Choyong A8W internet radio

[marqueemoon]

Just thought I'd post about a cheap and cheerful Chinese gizmo I've been enjoying:

a8w.png

I know you can listen to anything you want on your phone, but if you appreciate listening on something that actually feels like a radio to operate - just to see what's out there, and accidentally finding stations you really like (plus having a decent speaker!) - then this could be for you.

It's really easy to use - you can either search by continent and country, or use the voice search., The thing that surprised me most about it is how stable it is. It rarely refuses to play a station or drops the connection once it's going. Battery life is good; it runs for hours on its built in Li-Ion battery (the type Nokia used to use in the 3410 and such). There's a SIM card slot if you want to use it off-WiFi, a SD card slot and a (rather crap) FM tuner too.

It costs a shade under £60 delivered on Aliexpress.

[radionortheast]

There used to be a dab one with an oval screen that looked really cool, pure sensia dab radio, I never got round to getting it, it had an internet radio too. I suppose I always have a laptop nearby so I can connect that up, to relay internet stations.
I think there was a quirky pocket internet radio you could use round the house, I suppose you couldn’t use it beyond the house, kind of like in one of those movies, only the person wouldn't disappear it would be the radio station, as they’d want to use a phone have a contract, maybe it there was some free wifi it could have its day. like classic art

I'm always reading about older internet radios, seems like many people have problems, the urls might change, they also might close the database, making them not function. They might have a problem with geolocking, drm, don’t know if its anything like tv, when itvx brough in drm I couldn’t watch anything anymore it went into landfill because of it, maybe radio stations are immune for now from having to have an account to listen but in future who knows.

[marqueemoon]

I'm always reading about older internet radios, seems like many people have problems, the urls might change, they also might close the database, making them not function.

Yeah, that's another disadvantage of a device specifically for listening to internet radio. The only one I've had before this was a Logik (Curry's own brand IIRC?) that I paid £20 for... I had a couple of years fun listening from it until Reciva shut down the database it used to look up stations. Mildly annoying for me as I'd not exactly invested heavily, but that took out some quite modern and expensive sets, Roberts ones amongst them. Apparently there's a hack that allows you to keep using them in some way but I never looked into that.

I got one of those old Philips Streamium multi-room streaming set-ups cheap because Philips obsoleted the internet radio features when they were still relatively new, which was outrageous considering how much those things cost new. The music streaming still works a treat though, and they sound great. From what I've read, though, this Choyong set uses internet-radio.com as it's database, so hopefully it'll be around for a good while.

[radionortheast]

When radionecks was down I was doing a search I found something were a radio portal website had legal action against it, had some radio stations there think maybe owned by global, something about it taking revenue off them, someone else said maybe shooting themselfs in the foot if it means someone can’t listen.

I suppose nothing lasts forever, if it works its easy to listen to radio station its a good thing. My mum has struggled since they removed radio channels from freeview as it was easy just type in a number. It requires going to the app, finding the station, too hard for her to do, you can make it so when you go to the app it starts playing the last stream. I was trying to work out if its possible for to go to tunein at switch on that way she’d have no problem, if the timer could be set up, it could set up when she gets up. I suppose a radio that just comes on and plays the station could be quite useful,it dose look quite interesting..