Review: Tevion Internet Radio and Media Player
Last week Aldi had a £50 internet radio and media player on offer. I’ve been looking at a Squeezebox for a while, but that still requires an amplifier of some sort, and it’d be redundant if and when I sorted out a media centre in the main room. Plus it’d be nice to wake up to stations all over the country, even world.
I’ve bought a Tevion product before - a digital radio in July. I keep meaning to finish the review of that, but it’s been brilliant so far. This internet radio uses the same design, and the software is similar. The main difference is the lack of a battery compartment, and it only does FM radio - not DAB. That’s a shame, but it’s easy to see why. I’ll cover the hardware, the Reciva service, listening to stations (and on demand, which is brilliant), adding streams and podcasts and playing your music collection.
The Hardware
On the way out of the store I had a peek in the box - it looked like it had been opened before. Getting home confirmed that, but it was a dream to set up. It feels heavy and well built, and I assume the antenna is for FM radio rather than wifi. There’s not a lot going on in the box - just the radio, the power adaptor, the manual and packing material.
There’s some little rubber feet, and it feels sturdy when you use it. Earlier in the year I looked at a few internet radios and they shot across the surface when you tried to press a button. Not so with this Tevion model. The buttons are a little clunky and you don’t always get a response.
The speakers / overall sound is very average, but no different from my clock radio which this is replacing. Fine for kitchen/bedroom environments.
Switching on the first time
On turning it on there’s an FM radio, which is simple enough. It defaulted to 108.00FM, and going down a few steps to Durham FM confirmed it was working fine.
On pressing the IR button, it’ll switch to internet radio, search for networks and come back with a list. I confirmed the network, then put in the WEP key. After a little while it changed to ‘Network OK’. On pressing select you can go down the stations menu, at which time it connects to the Reciva service to download a list of stations.
This was suprisingly quick. You can then browse by Genre or Country. The selection is impressive, and I’ve not yet not been able to find a station I listen to missing.
Reciva
What’s been really interesting is the Reciva service. Reciva supplies the database of stations, an area for users to login and add streams, favourite stations and podcasts and the actual brains of the radio to the manufacturer. I signed up to Reciva last night and set up some stations and podcasts, and then followed the manual to get the registration code and serial number from the radio.
Add this to the members area on the Reciva site, power off the radio at the wall and back on (to force the radio to download a list of stations again) and the information is automatically pulled down. Once this was done I played a few stations and streams with no problem, and was especially impressed with the podcasts feature. I download a lot of daily news podcasts and never listen to them - this could be really good to go to bed to, especially as you don’t need to download them locally first - the radio picks them up from Reciva and just starts playing them.
Listening to Stations
Tuning into stations is really easy to do. Just press select, choose Genre or Country and keep going until you find a station. Connection is almost instantaneous on some stations, but buffering for 10-15 seconds isn’t uncommon. I listened for a few hours today and didn’t have any stations buffering once the stream started.
On the BBC stations you get an option of Real, WMA and On Demand. Selecting On Demand comes back with a list of programmes available for listen again, and even more impressive is that you can pause them with the play/pause/stop/forward/back buttons. When you select a programme you can even specify the start time, which is a nice touch. These programmes sound about the same as anything else through the speakers.
Listening to a Music Library
The documentation for setting this up is pretty decent. I had some troubles to start with owing to an old LAN configuration, but passed that and through UPnP I was listening to all sorts of music I forgot I had on various hard drives.
Conclusion
This is a brilliant bit of kit. It’s really excited me about what radio can be with the internet, partly for the convenience of listening to podcasts almost as easily as Radio 4 live. I’ve not really found a breakfast show on local DAB or FM that I like waking up to, so am thinking of tuning into a random station every night and letting the radio wake me up at 6am with the internet radio option.
What would really make it brilliant is the ability to set up alarms with a station (say, weekdays, choose Original 106 at 7am, Saturday choose BBC Radio 2 at 6am and Sunday choose Einslive at 8am). I find the internet radio slow to start at times - I understand other models with the Reciva software are much quicker. Overall, I think it’s well worth the £50.
I’ve been using the radio for about a week now, and am still impressed. For a few days it wouldn’t connect to the Wireless network on its own, but this seems to have cleared and it’s now great. Some stations buffer a fair bit, which is annoying, but some not at all. The main drawback is still the slow startup time, but I’d consider a Reciva radio again in the future.
Del.icio.us | Technorati | Digg | Slashdot
James covers all the main areas of what is a wonderful radio. The instructions that come with the Radio are fairly clear although could be much better. After entering the WEP code, I did have initial problems establishing a connection but this was solved when my son informed me that I needed to push a button on my router.
Well done James on your report. Paul
Comment by Paul Yeoman — January 12, 2008 @ 2:02 am
Hi
I have one of these and I am using it with WPA2 after upgrading the firmware. Only complication is that you need to connect it to e.g. a WEP network to do the firmware upgrade.
The Reciva portal is of course excellent.
I have recommended this radio to a number of my friends.
Kevin Flood
Comment by Kevin Flood — January 25, 2008 @ 12:58 pm
Hi Paul - thanks for your comment! I too found that with the instructions, although haven’t needed to look at them since writing this post.
Hi Kevin - thanks for your comment. That’s an interesting point about WPA2. I’m a little too scared to try updating the firmware at the moment.
All in all this is still a great radio. Every now and again it has problems connecting to the network, and the startup time is a bit slow, but I’d still recommend it and would love another set.
Comment by James Burrage — January 29, 2008 @ 10:59 pm
well mine freezes up all the time…on my second and it is not so bad…..
Comment by jim — February 3, 2008 @ 9:15 pm
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your comment. Mine has frozen up once since I bought it (last night infact) - had to unplug it at the wall. A bit of a pain, and add the startup time, then the Reciva update…
Comment by James Burrage — February 3, 2008 @ 9:19 pm
Hi
I just bought one of these radios today been looking at internet radio for about a week now and as my wife is very pro internet having amassed a fair bit of music on our home pc I thought it woud be good to stream this down to our conservatory I have yet to find out about connectivity ie extra speakers and linking up ipod etc BT do one of these internet radios that costs about £90.00 and gets good reviews so it would be interesting to see how the ALDI version compares.
Comment by James Barr — April 12, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
Its a great little device, and for £49.99 it certainly represent great value for money. To be honest I’m not a huge Aldi fan but its the second device that I have bought from them and they are not s be sniffed at.
With the three year warranty and reasonable sound, you cant go wrong. Two chums of mine bought the Roberts radio at about £200. Im yet to gloat over the £150 saving….!!
Comment by Jonathan Farber — April 12, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
Hi James - thanks for the comment.
The radio can play MP3s straight off the computer, and it actually works pretty well. Have a look in the manual at the bit about UPnP? Be interested to hear how you get on.
There is a headphones jack on the back, so you can either plugin a pair of active speakers (that is, speakers which have their own power supply or batteries), or use the aux input on a Hi-Fi system.
Thanks for the comment, Jonathon. I think it’s a great little set (it now lives in the bedroom), and would be very happy paying that again for another Reciva radio from Aldi.
Comment by James Burrage — April 13, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
Apparently Aldi are now selling these for £29.99
Comment by Dave Dixson — May 26, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
Hi James
Good review, and I agree with you - this is a great piece of kit. However, like you, I didn’t think the sound was too great either, and I also suffered from the odd connection lapse and the buffering issue due to weak signal strength. I’ve done a few ’simple’ modifications with this little radio to make it sound better (added smoothing capacitors to the power supply, an rfi choke to the power lead, and bass ports/damping to the cabinet). To stop the buffering issue, I also did an aerial modification which improves reception by about 40%… since the reception is greatly improved, the radio connects a lot more reliably, it allows the radio to be used further away from the router (in areas where an unmodified one won’t work at all), and it all but stops the ‘buffering’ issue since the signal strength is much improved.
Best
Keith.
Comment by Keith Burton — July 21, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
How did you do the “aerial modification” ? please explain. Thanks.
Comment by Lior Shanan — August 13, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
hi,
I bought one 2 days ago cost £29.99 which is interesting as they have only just been reduced this week in my local aldi . Set up worked perfectly, the sound is fine for such a small set. It is slow though , if you start pushing buttons too quickly it does not respond but at 30 quid!, I am looking forward to trying to access my media libaray. I live in a poor reception area , my dab picks up only 3 stations so internet must be the way forward. just one observation not all BBC stations send at a high bit rate so quality varies.
Comment by DAVE HUGHES — August 21, 2008 @ 11:37 pm
Just bought this device for 19.99 in local Newcastle Aldi. It was last example, display example actually. I was thinking about this device long time ago, since it was over 60 quids, but fortunately my patience paid off. Yes, the device has some glitches, sometime freezes, but generally works fine and I am happy to listen radio stations from back home without computer. Support for podcasts is great, and my only concern is Reciva website, as I found that it can be offline causally, and the device is almost useless without their servers. Anyway, good piece of hardware for less than 20 quids. Sorry about my English.
Comment by Nenad — August 30, 2008 @ 7:29 pm
Just bought this radio from Aldi for £19.99, pretty awesome for under £20. Internet radio is the way forward, BBC on demand rocks, buy this if you can!
Comment by Tony — September 23, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
To Nenad- from my experience the Reciva webiste is very rarely off. I use it alot to update my list of stations (add new ones and delete stations that do not seem to work when I tune in). I have also set up a few podcast (learn German etc.)- works well.
Not many notice the possibility of changing the bass / treble by presseing the select button - sometimes improves the sound considerably.
Comment by Lior Shanan — October 23, 2008 @ 8:45 am