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A pair of "connected radios"
Internet radio is nothing new. There are plenty of streaming stations about, not all of them of particularly good quality, but most of them certainly diverting. Over the last couple of years we've seen plenty of software to listen on the PC such as Radiotracker, as well as stand-alone radios from Terratec, Roberts and Intempo, among others.
Those products are fine, as far as they go, but they lack a certain something. Now along come two new products that both promise to shake up what's become a moribund market.
Pure Digital's DAB radios have a long pedigree and are generally excellent quality (in fact, the company's parent Imagination Technologies makes the chips that go into most other makers' radios), but the Evoke Flow is the company's first foray into non-DAB sets. It's an impressive-sounding product, with DAB and FM as well as access to hundreds of internet stations around the world.
Then there's the Radiopaq RP5 from, yes, Radiopaq. This works in conjunction with the Radiopaq website to deliver what the company says is high-quality programming as well as such extras as traffic news.
In fact, what the two have in common is that both work in conjunction with web services - Radiopaq's main site and Pure's Lounge. On both you can set up listening profiles with your favourite stations, and each site does the job of filtering out poor-quality stations from the listener.
In both cases, it's transparent to users of the radio most of the time - you don't have to delve into the site to make the radio work, but the site makes the radio work better. That's the plan, at least. Both companies are pushing their products on their ease-of-use: trying to make internet radio as painless as standard radio. We'll be putting both through their paces over the next few weeks - look out for full reviews soon.
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