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Product Review: Page (1) of 1 - 08/21/08

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Recording Internet Radio

Time to get a larger hard drive

By Matthew David

There are thousands of Internet Radio stations on the Web. They are broadcasting everything from chat radio to top 40 to anything you can imagine. A big problem, though, is that you can't listen to these stations very easily from your car. In this article, I will show you how you can record Internet radio stations, store them on your MP3 player and play them back whenever, or wherever, you happen to be.

The Applian Way
Many of us have TiVos or similar Digital Video Recorders, or DVRs, in our homes to record TV. This concept inspired Applian's founder (www.applian.com), Bill Dettering. At the time, eight years ago, Bill was commuting an hour each way to his job and needed to listen to something. Unfortunately his car radio just received Country music stations (my apologies to the Country fans). The solution was to create a TiVo-like tool on his computer that, on regular schedule, would tune his Windows Media Player to an Internet radio station, record the show and then save it to his hard drive. When Bill got home from his drive, he simply connected his MP3 player to his PC and synchronized his files. The product grew to become the most popular solution for recording Internet radio: Replay Radio.

Eight years later, Applian's Replay Radio is now Replay A/V. 

As you might expect, Replay A/V has added a lot of bells and whistles. You can now record multiple radio stations at once. Up to 99. The recordings can be set to different schedules. For instance, you can do an immediate recording, a recording that only happens once or a recording that happens at the same time during the week. For instance, BBC Radio 7 has a Sci-Fi radio play every day at 6:00PM CT. Replay A/V can be easily set up to record the show Monday - Friday at 6:00PM for one hour. You can record broadcasts sent in almost any format including MP3, ShoutCast, AAC, WMV and Real Media format.  

Replay A/V can record up to 99 Internet radio stations

When the recording completes the file is saved to your computer. A converter tool will take the audio file and convert it to almost any audio format. For instance, the iPod does not play back WMV audio. Radio stations that broadcast in WMV can now be easily converted to WAV, MP3 or AAC - all formats the iPods understands and can play back for you. In addition, Replay A/V will also automatically add new tracks to iTunes. All you have to do is to connect your iPod, sync and go. 

The software's name reflects the massive expansion of rich media in the Internet. The A/V stands for Audio/Video. The concept behind Replay A/V, however, is still the same: record Internet stations for play back when it is convenient for you.
Applian is increasingly exploring ways in which Internet video for broadcast stations such as YouTube can be saved to your computer. Expect a lot of new video recording solutions for come from them.

Using RadioTracker
A competing product to Applian's Replay A/V is RadioTracker (http://radiotracker.com). In many ways it is very similar to Replay A/V. There are more limitations with RadioTracker such as a more confusing interface. The price, however, is very reasonable at only $26, about half that of Applian's solution.

Internet Radio Recorders
There are many free solutions you can try. The most popular solution is StreamRipper.

StreamRipper is an Open Source project hosted at SourceForge.com (http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/). StreamRipper has many of the features you expect to see in a basic solution. Is is more cumbersome to use than either Replay A/V or RadioTracker, however you can not argue with the price: FREE!
 Release Internet Radio from it's broadband tethers
The breadth and depth of media streaming is only just beginning to be realized. It has only been in the last year that companies such as ABC have started to stream video in HD format over the web. Tools, such as Replay A/V complement the DVR solutions you already have in your home. There are going to be questions about the legality of recording Internet media. The same questions will also be posed to home DVR solutions that allow video to be shared with iPods and other hand held media devices. The reality is that recording video and audio stations from Internet is here.