RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter: Plethora of Internet radio devices is on the way

Plethora of Internet radio devices is on the way
·Nov 27, 12:27 PM
Posted by: Kurt Hanson

One of the unfulfilled promises of the early days of the Internet radio industry was the Kerbango — a gorgeous, art deco-influenced tabletop Internet radio that was supposed to come out in approximately 2001…

Unfortunately, the project fell victim to the Internet bubble. (Kerbango was acquired by 3com (at the time, owner of Palm), which supposed put the device into production in Asia, but then 3com shut down the division before the first shipments arrived.

But now a variety of companies qre coming out with a whole bunch of devices — tabletop radios, clock radios, stereo components, and more…

==============
More “below the jump,” as they say. But meanwhile — hey, do you like this redesign for RAIN? Please drop me a line! Write to feedback@kurthanson.com. Thanks!

Philips SLA5520 Wireless Music Streamer

Here’s some information (if you follow the link) about the Philips SLA5520 Wireless Music Streamer from a cool British website, BroadbandStuff.co.uk.

Torian Wireless Fusion

If you’re around my age, when you were 11 or 12 you might have had your own 10-transistor radio. Here’s the 2007 version of that — a dedicated little battery-powered Internet radio, smaller than a deck of cards:

This Torian Wireless Fusion misrepresents itself (or at least the website selling it misrepresents it) in that it doesn’t pick up “every Internet radio station in the world,” since it doesn’t support stations that stream exclusively in the .wma (Windows Media Audio) codec (e.g., AccuRadio until earlier this year) or via Flash (e.g., Pandora).

IntelliTouch ITC-IR1000B Wireless Internet Radio

From the same firm, IntelliTouch, that makes a 1940’s-style Victrola (i.e., turntable (i.e., for LPs)) with built-in CD recording capability comes this very nice-looking clock/table radio with a WiFi connection, using the Reciva tuning system to find Internet radio stations:

*Buy it here.

Noxon (from Terratech)

Will write more about this one later today or tonight.

Acoustic Energy AE17-168 clock radio

Here’s what the manufacturer billed as the FIRST standalone Internet radio “that can pick up 99% of all Internet radio stations.” Buy it for $299 (as I write this) from J&R Music World (in New York City) here.

Squeezebox

The elegant Squeezebox, from Slim Devices, has been around for a couple of years now. It’s not gaining the kind of traction you see with, say, the ———- (that brick-shaped thing for your TV that has a similar name; it’ll come to me in a minute), but still…

Roku SoundBridge Radio

This is, in my opinion, the modern version of the Kerbango I mentioned at the start of the article.

The website/blog Engadget covered its annoucement here and reviewed it here.

I’m very surprised to see that it’s been out for almost a year and a half already! Apparently in a world when you can buy a good AM/FM/CD tabletop/clock radio for $40, a price point of $399 — or even $299 now — for adding Internet radio is too high for most consumers.

(And actually, for not much more than that price, you could just go to Best Buy and buy a brand-new PC to put on your dresser, getting Internet radio and a whole lot more.)

More to follow.

share: del.icio.us.

Digg

Yahoo

Wink

Windows

Google

Newsvine

Comment

Hope you will keep tracking new internet radio devices as they come out, including those that are currently or soon will be on cell phones and other portable units.

— Rick Crandall · Nov 26, 06:08 PM · #
hi, great site. on the wifi radio story – most do not work with a proxy! so they are excluding college students from the consumer list. only torian’s infusion model works with a proxy, but the device barely works. so it’ll likely be a few years before anything is good.

— bree · Nov 26, 06:54 PM · #
While you bemoan the product that didn’t happen, don’t forget that Sonicbox DID go to market in 2000. We were the first device for tuning Internet radio without using your computer. We were way ahead of the wave. Only now is the market catching up to the Mark Bolas vision.
Oh, we had a groovy retro look too.
Best,
Bone
Mary McCann, The Bone Mama

— Mary McCann · Nov 27, 11:53 AM · #
kurt, love teh site. could you please detail if a device is able to work with a proxy? i know torian does – but biy i gotta tell you customer service is NIL for that device. and i have the AE acoustic energy – and it doesn’t work with a proxy. and all devices should have an ethernet plug in too (just in case).

— bree freeman · Nov 30, 07:46 AM · #
Totally love this site..the devices are off-the-chain
I would like information regarding devices which could run inter-changeably on both wi-fi and gprs seamlessly with little or no down-time

Thanks.

— samson · Jul 8, 12:08 PM · #
hi all
i need to know more about your products

— OSMAN · Jul 15, 10:50 AM · #
I need to know if there currently are any internet radio devices created to run on both CDMA/GPRS and wi-fi

Thanks.

— Samson Olayemi · Aug 27, 04:10 AM · #
http://www.dj-egypt.com/ib/index.php?

is the best music a in radio mixo xx 20 18

— mao · Jan 12, 10:28 PM · #