microphone-free!!

This one and other wifi radios listed as microphone-free!!

Apparenly the fear that your new radio will be listening to what you say has depressed sales, so now they are explicit:

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Does anyone have a wifi radio? Esp. one with preset stations? What do you have? Do you like it? C-Span radio which used to come in crystal cear all the time, even though it's in DC and I'm in Baltmore, now rarely comes in well enough to listen to it. They must have moved their antennas. But I can get it on wifi, so I can use recommendations for a wifi radio with presets.

And you have all heard about Ring Doorbell vidoes by now, right?

Reply to
micky
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Good idea. Actually, I have written them about 3 times in the last 3 weeks. And each time it auto-responds with the message that their mailbox is full! snipped-for-privacy@c-span.org What kind of a business has a full mailbox? We're not talking about voicemail, we're talking about email! I keep thinking next time it will work.

(I wanted to write, not call, so I could give all the details, including my exact location, and so I could butter them up. For a while an engineer at WAMU FM in DC was soliciting my opinion on reception in Baltimore. I guess I wrote him first but I don't remember why (bad reception?) Reception is good now in most of the city and even coutryside north of here (on the far side from DC).)

I'm going to call and see if there is a better address than the one they give on their webpage! And if that doesn't work, I'll write to C-Span and ask them to forward it to C-Span radio technical department.

I don't mind spending $200 for another radio, even though I should be getting rid of things instead of buying more things. It would make it easy to preset C-span and 9 other stations. But I've run out of space on the shelves next to my bed. (For the rest of the hosue I use the computer and an FM transmitter.) And I'd have to decide between two models with presets (3 if you count the one that requires using the remote to go to a present, but I don't count that one.) One is a pretty wood style one, but one has a face that tips back, which would work well on the lower shelf, but I think it's plastic. I hate decisions.

Reply to
micky

Why not download things like tune in or iHeart to your computer, iPad, or whatever? My ears aren't that good but those are good enough.

Reply to
Dean Hoffman

I have tunein, but the computer is in the spare bedroom and I'm trying to fall asleep in my bedroom, and it's too hard to change stations which I do frequently, when news gets depressing or too boring. Even if the computer were in my bedroom, I'm lying down and I couldn't reach it.

I will look into iHeart. Tunein plays the same commercials, I haven't kept a log but maybe 4 or 6 times an hour for weeks or months in a row. No matter what the product is, after a few days I hate it. If I were watching broadcast TV (and cable I suppose) each program has its own set of commercials so there is big array of ads through out the day, but with tunein, I might hear the same ads 10 or 20 times each in 4 or 5 hours. (At least this is true for commercial stations. I should pay attention, there may be few or no commercials on NPR and C-Span, other than when they advertise their own shows.

At night, everyone gets the Premium version and it is incredibly screwed up. There are no commercials and they have some system that when there would be a commercial, from the radio or tv station they are relaying, instead they play something from earlier that day. When the commerical is over, it switches back to "live"** even if the rerun part is in the middle of a word. I understand they do that. I don't know how else they could do it. BUT...it's all screwed up. Saturday night they played the exact same 5 minutes 3 times in a row. And Sunday night they played a story about 3 sisters who the army sent to Afghanistan and one who was only 20 years old got killed. I heard the story once between 9 and midnight. It was depresssing, but I listened. Reruns go between midnight and 4 or 5 AM, and the story I'd heard earlier got replayed. So after 10 minutes I switche to NPR. I kept switching back and the same story played for over 2 hours. I would hear the same opening line each time I switched back.

I wrote to them about this the first time, months ago, when I thought it was a fluke that they should know about, but their bot didn't understand my email. And by now they must know about it, but it doesn't get any better. Sat and Sunday night was not ususual.

**Although live might be a repeat from earlier that day. I understand that, no problem.

I will definitely look at iHeart... Darn.... For news it has Music & Entertainment News. For C-Span, it has a song by Yee and a weekly podcast. Not nearly enough. And another station that would be easy to get with a wifi radio it also doesn't have.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I already have a wifi radio I got from a friend 10 or 15 years ago, but it was hard to get to a particular station and there was no way to set a preset. A radio commericial a couple days ago made me think maybe they've improved and they have.

Reply to
micky

If it has a speaker, it has a microphone....

Reply to
Paul Babiak

Only if it is a microspeaker.

Reply to
John S

I know you can use a speaker as a microphone, but isn't that true only if t he circuit it's connected to will also "operate in reverse".

BTW, dsspite what it says in the ad, from the owners manual, this radio allows for spoken Google commands to play a particular song etc. I don't fully understand the manual and I think this may use a smartphone wh ich can be connected to the radio, to provide input. If so, it would still be micrphone-free.

Reply to
micky

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