Does wifi radio pick up all web stations

L

lemonhead

Registered User
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Hi there,
saw the previous thread on wifi radio but didn't want to hijack it as my question is a little different. I would like to listen to American stations as well as occaisionally experimenting by picking up stuff from Australia or elsewhere. Do Wifi radios pick up all stations which have a web prescense? For Example if I go on my laptop and go to WFAN 660 AM website I can listen to live radio there, could I do the same on a Wifi radio? Is the idea of Wifi radio that you don't have to power up your computer to pick up the stations? How does one select stations on a Wifi radio?

I hope my question is clear

many thanks
 
The following is based on using one brand of internet radio for a couple of weeks.

The internet radio 'receiver' is aligned with a specific provider, in my case . The radio is capable of picking up the stations supported by reciva, i.e. you can't key in a url. One 'limitation' for me is that I would like it to be able to link to last.fm, but, so far, no joy.

Once the radio is authenticated to your wifi network, it works independent of any other devices on the network (apart from the router), i.e. you don't need your laptop to be powered on.

The station choice is grouped by location/country (e.g. Oceania/New Zealand, Europe/Ireland), or by genre (e.g. Country, Dance, Sport).
 
Pretty much depends on what type of player, and what type of station you want to listen to, but in general, yes, you should have no bother. Some radio stations do thier web broadcasts in several formats, windows media player, real player etc, some only in one format. Some players will not play some formats, but in general there should not be an issue. The one area where I have had a prob with this, is with my SONOS, and rte radio rte I think only broadcast using realplayer, which sonos will not work with.

The idea of the any wifi radio, is that you do not need your pc turned on as you stated, it should work independently, although you can get some wifi radios that will also stream media from your pc, a good idea I think.

Regards,
Wexfordman
 
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Most internet radios use one of the two main internet radio portals - or Frontier Silicon (which you cannot access without a login/FS chipset based radio ID but is based on the info supplied by vTuner). These portals and your device characteristics (e.g. codecs supported) determine what stations/streams/podcasts etc. you can access. You may also be able to manually enter URLs that do not appear on those portals databases.
 
I have had problems with some channels I once could connect to (e.g. Radio City Liverpool) which are now embedded in some sort of java applet in a webpage - hard to get the real URL for the stream.
 
leex said:
I have had problems with some channels I once could connect to (e.g. Radio City Liverpool) which are now embedded in some sort of java applet in a webpage - hard to get the real URL for the stream.
Click to expand...
RCL is in the Frontier Silicon (vTuner) database. I presume that it's also in the Reciva database too?
 
Reciva also allow you to submit stations that you want to have added to their database.

Most wifi radios have a number of presets, maybe 5 or so but you can create your own account within the reciva website and add stations to a favourites list. this saves a lot of time scrolling for stations.
Your wifi radio should then have a menu called "Mystuff" or something like this where your favourites list will magically appear.
Works great for me.
 
You might find that the BBC's are not always available. Sonos used to not be able to access them. Dont know if thats changed.
 
This is my first post but came across this discussion as i am looking into installing a home entertainment system/ music systm into my new build in wexford and am very interested in the Sonas system, with my main concern relating to the radio element. I often stream radio online but it can be effected by internet speed and is jumpy, will this be the same with the sonas? Is there any way of adding on a standard radio or DAB tuner and add it on as another source?
Any info or eperiences with the sonas system or any others would be gratefuly recieved.
Dave
 
Hi Duffry

Yep, its quite easily done, every zoneplayer has a line iput and you can connect external sources to it and play that source in any or all other zones.
So if you have 6 zoneplayers, i theory you can have 6 external devices also!!!

One issue with it, is that you will not be able to control the device from the sonos control (you can control volume thugh), you will not be able to power it on/off or change stations, all this will ahve to be done manually at the device.

I do this, not really a problem for the rare times I use it, and about one of the only bad things I can say about sonos, but if you have good bb, no issues at all.

What I would suggest you do, is locate a zp in your living room (zp80 for example). The living room probably also as a surround sound system so your sonos would share these (line out of the zp80 goes in to your home cineme system). Most home cinema systems have an fm tuner built in, so you also take a line out from the amp into the sonos, problem solved, fm radio available anywhere in the house!!

Regards,
Wexformdn
 
Peats have a unit that has FM,DAB and WIFI all in one.
Revo Blik Radio Station DAB & WiFi - check the Peats or Revo website for details. Also have a model with above plus IPOD docking station.
It's based on Frontier Silicon, I don't have it (yet) but would love it.
This should cover all your requirements.
 
Places to find other radio stations

Hi,
Our site StreamFinder.com has 10,000+ radio stations listed. Many of them we have SONOS and internet radio player links available for you to load into your player.

We also have a 'saved favorite stations' widget you can use to export your stations in RSS or XML format.

So find all the stations you want and add them to your internet radio.
 
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