Fatcontroller

This Grundig radio faithfully sat in my parent’s kitchen for the last 40 years or so. The tuning dial was fairly dodgy, making it really difficult to tune to another station then find radio 4 again, but that didn’t matter too much seeing as BBC radio 4 represents about 95% of my parent’s listening. (The average number of radio stations listened to in the UK per listener is about 3.5, with about 80% of listening done to the first choice station. The average number of radios owned is about 6 per household)

When something of interest came up on 5Live or radio 3 then all that was needed was a trip to the sitting room where it could be listened to on a DAB/FM mini hifi or freeview, But it was a bit of a hassle.

Here’s the replacement, a Pure DAB radio. So my parents can now listen to as many stations as they want from a much wider choice, in the kitchen, without fear of missing the exact spot on the dial for the best radio 4 reception. Also, guests such as my family and I can easily tune in to stations more acceptable to our kids without fear of never finding radio 4 again. Maybe it will even encourage a sampling of other digital stations. BBC7 seems an obvious choice… Ease of tuning easily trumps sound quality in the kitchen – most kitchen radios only have mono speakers anyway.

A radio that has been sitting in my kitchen for a while now is the Acoustic Energy wifi internet radio. Perfect for listening to podcasts, on demand comedy shows or random music stations in the evening , or sampling some new international stations on the weekend.

However my morning listening always defaulted to the DAB radio for quick, reliable access to live news, traffic and travel and a bit of light relief, along with the DLS text information to help me out when needed.

The AE is now also installed up at my folks house – they are contemplating how they can navigate through 12,000 stations on a 2 line display – they’re not the only ones!

Anecdotally, the number of stations that people regularly listen to over internet radio increases from 3.5 to just over 5, with the first station representing 60 rather than 80% of listening. There’s also a lot more sampling.

I now have only one radio in my kitchen, the Roberts WM-202 combined DAB, FM, Wifi radio which also operates on batteries. I could equally easily have chosen the stylish Revo Bliq. The key thing here is that what makes the Roberts so attractive is the combination of DAB and internet radio – they do slightly different things for me, and suit needs at different times of the day or day of the week. FM could also be useful in areas where DAB coverage is missing, or for small local or community radio only available on FM.

I have mainly been talking about the kitchen in this post, the dynamic changes slightly when we move to the bedroom or sitting room, let alone outside of the home, but for now the attractiveness of a multi mode home receiver seems obvious and desirable. We’ll see a lot more combined DAB, FM and internet radios before xmas this year, but i reckon xmas 2009 will be the turning point for internet radio devices. There’s also other stuff you can already do, or will be able to do with these devices, like ipod docking or access to your music collection, let alone what will happen with the advent of large and colour screens (or some of the concepts behind the Olinda physical prototype)

There are many issues to be resolved to see internet radio devices prosper, but two of the biggest right now are how broadcasters can send synchronous metadata easily and openly across a range of output formats to a number of different devices and how the navigation and discovery around radio can be moved away from a tiny monochrome screen to a more suitable environment – either a larger colour screen on the device, or through a peronalised web portal.

One thing that’s clear to me is that internet radios are much more interesting when they include digital terrestrial radio and FM.