannot count the number of times I have seen system failures after people installed cards. It might be five minutes, maybe if you didn't have to install any drivers and they worked just perfectly. But you know what? Welcome to Windows where all you are sure of is uncertanty!
Not to mention taht PCI card is now locked in your aging computer with no portability. Oh, and what about an antenaa? I guess you have to hook one up as well or the FM reception is going to be hell.
There are a million things you fail to consider, and millions more that will simply not PC cards as much as you fantasize about them being for the masses.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I always called them Radio Shaft. I never called them Radio Shark before.
Cool.
It's not your house - it's all the stuff IN your house. Worst offenders are generic PCs; specifically their case design (RFI/EMI-wise) is absolutely clueless (e.g., see http://www.ac6v.com/comprfi.htm/ for theory and fixes). Second place is firmly held by very, very crappy power supplies that let all the noise OUT of the PC on the power buss (ie. into your wiring). Sam's very useful Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Small Switchmode Power Supplies) will get you started with theory and what [often] goes wrong (disclosure: I'm his sidekick). But:
Pet Peeve: as soon as Name-Your-$14-PC-PS-Manufacturer gets their UL sticker (meaning they can start selling in the US!) the ENTIRE L-C filter from the input of the power supply PCB is shorted out with a series of jumpers. Right, the 120VAC wires go through the save-thy-ass fuse right into the rectifier! No caps, no chokes, nuthin'! (Ok, so what do you expect from a $15 460W PS?) This allows all the noise on the power lines to enter the PC (and fry it - use a surge protector!) *AND* it allows all the noise IN the PC to escape back out and corrupt others (ie. your receiver, TV, etc.) (See: http://cms-emc.web.cern.ch/cms-emc/pdffiles/PhDfil es/PS&filters.pdf section 3.2 Switching mode power supplies for a nice overview). Oh, yeah, and I'm *SURE* all of you have your grounded cable actually grounded, right?
I got a 250W ATX knock-off case for $29 that came with a PS included. Turned the PC on, *ALL* AM stations vanished! Right... I opened it up and shure enough, a jumper from fuse to rectifier. All caps to ground were missing as well (from various points in the circuit). A few moments with a soldering iron (jelly-bean components, salvaged from dead *quality* PSes) and you can't tell the PC is on by listening to AM dial. Day and night difference!
Don't feel bad if you never though of it, this guy obviously never did either... and he should have. http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/psus/index.x? pg=1
But, how do you later chop up the files? I'm glad you asked: I use a hacked version of text-only (yeah!) soundgrab. You can get my latest version from http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/filipg/soundgrab/
My signal comes from a battery-powered (ie. avoids issues with 'corrupted power' ;) digital sony walkman, via a 20-odd foot coax cable to my PC. The further away your receiver is from the source of noice, the better off you are![*] Linux records it from a SoundBlaster Live! with rawrec to a wav file. I have a series of templates (.sg files) for different shows and just fudge them a bit then export to MP3. Piece of cake! I've done a bunch of Dave's shows that way (~700MB worth) for inclusion in a weakness of mine (don't worry, they get some equally-illegit music ;).
Cheers
[*] "The solution to pollution is dilution" - Evil chemistry maxim applied to the wonderul and friendly world of RFI ;-)