The Fin is In
Tivo for radio? Yep, the radioSHARK is here. "But carobert, radio sucks!" I hear you say. Right you are, but this thing changes the game, and finally gives us the power back! Well, not all the power. It can't fix the crappy music they play, but at least we can skip the worst of the crap. No longer are we confined to listen to annoying DJs playing Nirvana on heavy rotation, screaming advertisements, or the new Ashley Simpson single. My friends, radio has returned!
We now have the ability to pick and choose our radio, no longer having to bow down to the man.
There's no on-going subscription charges draining your wallet with radioSHARK. You program in the stations and what times you want to record, so you don't subscribe to any services. That got the cheapskate in me excited.
Set up was really easy. Plug it into your USB port, install the software, and you're in radio city. I was disappointed that there are "crackles" in the sound if you just play live radio. As a sound purist, this really annoys me, but I found that if you turn on the "Time Shift" and play a minute or so behind the live broadcast, this goes away.
You probably know the concept Time Shift from Tivo. It lets you pause the live broadcast and come back to it later. If you listen from behind the live broadcast a few minutes, you can also skip commercials.
RadioShark also has really intuative timed recording capability, which lets us NPR fanatics listen to our favorite shows whenever we want.
OK, now for the bad stuff.
You can only record/listen to one radio station at a time. There are many times I would like to be listening to one thing while I'm recording another. Not possible with this model.
The software that comes with radioSHARK has some neat features, but is lacking more advanced stuff. It also has a bad habit of crashing at the worst moment possible, losing the hour of time-shift recording I had been saving up. I've got my fingers crossed that these software limitations get fixed in an updated version.
One final gripe is the light on the "fin". While I think for most situations it is a nice effect (very trendy), but the fact that you can't turn the light off really sucks. I don't always want a trendy red/blue light on.
Don't let these gripes get you down, radioSHARK is an awesome concept, and it has enabled me to listen to radio again. A portable model would be nice, but this would undoubtedly make the price skyrocket into iPod status. So for pricing reasons, its great they didn't add a hard drive, and buyers can purchase with confidence that new models aren't going to make this one obsolete. And anyway, at around $50, how can you lose?
| February 15, 2006 by carobert | 0 comments |
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