Hardware Forum - I love my new DAB radio! - Page 1

Still really plased with mine, my wife bought me a Roberts Solar Dab 2, it goes everywhere with me.

Suprisingly good sound quality considering how small the speaker is.

Not had any reception problems, infact I keep the aerial down as worried it may get damaged and signal is generally 90-100% in Cardiff, drops to 80% out of Cardiff.

All the best

Gerald.



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I think I need one of these!

I've tried DAB in my house before, and the signal kept dropping out. Besides, my favourite station, Planet Rock, isn't available on DAB in Northern Ireland.

Give us more details as you continue to use the radio, Jits.

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How much do these go for then?

Could probably do with one for my mum if it works just off the Wireless, normal DAB is waste of time in Wales.

We still can't get most ****ing broadbands, even Sky is still planning to get it to us within the next 18months (as they have been since about 2004 :s )

www.last.fm/user/1mills

I got one for £85 in Currys, with their usual helpful labelling mentioning that it picked up AM transmissions as well. It doesn't. I think it's around £70 if you look online. But bear in mind that it's the cheapest Internet radio combi that Currys did, so it's probably not the best featured or the most robust. There was this Roberts thing for £260 ish with an oval display that looked straight out of Star Trek. I wanted it, my wallet didn't...

The Clarus is a bit fiddly to set up, as you need text input for the WPA encryption of your router. That's managed by a a couple of buttons and the search dial, so it takes a while. But everything after is pretty automatic and straighforwards. It turns out that the DAB reception in my kitchen is pretty good compared to where my computer is. But still, only around 50 odd stations is poor compared to AM/FM, and the sound quality on some of the stations isn't outstanding.

Review here

Company site

One thing I like about the Internet radio is that it's really hassle free. It sorts everything into genre and location. And it's BBC centric, so it will have a separate menu for those channels as well, and user favourites can be sorted too.

You can choose all the Asian music radio channels in the world by genre, then scroll down to find what you want, or you can choose all radio stations in just India alone, and then scan those to find something you want. It took me under five minutes to get a religious broadcast from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and that was just by browsing, not specifically searching. It took even less time to find an anime soundtracks radio station broadcasting from the US. Browsing is simple. Searching is hard, because you have to use that fiddly text entry thing.

The set up of the thing may be awkward, but using it seems pretty intuitive.

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Jitendar Canth

Quote:
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I've got a few DAB radios, but not yet delved into Internet Radio. Would love to have one. Your description is really selling it to me.

People should not forget though, that streaming audio through your router is using up your Broadband allowance, so unless you have unlimited Broadband, you could use your allowance up before the end of the month by using this too much.

Ooh ooh! Podcasts aswell in the menu, which means you can catch up on those BBC radio programmes that you have missed.

I'm with BT Broadband, who just upped my limit to 40GB a month... Currently listening to a Canadian Indian radio station broadcasting at 20kb...

I think I might squeak it.

Frankly, Internet radio isn't my worry, ever since someone with too much time on their hands discovered that there are Bollywood movies on Youtube in their entirety. That's a couple of gigs a day depending on the stream quality.

The downside of Internet Radio is that it is slow. DAB is just like changing channels on the TV, the internet takes time to connect to the station, time to load the next submenu, so as well as the time you spend browsing, you'll have to add 20 or 30 seconds for the radio to go through its operations Fortunately there is a favourites menu you can add your stations to, and even quicker, you have eight presets.
===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

My Top 20 movies at YMDB
Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com

This item was edited on Friday, 3rd September 2010, 19:40

Orange are (or were) doing some ridiculously cheap wireless internet radio, which isn't too bad. Especially considering I think it was about £25?


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