mobilemag.com is showing a stand-alone (wireless, or WiFi) Internet radio from Acoustic Engery for US$350.
Says the Web site, "it can stream Real Audio, WMA and MP3 music which will cost you about zero dollars per month. The system will access over 10,000 stations..."
Zero dollars per month? Hardly. You need the Internet connection, which costs at least $25/month for a DSL line -- unless you plan to steal the bandwidth from your neighbour's unprotected wireless network.
Listening to Internet radio at reasonable quality also costs in terms of GB/month. Some months ago, I recorded 24 hours of music from an Internet station that plays 80s music. That amounted to just over 1GB in disk space.
You may not realize it, but most Internet accounts limit the amount of data you can transfer per month. The limit is typically a few GB; after that, you get charged for the excess. With the other downloads you do (email, etc), you will probably hit your limit after a week or so of listening to Internet radio.
As for accessing 10,000 stations, any computer does that. The problems are (1) finding radio stations, and (2) seeing if they can handle hundreds and thousands of connections from listeners. Regular radio and tv showed their superiority following 9/11, as Web sites couldn't handle being swamped by people looking for info. The same will happen when standalone Internet radios become popular.
I love the idea of stand-alone Internet radios, but I think that they will prove unworkable, just like hydrogen fuel cells.
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