Broadband internet radio is becoming increasingly popular these days, when compared to DAB radios. Internet is considered as an accepted platform for listening to radio as it comes with various advantages. Besides that, few forms of radio which it carries are only accessible through the internet.
Advantages
• High quality sound
Broadband internet radio offers higher audio quality than DAB radios. Since DAB uses the obsolete MP2 audio codec, the sound produced will not be as good as the sound produced by internet radio which uses advanced MP3, WMA and AAC/AAC+ audio codec’s. Internet radio stations that use bit rate of 128 kbps or higher will offer better sound quality.
• On-demand programmes
This option gives the listeners the freedom to listen again to their favourite shows. Internet radio streams are similar to the normal continuous live radio broadcast which means they are ‘live’. On-demand is just like video-on-demand, wherein the listeners are given the freedom to listen to their favourites among the available list of programmes. Systems that facilitate interactivity can alone support On-demand streams. Internet is one such a system that allows the data to travel in both directions, for instance, telling the server the programme preferred by the listener. BBC player is a good example that offers on-demand radio service known as BBC’s Listen Again service.
• More radio stations
The listeners get to select from a number of station options as it offers thousands of Internet radio stations covering various genres.
• Podcasts
Podcasts is another enhanced option offered, which are audio files normally available in the Mp3 format. They are downloaded to a computer. Just like internet radio station, there are innumerable podcast providers. Few people use these podcasts for audio blogging.
• Personalised radio stations
Personalised radio stations are gaining popularity which tracks down as to what music the user listens to and what tracks they fast forward on the personalised radio station. With regard to this information, a computer algorithm guesses the music tracks preferred by the listener and then plays them in the user’s personal radio station. last.fm and Pandora are examples of a personalised radio station.
Those apart, with the introduction of Wi-Fi Internet radios and Wi-Fi media adaptors which directly plugs into the Hi-Fi systems, you can listen to radio and work in the computer simultaneously. Various Wi-Fi radio devices enable people to listen to Internet radio stations, podcasts and on-demand programmes. Apart from that, there are options to include personalised radio stations.
Internet radio portals offering on-demand services
BBC iPlayer offers BBC’s Listen Again service which is completely integrated together with on-demand TV streams. The quality of the on-demand streams have been improved significantly.
Global Radio is considered to be the largest commercial radio offering on-demand streams for a number of its bigger stations including Classic FM, XFM, Capital Radio, Heart and Galaxy. These radio stations are available through the radio stations’ websites.
Shoutcast in a pretty good internet radio station with 20,000 streams and the radio stations are listed based on its genres and by default, it lists stations in order of their popularity. Information of the playing tracks is also provided.
AOL Radio deals with 200 stations covering various genres and they offer good streams as well.
iTunes is a user friendly Internet radio portal. They offer the station name, bit rate level and short details of the station.
The internet radio portal Reciva offers more than 10,000 stations and over 20,000 on-demand streams. It allows the user to search by location and by genre.
Multicast radio streams
In multicast, one stream is carried on any Internet link unlike in the unicast streaming distribution technology, wherein the broadcaster sends individual stream to each listener. Here, the broadcaster will send just one stream for each of its channels rather than tens of thousands of streams. This in turn reduces the bandwidth required by the broadcaster, enabling them to offer higher bit rate levels for the streams, increasing the audio quality.
This makes the multicast an efficient method for distributing live Internet radio (and TV) streams.
In comparison with DAB radio, broadband internet radio offers enhanced features and better audio quality.
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