Aluratek AIRJ01F USB Internet Radio Jukebox by Aluratek
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List Price: Our Price: $13.98 You Save: $5.02 (26%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Aluratek AIRJ01F USB Internet Radio Jukebox
Digital camera Review: Love it Does Exacly What it Promises~So MUCH FUN~~~
Summary: 5 Stars
I always loved listening to the short wave radio at night with my Dad. We would tune into countries all over Europe. Well this is 1000 times better I plugged it in and within 30 seconds I was roaming the world. Crisp clear wonderful sound, no static. No turning a knob trying to get it tuned in clear, it's clear from the start. I am going to so enjoy this. You can be online or email working and still be listening.
This is a great item and would make a wonderful gift to just about anyone. It lets you mark your favorites so you can go back easily.
I'm so glad it came up as a lightening deal I had no idea such an item existed! You will not be sorry if you buy this.
Digital camera Review: Music Galore!
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't believe this technology. I just plugged it into the USB port on my laptop at home that's connected to internet and the media browser automatically launched giving me instant access to music stations all over the world. I love the search by region feature which looks sort of like google earth and it allows you to simply click on the region you want to access then lists all the available countries. I use other free internet radio websites but I have yet to find something like this that organizes all the available music by country and genre for you and best of all no advertisements. This is an awesome product and very cheap.Digital camera Review: Nifty for internet radio, but could be better
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall, I'd say this product is pretty nifty.
The pros:
- Access to thousands of internet radio stations, mostly commercial free. It's wasn't hard to play around and find cool stations I didn't even know existed. Though really, how many of those foreign language stations am I going to listen to if I don't speak the language?
- Plug and play device. All you need is a USB port and no additional software is needed. So once you have your settings/favorites set up you can take this thing anywhere and have music to listen to (e.g., work, home, etc.) And I for one definitely appreciate not having yet another media software player on my computer.
- Relatively inexpensive and it's a one-time cost.
- User interface is pretty straightforward. You can search by music genre (over 50 genre choices) or radio station name. You can even see the top 10 stations (as voted by users) by genre or region. It's easy to add stations to your "my favorites" folder and you can also browse your listening history. You can even see station transmission rates (kpbs) to identify potentially slow stations and there's a button to directly launch a station's website, which is helpful.
- You can vote for stations you like and I think Aluratek adds up all your votes to tabulate their ranking lists. So theoretically over time, really good stations will stand out as more users vote for their favorites.
And now the cons:
- Search and browse functions could be improved. You can't easily sort by region and genre. Similarly the ranking feature (whether its top 100 stations or top 10 by genre, etc.) is a work in progress. I found I spent a lot of time browsing stations that were top 10, but mediocre at best. But since it's user based ratings, hopefully that aspect improves with time.
- This device is basically a storage unit for software. So the sound quality of the broadcast is basically as good as the website broadcasting it. This is unlike a Rhapsody (which I subscribe to) for example, that maintains sound quality through its own network.
- You can't download, record or even see the songs being played. I guess this isn't surprising but that's a huge difference from a pay service like Rhapsody where you can listen to songs with good fidelity and then instantly be able to download ones you like. It would have been nice if there was a rip/record feature to the software that lets you record, even better if you could do it on the USB drive itself.
- It takes up a USB port and you have to remember to bring it around. For my laptop, it seems like it would have been easier to just give me a software download so I wouldn't have to bring any other device around period.
Still, all in all, its a pretty cool little device. If for no other reason than to be able to monitor top stations, search for new interesting ones and do it all in one place.
Digital camera Review: No longer at the mercy of my browser
Summary: 5 Stars
At first, I didn't think it made sense to pay for something that I can get for free, since you can listen to most if not all of these stations via your browser. There are two things I see as reasons to pay for this. First, all the stations are nicely categorized and easily accessible via this device. Second, and most important, whenever my browser crashes or freezes up, the music keeps playing since I am not accessing the music via my web browser. That happened twice today.
I have Vista and this works fine. You have to deal with Vista's nanny-like security features, but that is not unique to this product.
Digital camera Review: Not Really Plug and Play!!
Summary: 1 Stars
Bought this product awhile back and just recently installed which in it self was a long process. Maybe just my luck but the one I have just does not work, after finally downloaded you can select a station and it will not open up and there is no sound and on screen the image flashes on and off. Did not bother to return because such a pain getting credit or another one and since priced low just my loss!! I guess buy at your own decision probaly just got a bad one.