[cr-india] Radio Station-in-a-box debuts at Comdex

[Barry Rueger]

The website claims that "The WorldVibrations Radio Station is an 
affordable unit about the size of a VCR that replaces two rooms full 
of equipment, an on-air studio and a production studio,"   

Claims like this make me a little crazy.

When this popped up last week I took the time to look though the  
WorldVibrations website - all four pages of it. As far as I can tell 
from the sketchy information provided $2,495 buys you a box that will 
play back sound files and nothing more. 

To use this as a radio station, you would need to add microphones, a 
mixer, CD players, speakers, a computer monitor, mouse and keyboard, 
audio processing, a transmitter and an antenna. You could do the the 
same thing with about any PC, but for much less money. 

The website doesn't actually tell you much about the audio hardware 
(I assume it's built into the motherboard), how many of the 
apparently balanced mic inputs there are, and what kind of audio 
output connector is built in (mini-plug??). It also says nothing 
specific about the software that they have included.  

That vagueness does not inspire much confidence.  

The one page FAQ, has only one paragraph dedicated to explaining the 
complexities of actually obtaining an FM licence.  

I've worked with dozens of groups who have started real honest to god 
radio stations.  Promotional garbage like this just makes our work 
that much harder by giving the impression that you can buy one box 
and be on the air in a couple weeks.  

Some of these groups have started stations on a shoestring, but they 
did it by being frugal and by using the simplest possible equipment - 
not buy buying a souped up PC.

So I guess in summary - be very skeptical of anyone who claims to 
sell a "radio station in a box".   

Barry


===================================
Barry Rueger
Community-Media.com
107 Victoria Avenue South, Hamilton, Ontario L8N 2S9
Phone: 905-308-9179      Fax: 905-308-9732 
Cel: 905-979-6677
http://www.community-media.com
AIM ID: AppalBarry