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Internet radio device: Information and Much More from Answers.com

  • ️Wed Jul 01 2015

An Internet radio device is a hardware device that receives and plays audio from Internet radio stations or a user's PC. The devices which are currently on the market mainly support MP3 (MPEG1 Layer 3) streaming. Other popular formats like Windows Media Audio (WMA), RealAudio, Ogg, and Apple's AAC are supported by a few of these devices.

Internet radio devices can be divided into several product categories:

  • Products which are mainly targeted at listening to music stored on a local network. These devices are usually called network music players. These devices are usually sold with server software in order to play the music from the network. Examples of such devices are the Slim Devices Squeezebox2, Roku Soundbridge and the Philips Streamium WACS700 and SLA5520. Some of these devices also have the ability to listen to Internet radio stations. As these devices may not have an integrated loudspeaker, they need to be connected to an audio system in order to listen to the music. These devices usually have an Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi network interface.
  • Standalone products like the Squeezebox, Reciva or Streamit Internet radio devices which are targeted at users who do not want to be dependent on a computer (or computer knowledge) for their Internet radio listening. These products are often used in closed user group applications due to the ease with which a shortened specialised stations list can be delivered to them. Closed user groups might be a geographically distributed ethnic community who all want to listen to the same internet radio station, or a commercial application such as restaurant chain that wants to distribute the same audio to all their restaurants. With several of these products, such as the Streamit and Reciva based radios, a dynamically updated stations list also makes it possible for the receiver always to have an up-to-date list of available on-demand content as it becomes available from national broadcasters BBC and VPRO. Some of these devices also allow the user to listen to media files from the local network, as with the Network Music Players above. There are variants of these devices with and without integrated speaker(s). They normally connect to the Internet via the user's broadband connection using an integrated Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi network interface.
  • Standalone products like the Barix and Streamit SIR80. These products are targeted at professional audio streaming applications.
  • Standalone wireless-equipped Internet radio receivers like Sonowave allow listening to Internet Radio around one's home or apartment (though wireless network adapters can be added to non-wireless receivers as can A/C power-line network extenders). Controls Internet radio, terrestrial radio, mp3 files, or CDs (in computer) from the portable tuner's location.

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