Re: [Internetradio] vTuner and Frontier Silicon

[Jerry Berg]

Thanks for making some sense of this, John.  So my Sangean 
WFR-28 isn't quite a brick, but with only five presets, pretty 
close.  The only good news is that I use it mainly when I am on the 
computer, so the stations are still available that way.


Worth noting:  The vTuner database of stations is still 
online 



Jerry Berg

At 11:28 PM 5/13/2019, you wrote:
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.)

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Re: [Internetradio] vTuner and Frontier Silicon

[Paul Webster]

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  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  On Behalf Of 
> John Figliozzi
> Sent: Monday, May 13, 2019 11:28 PM
> To: internet discussion 
> 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 

Re: [Internetradio] vTuner and Frontier Silicon

[Rob de Santos via Internetradio]

--- 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  On Behalf Of John 
Figliozzi
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2019 11:28 PM
To: internet discussion 
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.)