Time-shifting terrestrial radio has been around for a while. with standalone products from PoGo Electronics, purveyors of fine windup remote controls, the unfortunately capitalized radio SHARK Mac and PC accessory from Griffin, and the new MP3 player filling station from PopCatcher, taking another stab after the TraxCatcher never came to market.
But now a new wave of Internet radio time-shifters are coming to market. There’s the imminent Slacker Portable and the definitely not portable iShift Internet Media Receiver (check out the introductory video with the pornotronica soundtrack), which packs an 80 GB hard drive. Who needs to record 1,300 hours of Internet radio? in any case, this living room-sized component will be able to sideload its storehouse to the iPod and other MP3 players and uses an Internet recording service from Timeless Radio which looks competitive with the iRoamer service launched a few years back by Aussie firm Torian Wireless.
The MP3 filling station concept, whether it uses FM, Internet radio or some other source, stands to simplify the process of loading up a portable music player.
FlyTunes was announced at CES and appears to deliver what Slacker promises, except you don’t need to buy their player and you don’t need to pay a monthly fee. http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/08/video-flytunes-brings-internet-radio-to-iphone/
Uhh, regarding this product and the newly reviewed Pop Catcher, aren’t the labels and the RIAA going to have kittens over these? They went nuts over the Pioneer Inno as it is. At least that music is paid for.
These HW products are OK, but Snaptune.com does more with a PC than any of these products can begin to imagine. Snaptune is so simple. Tell it what artists you’re interested in, or what stations you like to listen to, and it will find the individual songs, tag them and give you a wealth of other info. It works with Web AND FM radio and has its own metadata lookup service even if the web stream doesn’t broadcast the metadata. Plus, the songs are almost perfectly trimmed as opposed to these products.