Internet Radio – On a Radio

The Reciva Reference Wireless Household Internet RadioI would listen to a lot more internet radio if I didn’t have to be in the vicinity of my computer to do so. Internet radio stations are great, but just not convenient around the house for most people – not being able to carry a small radio from room to room to listen to programmes often means that a lot of people just don’t bother listening to the huge range of programming out there.

Reciva have come up with an ingenious way round this – without even needing a computer. Their Wireless Household Internet Radio modules allow consumers to listen to broadcasts in any room of the house by using a WiFi receiver to access streamed content. You could even use it in the park if it’s in a hotspot.

Reciva don’t make the finished devices themselves, instead manufacturing the modules for their partners. They also provide a reference unit for module evaluation, and an Application Development kit. There are more than ten thousand internet radio stations in existence covering most niches, and as they don’t rely on over the air transmission, are not geographically dependent. This means that anyone can set up a station in the UK to reach the 15 million expatriates living abroad, with bandwidth as their only consideration.

If PC-less internet radio devices like this take off along with ubiquitous WiFi coverage, it could mean that digital radio will lose some of it attractiveness. After all, there are considerably less stations and the selection available is dependent on which ones are carried by your local broadcast masts.

Reciva

Published by

Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?