Showing posts with label reciva. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reciva. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

CC CWF WiFi Internet Radio Review

CC CWF WiFi Internet Radio
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I bought this radio despite reviews complaining of its reliability. It worked right out of the box and offers, for the price, far more presettable stations than its nearest competitor, a remote and an ethernet connection in addition to its wireless feature. It is also one of the smallest of the table top sets and will sit neatly in a little corner without drawing attention to itself - an appealing feature to those listeners for whom appearance places a far second to content. I found its setup well thought out and mostly intuitive. The front panel offers only three pre-sets so do not lose the remote which replicates all radio controls and has a 100 pre-set capacity. The loudspeaker offers better than average fidelity of table top models.
This radio operates using the reciva internet radio website, which the Grace radio also uses. Registering the radio with that site allows the listener to select using reciva those stations of particular and recurrent interest and save their locations in the actual radio. These stations can then be accessed from a menu labelled MY STATIONS on the radio - a very nice convenience. Of course wifi radio is only as good as your wireless connection and the streaming rate of the actual service providing the signal. In addition, if your wireless network is in use by several computers or other devices while you are using this radio you may experience bits of silence at times - especially noted with broadcasts from foreign stations that are otherwise flawless. Most, but not all, American radio stations use servers providing reliable output to the internet, as do the government supported stations of Europe, Russia, China and Japan. However, if your cup of tea is Upper Volta or the Falkland Islands for example, well, the sometimes large gaps in the sound are not the fault of this radio. Having more than a casual interest in world news and having listened to shortwave broadcasts for many years, I have found that wifi radio offers far, far more foreign stations than shortwave these days without requiring a subscription fee (except, of course, the cost of your internet connection) and seems to be largely replacing shortwave broadcasts to the very well developed world. I found this radio an affordable and, so far, easy to use, trouble-free way of listening to what inhabitants of other parts of earth have to say about themselves and us, without a fade any time of day.

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The CC WiFi gives you an American style of Internet Radio. The CC WiFi combines straightforward style with all the convenience of tuning in over 11,000 radio stations from around the world. The CC WiFi radio has excellent audio in a small footprint that fits nicely on a desktop, kitchen counter or bedside table. There's a headphone socket for private listening and a line-out for use with your component speakers. Features 99 memory presets, remote control, an alarm clock, and an Ethernet port for a hard-wire network connection.

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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Grace Digital GDI-IR2500 Wi-Fi Internet radio Featuring Pandora, NPR On-Demand, Sirius and iheartradio Review

Grace Digital GDI-IR2500 Wi-Fi Internet radio Featuring Pandora, NPR On-Demand, Sirius and iheartradio
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I have owned the Grace GDI-IR2500 now for a couple of months, and I will try to be as brief as I can with my thoughts and comments.
Build quality: Fair - not terrible, but not great. The black vinyl or plastic wrap used over the wood housing is attractive but not assembled very well, with very noticable imperfections/large wrinkles on both the top front right corner and the top back right corner. The controls are of comperable quality to those of a $10 clock radio, and will probably start wearing out after a couple of years of heavy use. The 4-line LCD display is relatively easy to read.
Setup: If you have ever setup any other wireless devices such as a laptop, smartphone or other wi-fi enabled device, it is not much different and pretty straight forward. The only area that can be somewhat cumbersome is the same issue I have in other areas of operation: the poorly functioning and designed remote control. The remote basically offers up and down keys for entering a security key, scrolling through each number and letter of the alphabet, locating the character you need, then selecting, then scrolling... you get the picture. A remote offering a numeric/ABC type of entry would be preferred, and for $130 to $150, should be included.
Station selection: Good - but not nearly as good as some of the applications offered on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smartphones such as WunderRadio and RadioTime. Searching for stations is also poorly thoughtout. Other than Clear Channel Communication's "iHeartRadio" offering, you can't even search stations by state, let alone city - and searching by call letters is again an entry where you have to scroll through every letter of the alphabet and enter each character, which is a pain.
Connectivity: No complaints, it starts up relatively quick once you have your wireless settings configured. Regarding connecting to a station url, it depends on the stream format... most .AAC streams begin playing quickly, .mp3 streams fairly quick, .WMA streams a few seconds longer, but none are frustratingly slow. It also played all streams consistantly for hours at a time without interruption.
Sound quality: Fair at best. I guess for $150 I expected this radio to sound at least as good as some of the $50 Sony or Panasonic tabletop radios from the past. There is no reason it couldn't on most mid-to-higher kbps streams - but Grace chose to cut costs on one of the most important aspects of any radio - the speaker - and the speaker quality is about on par with that of a $20 GE table radio. That would be OK if the radio cost $50, but for what these relatively cheap to build radios cost the consumer, I expect the materials and components used to be of higher quality.
Remote Control: Poor quality, poor layout, and many times you have to hit keys two or three times to get a response. I thought the included battery might have been old, but the Duracell replacement battery I bought did not improve the remote's performance.
The bottom line: If you want an internet radio that somewhat gives you the look and feel of your old tabletop radio, and you use the presets a good part of the time, it's an OK radio. I don't hate it, and have actually had some fun with it, but in reality it is worth about $79 tops. I would however look at the Logitech Squeezebox before this or any other internet radio. I played with one at Best Buy a couple weeks back and the build and sound quality is light-years better, and it also offers an optional battery pack.
If the old-time feel of a tabletop radio isn't important and you are wanting to just tune in stations from around the world and have decent sound quality, and if you own an iPhone, Blackberry or Android smartphone with 3G and/or a wi-fi connection, I recommend one of the many decent wireless bluetooth speaker systems (I own the Altec Lansing inMotion SoundBlade Bluetooth A2DP Speaker/Speakerphone, which sounds better than this Grace unit, operates on either the supplied AC power adapter or batteries, and cost me around $50) and install some free to very cheap apps on your smartphone such as Pandora, Slacker, Sirius/XM, iHeartRadio, Yahoo Music, WunderRadio and RadioTime. The beauty of smartphone apps is you can also use them with many new car audio systems via bluetooth, at the office, at the beach, and pretty much anywhere you have either 3G data or a wi-fi connection.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Grace Digital GDI-IR2500 Wi-Fi Internet radio Featuring Pandora, NPR On-Demand, Sirius and iheartradio

The Grace Digital Innovator III (GDI-IR2500) Wi-Fi radio is the newest in the line of Grace's tabletop radios. The Innovator III is a combination Internet radio and audio media streaming device that brings all the audio content of the Internet and Pandora within listening distance, wherever you are. With it users can listen to 16,000+ radio stations from NPR, FOX news, CNN, BBC, CBS to KROQ, over 35,000 podcast, 20,000+ On-Demand subscription streams or your personal Pandora radio stations. Additional features include a stereo headset jack for personal listening enjoyment, the ability to stream files from local computer networks, compatibility with the free Grace remote control App for iPhone/iTouch, and 5 separate alarms with sleep mode and a high contrast 4 line adjustable backlight display.

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Monday, July 4, 2011

Sangean RCR-8WF Internet Clock Radio Review

Sangean RCR-8WF Internet Clock Radio
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I purchased the RCR-8WF as a replacement for an old Panasonic clock radio mainly for the Internet radio capability and for use at night. It is not a bad radio but seems more like a work-in-progress than a well thought out product.
My issues with it are:
1) The sleep timer takes three button presses to work. Turn the radio on, press the sleep timer button, then press select. Try doing this in the dark when you are half asleep! It should take one - press the sleep button. This is the way their other radios work.
2) The display brightens to full when any button is pressed. The manual says that you can dim it in this mode but is does not keep the setting. You can dim it but then comes back full brightness the next time you hit a button.
3) The internet radio takes about 15-30 seconds to change stations or to come on the first time. I understand the technology involved, and could deal with this if it were not for the other issues.
I contacted Sangean a week go about these issues and still have not heard back. I will be returning it and waiting for a more mature product.

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People just love the idea of waking up to their favorite internet radio stations. The Sangean RCR-8WF lets you set an alarm to wake up to Internet radio, and also has an FM/RDS tuner built in allowing you to be able to access any local FM stations with or without RDS provision. In addition it incorporates all of the advanced features found in other Sangean clock radios. Set your favorite 10 stations using the preset buttons or the "favorites" category on your radio. Any needed firmware upgrades are available through the Internet. Play your CD player or iPod through the Aux-In socket and connect your recorder or additional equipment to the Line Out sockets--and if you need some extra sleep time the sleep control and snooze timers provide that extra control. Plays all the popular digital music codecs such as MP3, AAC, WMA, Real Audio and others.

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Click here for more information about Sangean RCR-8WF Internet Clock Radio