11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Great household application of wi-fi!
Date of Review: Aug 27, 2007
The Bottom Line: Recommended if you want access to internet radio or your personal music collection in places where your PC isn't. Great sound quality.
(This Review is for the Roku SoundBridge R1000 Radio.)
Background:
I originally was looking for a tabletop radio to play music from my SD cards. I didn't like the idea of an iPod bay for my iPod given how fast iPods keep changing. Ideally, I would have loved a radio that also received HD signals over the air. Although the Roku SoundBridge plays music from an SD card, I was pleasantly surprised by the sound quality of internet radio with the Roku SoundBridge Radio...I find that I am using internet radio much more than SD card playback now. And it does play a few 'HD' radio stations (over the internet route, not off-the-air.)
What is it:
It's an expensive clock radio that acts as the following:
- Clock Radio with standard AM/FM reception off-the-air
- Alarm (dual alarms)
- SD Card Player
- Internet radio via your wireless network.
- Streaming music receiver via your wireless network.
Its expense (I paid around $280 incl shipping) is mostly attributable to its wireless technology and 'early adopter' premium. I expect there will be similar products like this within one year to help drive the price down. But this is a nice product and my wife commented that she would like some of these in other rooms ($$$!)
Setup:
Assuming you are familiar with how to setup a wireless device (such as a wireless notebook) and assuming you have a wireless router, setup is very easy. If your router is configured to broadcast without security, the radio will find it and it is pretty much plug-and play. If you have a MAC address filter, your router should spot it as a new device (and you simply add the radio address to your security list.) If you have a WEP-type password, you simply enter it in during the radio's configuration process (when it is first powered on or reset). Data entry is remarkably easy even without a standard keyboard. With their remote control, you enter alphanumeric entries quite fast with just their up/down left/right and enter buttons.
Overall design:
Available in black only, the R1000 is a heavy rectangular radio, presumably with stereo speakers in front, and a small subwoofer in back. The footprint roughly occupies a 13" by 13" area. It works best in a corner. The radio has a large volume knob, which also acts as the on/off switch, controls for up to 18 presets, a snooze button which can toggle the length of the snooze, a function toggle button, an alarm setting button, and an up/down cursor button. The remote control has access to greater functionality, so there are some good reasons to never lose the remote.
Display:
The display has various fonts styles and font sizes with variable brightness. The largest font size is just smaller than the normal clock radio LED that most of us are used to. When a text is too long to display, the text is cropped, but then scrolls left after a few seconds to show the entire text. The display dims when the unit is turned off. The unit also has a photosensor to detect ambient light in the room...as a result, the display will adjust. Once setting it up, I have not had to fuss with LED brightness (never too bright during the night, never too dim during playback)...there seems to be some good intuitiveness built-in to the design.
Toggling functions:
The radio itself has a toggle button (resembling a recycle icon) that enables you to switch from AM/FM radio, internet radio, streaming music, or SD (flash) card playback. You can also toggle via the remote; however, it is not as quick to get to as the physical toggle button on the radio itself.
Remote functions vs. Radio button functions:
The remote control can search for new stations and has more SD playback functions (like random access control). The radio controls have faster preset controls (like a car radio) and the handy toggle button. For alarm settings, you kinda need both.
Sound Quality:
Overall excellent. I don't own any of those Bose tabletop radios, but I imagine it is similar. Good bass and highs enhances any music or news. If you place your ear close to the unit when the music is turned down, you can detect a slight hiss; the hiss is there independent of whether you are using standard radio, internet radio, etc. However, this hiss is not discernable when you are listening to the unit under normal (or even low volume) situations. The unit does not have a way of controlling treble and bass...but remember, it's a clock radio. The fixed eq is probably fine for most of us.
Internet Radio:
This was the most pleasant surprise for me. There were seemingly thousands of channels to choose from...a good number of them with above decent sound quality rivaling an FM channel with good reception. You can search for channels by name, genre, or language. There is even a way to enter in the address of an internet radio station; however, I did not try this. I experience an interruption in datastreaming perhaps about once a week for about a 10 second interruption...but this is probably a weakness of my ISP, my internal network, or the radio station itself. The R1000 seems to buffer quite well. From the time of turning on the unit and selecting a station, it takes about 4-5 seconds to get up and running with the audio after the buffering. A friend told me that a lot of internet radio stations will not be able to stay in business in the future; however, I think this might only apply to stations that broadcast over the internet exclusively. I am mainly listening to commercial radio stations that offer internet broadcasting as an alternative. I think these type of internet stations are here to stay and there are a multitude of such stations out there...but you might want to do your own research about the longevity of internet radio.
Streaming Music:
This was another pleasant surprise in terms of how easy it was to setup. This function gives you access to your iTunes, Windows Media player, or other players with streaming capability. You will need to configure your player to share and stream and you might need to upgrade it. Please note that iTunes will NOT stream music that you purchased from Apple. Accessing your music library from the Roku is very easy with the remote...it's like peeking into your PC from your bedroom. If you leave your PC on all the time, streaming music is a great function. I actually don't leave my PC on all the time which is why I tend to use the internet radio or SD card playback.
SD (Flash) Card playback:
Does what it says with fairly straight-forwardness. You probably will need to rely on the remote control (vs. the radio control) for full functionality.
AM/FM Radio:
The R1000 comes with antennas to set this up; however, I liked the internet radio so much that I did not set up my unit for standard radio...I probably should in case my ISP service goes out. I was able to find the internet version of about 75% of the std AM/FM radio stations that I normally listen to...I had better success finding the AM versions.
Alarms:
There are two independent alarms that can be set. These can be set for a standard buzzer, or to trigger the AM/FM radio, internet radio, SD Card playback, or music streaming. Setting the alarm is easy.
R1000's internal website:
Since it is an internet appliance, each R1000 has it's own website that you can access from your PC's webbrowser. The website gives you similar controls as the radio and remote control, but also has some additional functionality such as setting your time zone (I don't recall being able to do this during the radio's configuration process.) Setting timezone is important because you do not set the clock's time and date...it grabs it off the internet.
"My Favorites":
"My Favorites" is a collection of internet stations accessed frequently. To use this function, you have to set up an account with Roku, which I believe is free. I did not use this as I found the presets to work fine for me.
Other nice things:
- Fade in / Fade out: The unit seems to be sensitive in not wanting to startle you. When you have a radio alarm, it fades in. When you set a sleep timer, it fades out when the time expires.
- Automatic Time setting: There is no way to set the clock from the R1000 unit because it grabs the time from the internet. You might need to adjust the timezone however. See note on the R1000's internal website.
- The R1000 also has a headphone out, which I have not tested.
Other notes:
- Sometimes, the unit needs to make several tries to connect with an internet station. But once the connection is made, I have rarely experienced a disconnection in such situations.
- Sometimes, I cannot access the list of stations when in browsing mode (presets are still there and work fine). If I try again later in the day, the list becomes accessible again. This on-again/off-again behavior does not seem to be related to whether or not I reset my router/DSL modem.
