I'm thinking about getting Griffin's RadioShark for my dad for Xmas, but the shipping that Griffin charges to Canada is ridiculous, and Ecost doesn't have it in stock. Does anyone know of any stores either in Toronto or Winnipeg that has it available?
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Black Macbook Core 2 Duo
Upgraded Sawtooth (900 Mhz)
12" 867 Mhz PowerBook - RIP
It may be perfect for what you are up to, but make sure! I waited a year for this thing to come out only to be severely disappointed with the release--went and got Audio Hijack Pro instead and hooked up an external radio through line in.
From engadget (reviewer may have had issues with a faulty unit? PC software? Overlooking that, still some valid points about shortcomings--it ain't TiVo, not even remotely):
Quote:
Hands-on with the radioSHARK
Posted Dec 1, 2004, 1:16 PM ET by Peter Rojas
Related entries: Peripherals
Engadget pal Larry Larsen spent some time with the radioSHARK, Griffin’s long overdue peripheral for turning your Mac into a TiVo for radio, and concludes that there’s probably a reason why this took so long to surface. Read on for his take:
Let me say that I wanted to love the radioSHARK (presumably pronounced with a whispered ‘radio’ and screamed ‘SHARK!’.) I love my Tivo, and I listen to a good amount of radio, so I was excited when I saw it on my doorstep. However, reality has set in — the radioSHARK isn’t Tivo, and for recording radio you would be better off plugging a good radio into your line-in jack and hitting record on your own.
Hardware
The Griffin radioSHARK looks like any other Apple accessory. That’s great if you use a Mac. If you don’t, it looks like you swiped some hospital equipment. White rubber (for the first couple weeks anyway, and white plastic, with the only 90 degree angles being on the USB plug itself. There are huge blue lights on the side of it, and who can blame them, blue lights are the new black. At first, you may think they are cool. Soon you’ll get tired of it for catching your eye every time you walk past, and if you use it at work, everyone around you will be able to figure out what radio shows you like because the big blue lights turn into big red lights when recording. Presumably, this is to replicate the “ON AIR” sign in a radio booth.
The hardware in the radioSHARK will not, I repeat – will not tune an AM radio station without a very annoying, very loud hum, and if you get any audio at all from an AM station, consider yourself lucky. I have tried from two locations in different parts of town on two different computers. I even tried connecting it to a Tablet PC outside to see if it was the Faraday cage I live in or if the hardware just sucked. It was the latter. Griffin says you can connect any old wire to the headphone jack on the back of the radioSHARK and it will act as an antenna. This is a placebo; I have found no length of cable that will make any difference at all.
Software
This is where the radioSHARK just falls apart. The best thing Griffin could do is immediately open source the whole thing and hope someone with programming skillz will fix it. The interface is one of those bitmapped “we don’t need no stinking Windows API” apps that is only acceptable if the program is entirely skinable. It is not. Well, I shouldn’t say that, you can change the bars on the top and bottom of the app to any one of the Mac-approved flavor colors. Actually, the interface is a total Apple QuickTime rip-off, minus any of the intuitive cues, or stability that QuickTime sports. The buttons are too small, laid out on a grid, and the volume slider spans almost the whole width of the interface, over 4 inches wide on my monitor. You can’t type in a frequency, you have to grab a microscopic slider on the band display and move it back and forth until you’ve hit the exact frequency you’re looking for (good luck with that) unless you have the station setup as a preset.
The manual explains how there is an “excellent” EQ system built in to the software. I agree, so long as the definition of excellent is a button that doesn’t work. Pressing the EQ button on any PC’s I used the software on did nothing. Perhaps this is only for the Mac-ified.
Time shifting, a core function of the radioSHARK, is turned off by default. Turning it on requires going into the preferences (for which there is no button) and turning it on. It then defaults to using every single byte of free space on your primary drive as the time shift swap file. You might want to change that. When setting Time Shift, don’t touch anything else in preferences before you click OK or it will turn Time Shift back off. Your time shift file only uses WAV, so expect your gritty, static-ridden AM talk radio to consume 10MB PER MINUTE!
The entire time shifting scrubber consists of a line and a dot. There is no indication of where you are, how much is/was recorded, or the amount of time the line represents. Tivo it is not. This is probably one of the most disappointing aspects of the whole system. (No wait, that would be scheduling.) Clicking on the time shift line doesn’t cause the app to jump to that location, it causes the dot to jump forward or back some unknown amount, like a scrollbar.
Scheduling
Scheduling radio programs is the radioSHARK’s worst feature, which is ironic since that is the main function of the product. Had I not thrown out all the packaging, I would kick it back to Griffin for this alone.
Click the scheduling button and you get a bare-bones window showing your scheduled shows. On adding a new show to record, you may notice a few things missing. The duration choices from a dropdown are 15min, 30min, 1 hour, and 2 hours. Apparently you can type your own value in, but this is not at all intuitive for a dropdown box. Repeat options includes Non-Recurring, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly. If your desire is to get a radio show that only runs on weekdays, expect garbage to be recorded on weekends. It appears to save each radio program under the same name each time. So instead of something helpful, like calling my “Glenn Beck” recording “Glenn Beck 11-28-2004.wma”, it just overwrites the existing file. So much for building an archive.
For the PC version, the radioSHARK only records in WAV or WMA format. If your desire was to get an MP3 to listen to on your portable device, forget about it unless your device supports WMA or you have time to convert files. This will no doubt be a deal breaker for many potential buyers.
The rest of the interface is just sloppy. When selecting a preset, say 1040 AM, the band and frequency indicators jump to Band: FM, Frequency: 1.0.
When starting the program, the tick mark on the dial is often in the wrong place, and doesn’t refresh until you’ve moved it.
When recording a radio show, there is also no way to stop recording it or to even close the program. One would expect it to alert the user with a message saying “Closing radioSHARK will stop current recording.” Or something to that effect. It does not though, it says “Close not allowed during recording”. Insult to injury is that there is no way to stop a recording in progress short of a three finger salute and ending the process.
When setting up the radioSHARK to record during the night, the next morning I came in to find only part of the interface showing and the entire app seemingly locked up. Another three finger salute to close.
Other times I found the scrollwheel on my mouse was controlling the volume on the radioSHARK, but while I was browsing the web or using another application.
Often when automatically recording, it would be recording one station (say, 1040 AM) and but show it as being tuned to 97.9 FM.
Finally, expect the application to crash several times per day.
Conclusion
The Griffin radioSHARK has “jumped the shark” as they say. It gets an A for effort, an F for execution, and a blanket party for the software. I still hold on to hope that the software can be fixed in the future, but I doubt they can get rid of the AM hum by tweaking the software. Granted this is the first DRR (digital radio recorder) on the market in the U.S., using 1.0.52 software, but still, that is just no excuse for such a shoddy product. Perhaps a version 2.0 (hardware AND software) would be better, but honestly I would rather see another company take a shot, especially Tivo.
Note: I contacted Griffin tech support for information on eliminating the buzz in AM reception. Three days later, they have still not even acknowledged that my email was received.
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You know... this is kick ass technology, exactly what is needed for both the iPod and Computers. I listen to the CBC when I can, but the shows I really want to listen to like the Vinyl Cafe and Ideas I always seem to miss. This is perfect.
Yeah, I've read a number of reviews (iPodLounge gave it an A-). Like I mentioned above, this gift is intended for my dad, who enjoys listening to CBC and local talk radio. I realize that there are other programs and options out there, but I want something that my dad, the semi-technophobe that he is, can handle relatively easily. Thank you for the warning sinjin, but I've done my homework too .
So, back to my original question, does anyone know where I can get my hands on one of these in time for Christmas?
__________________
Black Macbook Core 2 Duo
Upgraded Sawtooth (900 Mhz)
12" 867 Mhz PowerBook - RIP
After I saw your message, I remember reading a thread not too long ago with a list of Canadian price comparison sites ... I was able to find it, and through it I got a better deal (here's the thread for anyone who's interested).
Thanks to everyone for their help.
__________________
Black Macbook Core 2 Duo
Upgraded Sawtooth (900 Mhz)
12" 867 Mhz PowerBook - RIP
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