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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."
You can always make your own
It works great, only $75
I'm not really seeing the market for this. So I want a device that plays internet radio, but don't want to just get an iPod dock, use a laptop/netbook and uses Wi-Fi so it isn't like your getting always available portable internet. If you have a home theater system, why wouldn't you just have a HTPC and just use VLC and connect to the internet radio that way, if you don't have a home theater system, why not just use an iPod or laptop?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
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
I've got to admit that I get a lot of use out of iHeart Radio.
I still won't pay for radio, though. I buy a lot of music that I hear on radio, so I figure it's a good enough promotional mechanism for music that it should be free. As far as "talk" radio, no thanks. I don't need any more voices in my head telling me what to think. I'm happy with the occasional podcast (some of which I'll subscribe to, such as Red Ice Radio from Sweden or Mysterious Universe from Australia).
The player or "internet radio" is a different matter though. I don't see why it should ever cost more than a regular radio plus a $10 wireless adapter. And I'll either plug it into my existing speakers or a pair of headphones. I guess I'm old fashioned but listening to radio via 3G feels wrong, like why should I take up bandwidth to hear music that I can get otherwise. I know it doesn't make sense because iPhone and iPad users don't seem to worry about it, but that's the kind of hairpin I am.
And, depending upon where I'm at, the "regular" radio is plenty good for me. Like if I'm near Monterrey, CA, there's a great station that plays Hawaiian music 24/7 and in New York there's a half-dozen stations that play great rock, jazz or classical music with minimal commercials. Things have been a little rougher here in Chicago ever since the public station WBEZ stopped playing jazz all night. Still, there's enough good stuff on there that I keep my car radio glued there just like the middle eastern cabdrivers. When I walk the dog, I take the mp3 player, which has an FM radio. Except for sports, AM radio is a total waste of the spectrum. Everybody is hollering about how Obama is black and doesn't have a birth certificate or how the mexicans are taking over, interspersed with commercials for erectile dysfunction (which leads me to believe that conservativism and E.D. go together somehow, though it seems they don't have any trouble getting it up for their 18 year-old rentboys).
One more thing that I like radio for is sports. For some reason, probably dating back to my childhood, I'd rather listen to a White Sox game on the radio than watch it on TV. With a good announcer (like Bob Elston when I was a kid and Ed Farmer now), my brain does a better job of creating the visuals than television cameras ever could. Oh, I also like the Bears and Blackhawks on WGN. The announcers are all homers, just like it should be. I don't listen to the Cubs, ever, because they suck dick and anyone who likes them sucks dick (you can look it up).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hell yeah. Back in the day we used to crowd around the muted TV, watching the game while we listened to it on the radio.
It's worth a bit more but worth it. The cumulative benefit of the system is great, considering you can add nodes easily once its in place and sync or not sync. Especially awesome when combined with MusicIP.
TFA looks like a troll. There are actually a lot of devices out there which meet the criteria.
If you're conscious about price and have lax wireless security get find a linksys wmls11b on line. For $30-40 it can't be beat!
This sig is alpha and shouldn't be viewed on production machines
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
Most people have a few spare xbox's kicking around.
May I suggest a walk outside. The fresh air is lovely.
The innards of the xbox can easily fit into a cheap home theater PC case. It also happily produces sound without a monitor.
Having a home theater PC case on my nightstand would be even better. I stand corrected.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
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
By posting this, I'm undoing some much-needed moderation I already did on this thread, but nobody's said anything about it so I gotta do it.
Squeezebox RADIO. No, not a Squeezebox, a Squeezebox RADIO.
http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/products/squeezebox-radio.html
Knobs. Buttons. A little display. Wired and wireless Ethernet. A powerful loudspeaker.
Quote: 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.
And I did exactly that a couple months ago. Drove over to my local big box electronics retailer and drove home with a Logitech Squeezebox Radio (it was definitely hard to find in the store, though, since it straddles the world of boomboxes/radios and internet gear).
At $150 it's not really that cheap, but it does exactly what many people here are clamoring for: gives them SIMPLE one-button access to internet radio, without having to fire up a full-blown PC app. I bought it for my elderly father, and have a preset button (a hardware button) set to KCBS (San Francisco), WINS (New York), an internet station that plays Celtic tunes, and so forth. Two button presses (power + preset) and he's got the sound filling the room, and the PC can stay off.
And soon the battery module will be available for sale and he'll be able to carry the radio around, even.
This is a solved problem, folks. Go buy one for your elderly relative.
One simple rule for its versus it's
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.