I have a Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 that
holds 20 GB. I downloaded and installed
its newest firmware (version 1.40.06p)
which solved two shortcomings and allows
me to use the player as a quasi-Tivo for
radio. The NJB3 costs about $270, but less
on eBay.

The first former shortcoming: on long walks,
the player would often freeze (apparently
due to the motion) and require rebooting.
This no longer happens.

The second former shortcoming: the player would
record for a maximum of only 10 hours. The
new firmware allows "continuous" recording,
which means that at the 10-hour point,
it finishes its file and starts a new one,
and will do so repeatedly every 10 hours
until I stop it or until the battery dies
(although I always record with the NJB3's AC
adapter attached) or until it runs out of
disk space (the player holds about 300
hours of MP3s at 128 kbps).

Here's how I do "Tivo": I put a radio on KQED-FM
and patch its earphone output to the NJB3's
line-in jack, and set the NJB3 on continuous
recording. A day or even a few days later,
I stop the NJB3 and can then easily locate
the programs that I want to hear, because each
file recorded by the NJB is automatically tagged
with its duration and its ending time. And as with
Tivo, I can fast forward through portions that don't
interest me.

The reason that this can work for radio is
because audio files take up so much less disk space
than video files. Tivo would need an enourmous
hard drive or array of hard drives to afford
you the luxury of taping TV continuously; this
luxury does exist with radio on the NJB3.

The NJB3 records in MP3 stereo at bit rates of
between 64 kbps and 320 kbps.

The drawbacks:

(A) The NJB3 can't be programmed to switch
stations, of course, so for this radio
scheme to work, you'd need to have one
station that airs enough programs that you
want to hear to make it worthwhile; KQED-FM
is such a station for me. Alternatively,
you could switch stations on the radio
manually once in a while, but most people
would find that tedious to do or difficult
to remember to do. Or maybe you'd only make
shorter recordings -- say, of KALW's overnight
programming.

(B) The NJB3's internal clock gains about 1
minute per week, which is atrocious accuracy
(my $20 Casio watch gains only 1 second per
week).

(C) Each time the NJB3 reaches the 10-hour
mark, it takes about 2½ seconds to get a
new file going.

Serendipitously, items (B) and (C) partly
cancel one another out. For example, on
a 100-hour recording stretch (~4 days),
(B) would result in the time advancing
by about 36 seconds, while (C) would
retard the time by about 23 seconds.
The net effect is that the time in the
recordings would advance by about 13
seconds during the 100 hours: a minor
annoyance.

Overall, I find the NJB3 used in this way
to be superior to Pogo's Radio YourWay,
which records only in mono at a maximum of
32 kbps. David Pogue wrote this review of
Radio YourWay in the Feb. 26 N.Y. Times:

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YOU'VE heard of occupational hazards like tennis elbow, runner's knee,
footballer's ankle. But those ailments pale next to the agony of the
TiVo twitch.

This recently diagnosed condition is exhibited by owners of digital
video recorders like TiVo and ReplayTV. Having become addicted to the
seven-second replay button - an essential movie-watching tool in this
era of special effects and mumbled dialogue - TiVo twitch sufferers
are often seen reflexively pressing a nonexistent seven-second replay
button, even when they're not in front of the television. Their brains
helplessly fire the deeply ingrained "Let me catch that again" command
when they're listening to the car radio, enduring a flaky cellphone
connection or savoring a hard-won apology from a spouse.

Truth is, you can't blame the brain for misfiring. It's bizarre that
five years into the digital video-recorder era, you still can't buy a
digital VCR for radio. Why has the electronics industry developed so
many machines that let us time-shift Dr. Phil and "Saturday Night
Live," but so few that do so for Dr. Joy Browne and "Science Friday"?

Actually, there is one such device. Radio YourWay (pogoproducts.com)
looks at first glance like a pocket-size (2.2 by 3.9 by 0.7 inches)
AM-FM transistor radio, which, in part, it is. But it also contains a
built-in timer, so that you can set up a schedule for recording radio
broadcasts. Programming it is exactly as easy - or as difficult - as
programming a VCR, except that it uses a military-style 24-hour clock
instead of AM and PM designations.

At the specified time, the radio turns itself on. It tunes in the
station, records for the requested interval and then turns off.

Once you've captured a show, you can play it back at a more convenient
time (or in an area with no reception), pause it while you take a
shower or a meeting, fast-forward through the ads, or even archive it
to a Windows PC using a U.S.B. cable.

As if all this weren't enticing enough, the Radio YourWay (RYW) has a
built-in microphone that captures voice notes with a single button
press. It, too, can record according to a schedule, a feature sure to
be a hit with private investigators and spies.

There's also a line input that can record from CD players and other
gear, and even a small but crisp-sounding speaker so that you don't
have to wedge earbuds into your ear canals every time you want a
playback. (Take that, iPod!)

But wait, there's more. The RYW can also play MP3 music files from
your computer and even act as an external PC hard drive for
transporting data files from place to place. All of this comes in a
package about the size of a deck of cards for $150 (for the
32-megabyte model, which holds 4.5 hours of recordings) or $200 (128
megabytes, 18 hours). Both models accept Secure Digital memory cards
that can hold even more recordings.

The bad news is that, well, that's all the good news. Despite the
overwhelming brilliance of the concept, the rest of the story is all
downhill.

The first devastating discovery is the recording quality. Now, MP3
music fans measure quality in kilobits per second (Kbps), a gauge of
how much computer data is used to represent the music. They record
music at 192 Kbps for great quality; 128 Kbps to save space on their
music players, at some cost to sonic quality; and 96 Kpbs when they
just want a beat to jog to.

By contrast, the RYW records in mono, and at - get this - 32 Kbps.
Recorded music sounds like muffled party tunes coming through your
wall from the apartment next door.

Talk radio doesn't suffer nearly as much. It still sounds much duller
than the original broadcast, but it's tolerable. As Captain Kirk might
say, "Set expectations to Low."

Reception is another problem. In a neighborhood where my Toyota
Corolla receives nine AM stations clearly, the RYW pulls in only
three. You get no FM reception at all unless you plug in either the
earbuds (whose cord is an antenna) or the included FM antenna (also a
cord) - and even then, the stations and their signal strength are
limited. At Yahoo's helpful Radio YourWay bulletin board
(groups.yahoo.com/group/radioyourway), the surprisingly polarized fans
and foes describe delicate window-sill positioning, buying stronger
antennas, and other workarounds.

Another delicate subject is battery life. The manufacturer estimates
that a pair of AAA's will drive the device for 9 to 11 hours; in the
real world, that's optimistic by a couple of hours. Sooner or later,
you'll realize that a set of rechargeable AAA-size NiMH's is an
essential accessory.

It's too bad that there's no backlighting; you can see the screen and
buttons only in good light. In general, though, the hardware design is
rewarding and logical. How many other music players, for example,
offer the luxury of separate previous-track and next-track buttons
(| and |) and rewind and fast-forward buttons ( and )?

But the software needs work. The crisp liquid crystal display provides
no information about when a recording was made or from what radio
station. And while you can load MP3 files onto the player from a PC,
using the included Windows software, the player can't show you song or
album names.

If you turn the player off, it remembers where you were in a
recording. (Pogo added this feature in a late-2003 "firmware upgrade."
New players come with it; older players must be upgraded at the
factory, which will cost you $10.)

But here's another gripe that's loudly expressed online: In all other
circumstances, the player doesn't "bookmark" your spot. If you listen
to the first half of a recording (say, "Car Talk"), switch to live
radio or another recording, and then return to "Car Talk," you have to
start from the beginning or manually fast-forward to the spot where
you stopped.

Finally, the RYW records in a proprietary audio format called RVF.
Pogo's transfer software can convert your recordings into standard WAV
files on your PC. But what most people want, of course, isn't
space-hogging WAV files, but the more compact MP3 format - and getting
to MP3 requires two separate conversions. (Or one smart download of
RVFMP3, a free RVF-to-MP3 converter available from
www.eonet.ne.jp/~y-katow.) Even the manual seems to be
excellence-phobic. It's filled with punctuation gems: "It will seem
like you are changing the start time when setting the ending time but
trust us you are setting the ending time."

In short, almost every aspect of Radio YourWay needs improvement. But
what's the alternative? Music players like the Samsung YP-910 GS can
record from the radio, but only FM and not on a schedule; software
like Replay Radio can record on a schedule, but only from Web-based
stations or from external radio tuners, and only with a PC.

And when you're the only game in town, you may not be in any
particular hurry to fix the glitches. (Insert your own Microsoft joke
here.)

You'll wish that Pogo had polished the thing up, improved the
recording quality and added a backlight. But if you can find a spot
where the reception is good, and if the broadcasts you want to
time-shift are primarily talk shows, you'll have to admit that the
compact, rugged, extremely versatile Radio YourWay does what it's
supposed to. It may not be radio your way, but it's at least radio a
better way.

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1366294709

Mark,

Have you tried continuous recording in WAV format? Does this format
also suffer from the 2-3 second gap in recording while the file is
being saved?

Thanks,
Flintstone