--- Begin Message ---
Thanks, John for update. The articles on the Dutch site were informative. I
tend to agree with the observations there and yours that the truth here is
somewhere in between all the accusations flying back and forth. The database
maintenance for all the online systems has always been an Achilles heel. None
of the manufacturers wanted to pay the freight for their firmware or the
database maintenance.
My sense is that we will soon be left with one less player in the game if
vTuner closes shop. Most of the maintenance to Reciva is now done by volunteers
(who do an admirable job, all things considered). TuneIn (the US company) is a
purely commercial operation at this point and not particularly easy to work
with as an end user. Work on the Logitech system continues as an open source
project. Slim pickings. Airable.radio seems small at this stage and it's too
early to see if they can get up to critical mass. Ultimately, some sort of user
selected database and maintenance may be all the devices will have in a year or
two.
Is there anyone who can reach out to the vTuner people and see if they can
preserve (archive) their database, at least? Perhaps ask if they would consider
working with the iradioforum crew? (Not speaking for anyone at iradioforum or
whether they would be interested.)
Also, articles at:
https://www.teltarif.de/wlanradio-internetradio-frontier-silicon-vtuner-airable/news/76539.html
(German language site)
https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2282513/frontier-silicon-portal-not-working/p1
--
-Rob de Santos
-----Original Message-----
From: Internetradio <internetradio-boun...@hard-core-dx.com> On Behalf Of John
Figliozzi
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2019 11:28 PM
To: internet discussion <internetradio@hard-core-dx.com>
Subject: [Internetradio] vTuner and Frontier Silicon
Late last week, I speculated in a comment in the SWLing Post that a May 1
vTuner 11 hour outage and a subsequent and sudden decision by several of its
former internet radio manufacturer users to drop and replace it was possibly
related to a financial dispute of some kind.
One of the radio manufacturers claimed that while vTuner had been a reliable
partner for two decades, subsequent management was stating that it could not
guarantee that the service would be continuing indefinitely due to inadequate
funding. That manufacturer implied that the outage, a demand from vTuner for
increased payment and the claimed potential for continued service interruptions
and even cancellation were related incidents.
An article dated May 12, 2019 on radiovisie.eu in Dutch fills in a lot of the
blanks. While vTuner has had the most accurate and reliable catalog of
internet radio streams worldwide, companies had been starting to abandon it.
The current management of vTuner, also in a comment on the SWLing Post, claimed
that former employees are pirating its information and poaching its clients.
The Post expressed frustration with the low rate of payment and increasing
expenses.
Bose and Yamaha ended their agreements with vTuner in 2018. But the big blow
came when Frontier Silicon, which has been an important development partner for
vTuner for two decades, determined that vTuner was to blame for the May 1 11
hour outage that affected hundreds of thousand IP radio devices. The dispute
apparently escalated in subsequent days to the point where Frontier decided to
immediately and without prior warning switch to a new provider. That provider
is a little known entity called airable.radio and offers far less in terms of
user flexibility at least at this point in time.
For its part, Frontier claims it had to move quickly to avoid the devices of
its clients becoming completely unusable. vTuner claims it will probably have
to close down soon given the current situation. Its CEO claims that, “The
electronic consumer companies want everything for free, no matter how bad the
quality of service is.”
The move to airable.radio does represent a cheapening of the internet radio
experience, a regrettable development given the expense involved in purchasing
one of these devices. The article in radiovisie.eu says that there is
increasing pressure on manufacturers to give users the option of selecting
their own portals and using multiple portals instead of having to rely on the
manufacturer’s choice of portals.
This situation is a watershed moment for IP radio in general and internet radio
manufacturers in particular. Absent a better solution that equals the
expectations of those paying high prices for these quality units, this sector
could be in dire trouble especially considering the competition presented by
other radio playing devices.
(There are two informative articles on this topic in radiovisie.eu which, in
order to read, the reader must first translate the Dutch language articles to
English. The airable.radio website appears to be only a placeholder with no
information or details about its database.)
_______________________________________________
--- End Message ---
_______________________________________________
Internetradio mailing list
Internetradio@hard-core-dx.com
http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/internetradio
To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to
internetradio-requ...@hard-core-dx.com?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL
shown above.
