Wi-Fi Receivers Loosen Internet Radio’s Bonds to PCs

Pure’s Evoke Flow will cost $300 when it goes on sale in the U.K. in September -- ahead of rivals and at about half their price. The small, piano-black box receives Internet radio, DAB and FM. It also has access to podcasts and the Listen Again feature from broadcasters such as the BBC, which offer archived radio programs online. Evoke Flow users won’t need to connect it to a PC. The radio’s built-in Wi-Fi connects directly to broadband networks.

Listeners with Internet access can use Pure’s coming Web portal, TheLounge.com. It works with the radio to search for programs and schedule listening, the company told reporters at a recent briefing. By year-end, music downloads and tagging will be introduced with a software upgrade. Radio tagging lets users click to learn about a broadcast. Listeners will be able to click to buy a download when they hear a teaser track broadcast. A free online library, Pure Sounds, offers mood audio, including seagulls, thunder and heartbeats, via the radio. “You can set the radio to wake up with a ship’s foghorn if you like,” said Colin Crawford, Pure’s marketing director.

Access to the Lounge site will be free. Pure proved that the radio works when Crawford took one fresh from its box to show reporters, quipping that he was “living dangerously.” A week before, glitches kept Radiopaq from showing even a working prototype of its tabletop Internet radio, which also is to work with an online portal. The only Radiopaq unit on display was a dummy.

“This is not just another Internet radio,” Crawford said of Pure’s Evoke Flow. “It seamlessly merges broadcast and online access,” he said. “The Internet radio market has been disappointing. Sales have been slow. There has been no iconic product, like the iPod. The marketing has been pitiful. People just talk about 10,000 radio stations. When I hear that it really annoys me. We want take Internet radio into the mainstream.”

The Evoke Flow has a Linux-based operating system and an OLED display with touch-sensitive controls. “We want to break the link with the PC and offer podcasts with no PC or iPod required,” Crawford said. “When you set up Wi-Fi, you don’t have to know whether its WEP or WPA or whatever. The radio sorts that out as you enter the key,” he said about the home’s broadband network security settings. Crawford portrayed audio offerings through Pure’s Lounge portal as added value. “There is a lot of poor-quality radio on the Internet, so, the Lounge portal provides an audio quality filter, with star ratings.” An optional download available from Pure allows the radio to receive Windows Media Player content with its associated digital rights management.

Besides regular DAB, the Evoke Flow comes with access to the newer DAB+ and its improved AAC audio “out of the box,” Crawford said. Australia, a latecomer to DAB, is starting its first broadcasts with DAB+. Other countries, such as Germany, plan broadcast upgrades. Pure will introduce the Evoke Flow in North America later, Crawford said, with DAB “hidden but available for Canadian use.” DAB is available is Canada. For the U.S., the table-top won’t get IBOC terrestrial HD Radio or digital satellite broadcasts from Sirius/XM, which would make the radios too costly, Crawford said.

Pure’s Evoke Flow joins Tivoli Audio’s NetWorks and Radiopaq’s Rp5 in the PC-free category, but should beat them to market and cost about half what they do.

Pesky software bugs put Radiopaq’s $500 Rp5 on hold until at least late next month, the company told us in a recent private briefing. Radiopaq President Prash Vadgama admitted that the Rp5 tabletop he showed us was only a dummy simulating the software needed to access and display the company’s existing Radiopaq portal, which brings a host of global audio broadcasters to PCs.

Radiopaq had boasted that its product would ship in mid- August and “showcase the kind of technology industry experts had predicted would be available no sooner than 2009.” Then it said there might not be a working model on display because “our efforts to get them out of China have not been helped by the Olympics.” The Rp5 is a sleek, lunchbox-size-radio with five speakers and a pop-up LCD displaying channel selections.

Vadgama was candid in talking privately with us. “Manufacture cannot start until we tell the factory how to make it,” he said. “And there have been software glitches. We have developed our own applications and interfaces for use with custom chips -- because we don’t want to look the same as everyone else with an Internet radio. Any new software will have bugs and we are still working through them. We'd rather delay for a while than deliver a puppy and have people say, ‘Great idea. Pity it doesn’t work.’ The application interface will work with other chips, and we will license that. We expect samples for review in mid-September, with sales in late September.”

Before the bug delay, Radiopaq had France as the next market for the Rp5 in September, followed by the rest of Europe, then the U.S. “There is definitely a plan to launch in the U.S.,” a spokeswoman told us. “This will probably be next year but nothing is confirmed, as Radiopaq would like to wait to see how the sales go in the U.K.” By then, Tivoli Audio’s $600 NetWorks table radio should be available. It’s slated for fall delivery in the U.S. and other markets, and similarly connects by Wi-Fi to a home’s broadband network, without a PC, to give owners access to Tivoli’s existing database of radio stations available on the Internet.

Though also still “under development,” the Radiopaq website does offer a taste of what the Rp5 tabletop radio promises (http://www.radiopaq.com/). The site is a one-stop portal for radio stations, podcasts, news and weather, with options for a user to search for and organize favorites. The Rp5 tabletop radio will mirror the site, for direct access without PC, and has a small flip-up display for navigation and information. Podcast play can be paused, and the Rp5 also receives terrestrial FM and DAB, where available. The radio uses the uPnP standard to play music from a PC, continually synchronizing with the Radiopaq Web site so that favorite programs, news and weather remain up to date.