WiFi to Replace Ancient Radio Waves Technology
Although these things have been around for quite some time now, I’ve only recently decided to give some more though and attention to the WiFi Radio concept, and I was pretty impressed to find out that’s it’s actually a lot more popular and widespread than I previously thought. I have never been a classic radio fan, since most radio hosts annoy me to the point that I just want to smash the radio with a baseball bat. But over the years I have tested some Internet radio stations and I can’t say I was disappointed. After Yahoo launched their new Messenger 9, I also had a brief “stint” at listening to some Yahoo music stations.
You have to understand that, at least for now, Internet radio has had some advantages over classic radio stations. These include a lot less advertising, much better “reception” quality (provided that you use broadband – who doesn’t these days?) and when music comes into question, you’re almost always allowed to select your favorite genres and artists. This is not to say that the station will only feed you what you select as favorite, but that’s the whole idea, to listen to something new. Otherwise you could just listen to your MP3s.
It is true that, in general, the WiFi radio concept is (at least today) an in-house solution. You obviously need an Internet connection and a WiFi router in order to stream radio stations wirelessly. But if you ask me, a wireless router is something anyone should have installed. It works wonders for laptops and netbooks.
So let’s see exactly how these WiFi radios work and what they have to offer when compared to their older, non-digital solutions. But first, let’s try and define what a WiFi radio is. I suppose we can simply say a WiFi radio is a device which complies to the IEEE 802.11b/g/n standard, can recognize Internet radio streams and output them to the integrated speakers. These are the basics, you can imagine that respected manufacturers allow for a lot more features.
The first and most obvious is the fact that, although most of them still come with regular radio wave receivers, they also sport built-in WiFi receivers in order to stream Internet radio. Besides the aforementioned features, such a device also displays full information about the playing tunes (artist, name, genre, album, source etc.), which come in handy when you want to identify a song in order to purchase it via your favorite music store. Another feature that can also prove to be pretty useful is the storing of favorite stations. By using a large display, users can just browse a list of their saved stations and select something they’re in the mood for. No more “can store up to 10 favorite radio stations”. Using just a mere 10MB of storage, a WiFi radio can store hundreds or even thousands of Internet radio stations.
Other features are mostly brand and model specific, but I believe that this short list, added to the previous stated features, makes for more than just an interesting alternative to classic radios. So let’s mention a few WiFi radio manufacturers that have made quite few progresses when it comes to providing modern radio solutions. We of course have big names like Sony and Phillips (actually that’s about it when it comes to big names), but there are a lot of other names that came up with WiFi radio solutions, which aren’t really that famous on the CE market.: Tangent, Sangean, Pure Digital, etc.
In order to have some sort of quick and practical tour of what Wi-Fi Internet radio receivers bring new to the stage of home entertainment, I’ll take one random example, like the Logitech Squeezebox Boom. This device is the latest in the company’s line of WiFi radio solutions and is one of the best (and expensive) you can buy today. The device comes in black and has a smooth and modern look to it. There’s a large and bright VFD display in the center, which is regulated by a light sensor. This is where users will enter their wireless router password for the first time so that the Squeezebox will be able to connect to the Internet. After that, the device will automatically search for some available stations and store them in its memory. Users can also add personal preferences to the list. Of course, this is just the beginning of what the device has to offer.
The Squeezebox Boom also comes with some of the most powerful speakers you’ll find on a WiFi radio these days, namely a 30Watt digital amplifier and Stereo XL technology, which takes the sound stage beyond speaker boundaries. A seven day alarm clock is also integrated. This can set a different alarm sound for every day of the week, so you can choose to wake up to the pleasing sound of music, a nature sound, or the not so pleasant sound of a regular alarm. The alarm is is backed up by a battery, so you won’t have any unwanted surprises.
By connecting to your networked computer, the bundled software allows the Squeezebox to play most of the music files which reside on your PC. It is compatible with MP3, WMA (lossy and lossless), FLAC, AAC, WAV, AIFF and Apple Lossless formats.
As a side feature, the Logitech device also comes with an Ethernet connector in case you don’t have WiFi, but I really don’t recommend this, since it requires the extra Ethernet cable, which in my opinion is a drag.
Of course, there a couple of features the Logitech device lacks. This is where I usually criticize an expensive device for not offering what other cheaper solutions provide as default. First of all, there’s no classic FM radio. This is disappointing. I know that we are trying to forget about old technologies and embrace new and modern solutions, but hey, you don’t just discard something which is widespread for something that will catch up only over the next few years. The transition has to be smooth and what Logitech did is not smooth in my book. And second, what’s with the lack of integrated flash memory?. Other companies provide internal flash storage as well, so that users can record up to ten hours of radio broadcast and listen or transfer them to a computer anytime they want.
Of course there are a lot of other features that might be added to a WiFi radio device, such as an USB port for connecting a thumbstick with MP3 files, maybe even VoIP features for some Skype action. I imagine the remote could double as a Skype phone. Of course, this feature is not mandatory, but I’m sure some would make use of it. Another idea could be implementing Bluetooth for use of wireless headphones or speakers. I guess the companies just need to get creative, but useful-creative, not just add a bunch of worthless features.
As WiMax seems to be the feature when it comes to MAN solutions, I suppose these kind of device could really replace radios in the next 5 to 10 years or so (depending on when WiMax becomes mainstream).
