RCA RIR205 Infinite Radio Tabletop Internet Radio with Wi-Fi Enabler (Black) Review

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(More customer reviews)The RIR205 looks good and seems to be well made. It can pickup most internet radio stations from around the world. That includes real radio stations if they are broadcasting live on the internet and also amateur stations being broadcast by individuals. Of course you can do the same thing with a PC but it's harder to do and you have to install different audio player programs, codecs and all sorts of things while the radio just works. It will even play BBC stations that I can't play on the PC because it says I'm not in the U.K. It has stereo speakers that provide good fidelity but they are small and not as loud as some other radios having just one big speaker. The radio will play Slacker Radio which isn't a real radio station but has almost any kind of music sort of like like XM or AOL radio. Slacker will usually work when other internet stations won't. They may have less bandwidth requirements or less overhead to play, I'm not sure. The radio has an alarm clock function but since it gets it's time from the internet I found that although the time is usually accurate it's not always reliable because it won't work if the internet out of service like mine frequently is.
Originally I purchased an RIR200 from J&R through Amazon but when I got it couldn't get it to work at all so I only gave it 1 star. I sent it back and it was replaced with an RIR205. Audiovox was good about replacing it and are more helpful than most other companies. The two radios seem to be identical except the 205 comes with it's own wireless router but I never got that. The new RIR205 wouldn't work at first either and even though I already had 3 older routers I had to buy a new WRT54G then the radio worked just fine. A lot of owners report having wifi connectivity problems with the RIR200 and that must be the reason why. The radio uses vtuner.com and rcainfiniteradio.com to get it's list of stations, not Reciva like a lot of other radios use. Vtuner doesn't quite have all the stations that Reciva does but generally works well and new stations can be added. You can go to Vtuner.com and try it out for free if you want to see if it gets your favorite stations or the kinds of music you like. You can also store Favorites that you listen to frequently but they go to the RCA website so the radio depends on being able to access a third party website everytime it does anything unlike some other models that store favorites locally in the radio's memory. This generally works well but can be a problem if the RCA or Vtuner websites are down for maintenance or unreachable. Also, since RCA sees everything you listen to they could possibly spy on you and keep a list of your radio listening habits. That could be a problem for owners who live in areas where the government considers some stations to be subversive.
This radio is made by Audiovox and sold as the Audiovox in Europe and as the Acoustic Research ARIRC200 in Canada. There is a Google Group for the Canadian version called "Acoustic Research ARIRC200 Internet Radio" that has discussions of that version. There are a lot more reviews of the RIR200 on Amazon listed as product B0016OK5O0. If you search for B0016OK5O0 you can find them.


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Listen to thousands of global music and talk stations with the RIR205 Infinite Radio by RCA.You can listen to web-only streams, as well as AM/FM transmissions broadcasted over the internet from all over the world.Radio includes a WiFi enabler that easily connects to your home modem or router with a standard Ethernet cable.The radio then creates a wireless internet link to the RCA internet radio.The WiFi enabler provides a quick and easy wireless setup option right out of the box.If you are using the radio where WiFi is unavailable, you can simply plug an Ethernet cable from your modem or router to begin listening.You can choose from several audio sources including internet radio stations, local AM/FM stations, radios internal memory, USB input, or Slacker personal radio.Slacker personal radio is an internet radio service where you can create personal custom stations.Using Slacker you can tag the songs you love or ban the songs you dont.Slacker will then customize the music you listen to with every input you make so that the music played is narrowed to your preferred tastes and genres.Slacker offers over 100 genre stations, 10,000 artist stations and millions of tracks.The Infinite radio has 6 preset stations per audio source so that you can conveniently and quickly find the stations you enjoy the most with the push of a button.Enjoy on-demand weather through Weatherbug, giving you one-day, three-day forecasts and emergency alerts.The RIR205 has 512MB of built-in memory so that you can record approximately 10-hours of your favorite music from the internet radio or FM radio source.Use the personal online portal to customize your internet radio.Selections are made on the portal webpage and auto-synced to the radio.You can store your favorite presets and genres or add our own stations and URLs.

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RTX DUALjack RTX3241S - white Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Yes!!! It works!!!
The house I grew up in and lived in while going through college has only one phone jack in the entire house. This caused a lot of problems for me as a teenager when I wanted to call girls without my sisters listening in. I was really shy, it was hard enough to ask someone out without an audience, let alone with my six sisters listening and making comments about what I was saying while I did it. The lack of more phone jacks caused other less severe problems in college when I needed to get the internet at home (before high speed and wireless).
So, in the past I've tried these "turn an outlet into a phone jack" devices to try and get a phone jack in a more convienent place, and I have to say that in the past I've always been dissapointed with the results. The past devices (and most of the ones still on the market) use the power lines in your house to pass signals from your portable jack to a base station located near your real phone jack. The result is something that just barely works well enough for a static filled, difficult to understand, telephone conversation, and is completely unusable as far as a dial-up internet connection is concerned. Not only that, but as soon as someone turned on a vaccum, a fan, the dryer, or any big device anywhere in the house, it stopped working. (Not good when you're trying to ask someone out, and the phone line goes dead when your mom turns on the mix-master.)
I am happy to say that the "DualJack" is different. Now I'm finishing up grad school, far from home, and wanted to get my Dad a used imac for christmas so he could use the internet and send me emails. He's retired, and he can't afford a high speed cable modem to have a wireless router, and DSL isn't in his area. Dial-up is the only option, but, there's the same problem as when I lived there, only one phone jack, and no place near it to put a computer. I looked at everything around now days, and most of what's out there are still the power-line transmitters that don't work. THE ONLY THING THAT WILL WORK IS RADIO WAVES to transmit the singal from where you want the computer to be and where the phone jack is located. Some options out there required you to have another computer close to the jack with a wireless router to dial in and share the connection (the whole point is that there isn't room/don't want a computer by the jack). Others required you to pre-program a dialing device, which, based on reviews, all sounded dissappointing, difficult to set-up, and only worked well with a few ISPs. There is a device called the NEBO that's close to what you want, uses radio waves, but uses a low carrier frequency which will reduce your connection speed, and less likely to go through walls.
But the DualJack finally gets it right. It uses a 2.4Ghz radio frequency to transmit from the portable phone jack to the base unit, which is the same carrier frequency as used with wireless cards. It looks and sets up the same as the old "power line transmission" systems, but there's a big difference in the quality of the signal, and it's completely independant of any vaccumm cleaners, dryers, fans, mixers, or anything else you might be using in your house. The sound quality when using it for a phone I've found to be next to perfect, and when you're using it with a computer modem I found little or no reduction in your connection speed. My Dad's imac is set up with this thing down the hall from the phone jack, and it's getting an excellent dial-up connection. It works. Plain and simple.
There are only two complaints or words of caution that you should keep in mind. If I could I'd give this 4.5 instead of 5 stars. The first is that you should use a phone cord with 4 lines on the connector instead of two in the connection to the computer and between the jack and the base station. It doesn't matter if you're just going to use it as a phone, but I found it didn't work quite as well for a modem if you used a cord with only two lines in it. (I'm not sure what the techincal term is, but I'm talking about the number of little wires you see if you look at the end of the cord that goes into the jack). I think the cable that comes with the dualJack only had two lines, which is why I'm complaining. My second complaint is the price. $80 on sale? $100 regularly? This is basically the same technology as a 2.4GHz cordless phone, right, which you can get for a lot less than $80. Maybe there is something more to it I'm not seeing, some technical difficulty that had to be overcome, but I don't see why they need to charge that much. I don't see why it shouldn't be $50. However, if you keep in mind that it costs around $40 to $50 to buy something that DOESN'T WORK, spending $80 to buy the DualJack, which DOES WORK next to perfectly, isn't so bad, I guess.

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The RTX wireless DUALjack lets you add a telephone jack wherever you need one. Works with telephones, fax machines, satellite set top boxes (DISH, DirecTV), digital video recorders (TiVo). Plug & Play simple installation--no tools required. Eliminates unsightly wires. Secure, wireless, 2.4GHz radio technology. No connection fees or service calls. Superior to power line carrier (PLC) type solutions that can be affected by noise on the power lines.110V operation (built-in energy efficient power supply).Includes base unit, extension unit, telephone cord, and manual. Support available on-line (www.dualjack.com) and through 1-800 number.

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