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When Internet Radios Get Affordable
DeviceGuru writes "Grace Digital Audio has just released a new device that functions like an Internet radio tuner in a whole-house audio system and is being sold at a surprisingly affordable price point. The Solo Wi-Fi Receiver works in tandem with Reciva's Internet radio station selection web service, provides excellent Pandora support, and also supports optional Internet services such as Live365, MP3tunes, Aupeo, and Sirius. It has built-in buttons and a display for easy control, comes with a dedicated IR-remote, and is supported by a free iPhone remote access/control app. We hear a lot about the high-end Sonos gear, but at just over $100, this little gadget seems like a breakthrough in cost-effective Internet radio, much as the Roku Netflix player broke ground in low-cost Internet video streaming."
An Ipod Touch can receive Internet radio through various apps, and it can fulfill many other functions as well. Why bother buying these one-purpose devices that usually cost almost as much, if not more than an 8GB Ipod Touch? There are probably smartphones (including the iPhone) that can do it, as well.
Is multicast tied too tighly to IPv6, already obsolete
You seem like a troll (because you say IPv6 is obsolete).
No, he was saying "Is multicast tied to tightly to IPv6, is multicast already obsolete, etc"
How is a pricepoint different than a price.
It's harder to sound like a douchebag if you only say price.
Yes, if you don't count any country besides the US, UK and Germany.
Dilbert RSS feed
Because Grandpa has no idea what VLC is.
Except for the ability to use YouTube on it.
Dude, it ships with a YouTube app!
Or play J2ME games on it.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Wouldn't you rather play some of the literally 50k commercially produced games that are in fact written for the Touch??
I seriously cannot believe you are saying you'd rather buy a device that supports J2ME over a Touch for GAMES!!!
I'm just saying that my mobile phone does all of the above
Right, it "does" that in the same way a rock and a stream "does" laundry.
I use a Internet flat-rate with it that costs me 20 a month.
The Touch is even cheaper since it uses your home WiFi.
Since we are talking about a home solution for internet radio...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not really seeing the market for this.
That's because you are a tech weenie. For you, going to websites and downloading software patches comes as naturally as hair dye comes to a platinum blonde. But the truth is, downloading patches and setting up handler applications and all the other stuff that you have to do is... HARD for most people!
As a software engineer, I find over and over again that "possible" isn't the same as "easy" or "automatic" or even "useful".
Some years ago, I wrote a tool to keep paperwork in electronic format, at a tremendous savings to our client organizations. My first attempt was usable, but required significant training, and we got a few nibbles. My next revision was better, and we got some strong interest from previously cool clients. My most current revision is drop-dead simple to use, needing little more than a button click, and customers are practically lining up.
It can be very hard to do, but easy is, for most people, the difference between doable and not worth the bother. I've many times wanted to listen to KGO radio in San Francisco. I can sorta get it with an AM radio, but it's static-y and unpleasant. I can stream it online, but to do this, I have to get a big, relatively expensive computer, plug it into the Internet, turn it on, load the browser, go to the website, and click to start, then plug the speaker jack into my stereo.
So I end up with a pile of wires, and a laptop that likes to fall asleep every few hours of listening while burning about 60 watts. Ouch!
If only I could just hit the power switch, and then turn a knob to the "KGO" station... ? I'd be pretty likely to buy something like this.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Analog will be soon banned/phased out. Because it represents the old mentality where you can listen to unmetered programming, and are free to make a recording with a tape deck. Where intellectual property is regarded as a temporary reward, an incentive to enhance creativity, and remove secrecy, but ultimately everything is meant to enter the public domain, as soon as further prolonging of property terms does not sufficiently enhance initial creativity, or release of private knowledge, private secrets into public domain. Recording radio programming with a tapedeck? Are you out of your mind? These days such violations of intellectual property laws, even the mere thought of copying any information, let alone it "eventually" entering public domain, have to be eradicated from the minds of people. These days we have to convert to a system where every time you start up the radio you click an accept button, that you agree that all content coming through it is owned by da man, for da man, and only for da man, and only by his grace and infinite kindness are you allowed to listen to any of this wonder and amazement for such a low low introductory monthly rate. Otherwise you're considered a heretic/pirate/thief, who probably just expects to get everything for free in life, and not have to pay for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Well, they say the best thing in life are free: sunshine, air, love, mothertongue, and it used to be the radio, you "payed for it" by being subjected to advertising, but now you'll get advertising + you have to pay for it in cold cash too. We can start with the radio first, while x-ing off all those things from the list of best things in life are free. Well, at least you have the option not to listen to the radio, like I do, or not to buy the radio programming decryption monthly card, the kind they sell for satellite tv programming. And life is still good. I can personally attest to that - I have not watched tv, nor have I turned on my car radio for 2 years now. Ok, here and there, but I don't miss it at all. When you have to start paying for the sunshine and air you consume, because it's owned by da man, it's gonna be very difficult to live happily without those things. Oh, by the way, since last February 2009, over a year now, I've been vegetarian, and doing just fine. Well, I did eat meat here and there, like pepperoni pizza, or company burger cookout, but I can go on fine without it, I don't miss it at all.
***When it gets affordable, I'll still be happy with analog***
1. If analog has the programming you want, it is almost certainly a superior way to get it. No synchronization delay. No glitches. I listen to a bunch of NPR programs most Saturday mornings. I can get them either via the Internet or Over The Air. I tried the Internet for a while. I found OTR to be much more reliable.
2. The failure/refusal of internet content providers to settle on a single open format for Internet Radio (or anything else) and to stick with a single http:/// get request format for their "transmission" is not only annoying, it makes acquiring programming a major annoyance. If your analog radio channels moved around and used occasionally varying encryption, you'd probably turn the analog radio off and leave it off.
3. I've played around with a lot of digital audio stuff at various times. The only thing that I occasionally actually use is streaming albums around the house from an Edna server ( http://edna.sourceforge.net/ ). Edna (a python script) runs fine as a background task on a VIA C3 system that doesn't even have enough computing power to run Google Earth. I expect it'd run on any 486 or higher CPU.
4. Podcasts would seem to be an attractive alternative to Internet Radio. Except the #$@(& content providers go out of their way to make acquiring podcasts difficult/impossible except through manual selection. And of course, they have managed to screw up RSS feed format beyond all possibility of reliable decoding.
In short -- Internet Radio and its cousins are so unreliable and unintentionally difficult to use, that it's hard to envision them replacing over the air for most people most of the time.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
A price point is an economic term. It refers to a theoretical optimum on a price curve. The word for the actual price of something is (drum roll please) "price."
Yeah, I know, this sort of semantic nitpicking is obnoxious. But I can't help myself, because people keep giving me money when I do it. Hence the name of my website.