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Customers most agreed on the following attributes:
[1 of 1 customers found this review helpful]
from Walnut Creek, CA on 9/7/2007
Everything great - although tuning from station to station seems much more complicated than it needs to be.
from Philadelphia, PA on 3/20/2007
It has opened up a whole new world of entertainment for me. There are endless listening choices in static free, crystal clear sound.
from New Jersey on 2/27/2007
As an expat from the U.K. living in the States, one of the few things I miss is listening to BBC radio. With this device I can easily listen to BBC Radio 4 or 5 while I am sitting in my kitchen, without having the inconvenience of setting up a computer or trying to listen through tinny laptop speakers.
from santa barbara,ca on 2/20/2007
Terrific way to get KGO without having comp. on !!
Took a long time to figure out the controls and how to access the different fuctions, but I'm very pleased with the unit even though it is not Stereo capable.
from Salem, CT on 2/9/2007
A great product which we use everyday. The only down side is that it won't play i-Tunes MP3's due to security restrictions.
from Concord NC on 1/29/2007
To redress the balance of some of the other reviewers, I like this product. You have to be prepared to work at it a bit - you MUST upgrade the "firmware" to get it working properly (very easy process (5 - 15 mins depending on connection speed), but you must not cut the power while it's upgrading otherwise you could end up with an unuseable radio) - details of how to do this are in the "reciva" website (www.reciva.com). The website also allows you to choose a list of favorite stations which are then added to your radio's menu (giving many more options than the 10 pre sets available). You can get further into it by adding your own "stream" for radio stations not included in the reciva listing or which have 'dead' links. The sound quality is more than adequate for what it is - a table radio - and I'm interested to see how this develops as there is surely scope for a high quality tuner unit to be incorporated into a sound system. The ability to obtain BBC radio is a real pleasure for me as an ex pat living in the US. The feature that plays "on demand" material is great. I'd recommend this to anyone in the same boat. It's not perfect (so not 5 stars) - it needs a handle and battery operation and it does not connect to stations first time every time - but I'll live with this, as it delivers very well indeed, and well within the bounds of acceptability.
from Minnesota on 1/2/2007
The unit did work out of the box until I attempted after a few minutes to update the software as instructed. The radio then experienced a total system crash and is as a result not operable. Be sure never to disconnect the power during software update. The radio will stop working. After not getting a response to my e-mail I called the manufacturer in the UK. They are aware of the problem. When I suggested that they do something about the problem other then tell me to send the radio back to [...] they stated [...] in those exact words and hung up.
"It is a very cute gadget. I like its design (outside and internal) very much. It is very easy to setup and it does its job very nicely. Sound quality is very acceptable (I am not a sound connoisseur!). However, it carries the basic shortcomings of all devices that rely on the internet (TCP/IP) which is not necessarily a fault in the AE design. Depending on the station (broadcaster), the transmission is lost from time to time. Nevertheless, I am keeping it. I. Konuk"
"The radio works ok for those stations that work. I'm trying to connect to a major New York City radio station and the Reciva site has either the wrong url or or server identified and after a week of sending help emails there still has been no reply other than automated and the station is not available. The clock works like trash - read the user group messages most have written it off. Besides it a 24 hour clock so for American's getting use to 14:00 as 2 PM is not something of interest. Set up was easy, it sounds good, but there are many stations that the Reciva site lists as accessible but your AE Radio won't be able to connect too. Several- 6 or 8 major stations are not accessible in my one week of trying. Their ""help"" team does not exist and you can't just add a station, it takes forever to get a change completed. I should return this toy, its not ready for prime time but now I'm curious as to how long it will take for WCBS New York to be added even though the Recivia site says it is operational. Click play on their site and you'll see it doesn';t work but go to the radio with your computer and it works perfectly fine."