Regarding Reciva ... they still do station maintenance themselves - in addition to the small number of outside volunteers. The volunteers are great for one off requests and occasional bulk updates (e.g. if one broadcaster changes all of their stream URLs from one format to another in a predictable way) but importing large lists or editing stations with more than one stream URL still requires Reciva (Qualcomm is the parent nowadays) to do the updates.
The Logitech Squeezebox approach is very good. They have TuneIn (tuneIn.com) as their built-in station library but have some broadcasters available without using TuneIn and, for people who run LMS/SlimServer at home, provide a way for 3rd-parties to provide plug-ins that extend the capability. For example there is radiofeeds.co.uk that has a very good list of UK radio stations. I have volunteered on a number of different platforms over the years. The TuneIn (was still Radiotime when I started helping out) station maintenance interface was, for me, the best of the handful that I used and Reciva had the most friendly and responsive staff ... but I was the first volunteer on that system so perhaps had better service. Paul Webster > On 14 May 2019, at 05:46, Rob de Santos <rdesan...@afana.com> wrote: > > 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.) > _______________________________________________ > > > _______________________________________________ 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.
