LAS VEGAS —
With the popularity of Internet radio
streaming to PCs on the rise, CE companies are trying
to take PCs out of the equation.
Companies such as Grace Digital, Pure, Sherwood
and others are turning up at International CES to display
new tabletop Internet radios. Here are some of the new
products that dealers will find:
Grace Digital:
The company’s latest Internet radio
features 3.5-inch TFT color display and a Party Mode
button that syncs all radios in the Grace’s new lineup to
deliver the same program throughout the house. It can
be controlled from new apps loaded on iPhone/iPod
Touches and on Android phones. The radio streams Internet
stations as well as Pandora, Rhapsody, Sirius Internet
Radio, Live 365, iHeartradio, Weatherbug, NOAA,
NPR, BBC and other services. Additional details were
unavailable.
Pure:
The U.K.-based company debuted last year in
North America with the launch of three tabletop Internet
radios, which stream more than 15,000 Internet radio
stations, access on-demand podcasts, and tune into FM
radio stations.
This year, Pure is coming to CES to
launch two more Wi-Fi-equipped Internet
radios, one of which is its first
with iPod/iPhone dock. A third
new product is the company’s
first stand-alone iPod dock,
which connects to any music
system.
The two new Internet
radios — the Contour
with iPod/ iPhone
dock and the AC/
DC One Flow – also
access Pure’s new
cloud-based music
service, FlowSongs,
which lets consumers tag a track playing on any Internet
radio station or FM station, then buy the track directly.
Once purchased, the songs can be streamed on demand
from any Flow-equipped radio, and the
tracks can be downloaded in MP3 format
to a PC or Mac. The price of a download
was unavailable.
The $299-suggested Contour
features a black semicircle front
face with red accent. A pushto-
eject iPhone/iPod dock
emerges from the front of the
housing.
Contour features Class D amplifiers, 3.5mm auxiliary input, USB connector
for software upgrades and Ethernet
adapter; 3.5mm or RCA composite-video output,
and IR remote.
The AC/DC One Flow portable at a suggested
$149 accesses the same music sources as
the Contour, but iPod/iPhone-stored music is
reproduced through a 3.5mm aux input rather
than through an iPod/iPhone 30-pin dock connector.
The radio features black satin-touch
finish, interface with context-sensitive buttons,
and optional rechargeable ChargePak 40-
hour battery.
The stand-alone $99.99 i-20 iPod/iPhone
dock charges a docked device and connects
to any sound system’s analog or digital inputs.
It captures the PCM digital output of a
docked Apple device, then sends the audio in
digital form via its co-axial SPDIF and optical
TOSLINK outputs. A built-in digital-to-analog
converter sends audio through a pair of analog
RCA outputs.
Video outputs enable users to view stored
video on a TV via a multiway output socket that
supports both S-Video and component video
from the dock.
Sherwood:
The component-audio company’s
Internet streaming appliance is the iPod/
iPhone-docking iNet-2.0. It streams the Pandora
and Rhapsody music services, streams
news services, doubles as an 8-inch digital
photo frame, and features alarm clock functions.
Amplification is rated at 2×10 watts. It
was shown last year with Rhapsody and Napster.
Price and ship date were unavailable.
