Hack20.Record Radio Shows

Hack 20. Record Radio Shows

A variety of software programs enable your computer to make scheduled recordings of radio programs.

TiVo has grown in popularity over the past few years, and personal video recorders (PVRs) are proliferating as a must-have feature for set-top boxes. Naturally, consumers of audio content want the same features, and many PC programs have been developed to meet this demand.

The real key to a functional personal media recorder (PMR) is the database. It's quite easy to plug a radio into a sound card, tune it to a station, and record, but what makes the process more user friendly is to have the computer tune the channel automatically and provide the end user with a menu of choices. Also, as the success of TV Guide tells us, the information on what is playing is as valuable as the recording itself.

2.10.1. TiVo-Like Functionality for Radio

While there are a bunch of programs that find and record online radio stations, few of them control the radio to change the station, and almost none of them offer any sort of radio program listing. However, one subscription service, Radio Time (http://www.radiotime.com), does it all, and will provide you with an inexpensive radio tuner that looks conspicuously like the D-Link DSB-R100.

As Radio Time has to pay licensing fees for their database of program listings, they pass that cost on to the consumer in the form of a subscription service. For around $40 a year, you get access to their database of the programs in your area, and they will sell you the FM receiver hardware as well.

To use their system, you simply enter a Zip Code, and you get a list of radio stations in that area. The stations are displayed in a web interface and include many of the program search features you'd expect (by station, category, genre, etc.).

To use this interface on the road you must have mobile Internet access (discussed in Chapter 6), but programs you record, once set, record at their scheduled times regardless of connectivity. The service recommends broadband Internet access, because it can record a wide variety of Internet radio stations as well.

The real problem with timed recordings in the vehicle is not the Internet accessthe problem is that when your car is off, your computer is off, and thus your timed radio recordings will not record.

There are a couple of solutions to this dilemma. One is to simply do your timed recordings on your desktop PC, which always has power, and then transfer the resulting MP3s to your car PC [Hack #64].

Another approach is to use a car computer that wakes up on a schedule. Many PCs have a timed wakeup feature, but even these deep "sleep" modes draw too much current and will kill your car's battery over time. Some solutions to this problem are discussed in "Boot Your Car Computer on a Schedule" [Hack #47].