Internet Radio on a Real Radio

I'm in Huntington Beach, California for DEMOfall--a neat little conference that's a launching pad for new tech products of all sorts. I'll reporting on the good, the bad, the intriguing, and the ugly over the next couple of days. (Full disclosure: The show is put on by a sister company of PC World.)

So far, the show is young and I've only seen one product--Roku's SoundBridge Radio. It's a spinoff of the SoundBridge, one of the nicest music-streaming devices, and as its name suggests, it's a radio. A clock radio, actually--one that does AM, FM, music off your PC's hard drive, and Internet radio stations.

The SoundBridge Radio aims to compete in the class of compact, upscale table radios that also includes products such as Bose's Wave Radio II, Tivoli Audio's Henry Kloss Model One, and Boston Acoustics' Recepter. Like those radios, the SoundBridge is meant to live unobtrusively in crowded places (think a bedroom dresser or a kitchen counter), it's low-key and purposeful rather than flashy, and it has an emphasis on good sound from a small box. It has a sizable display that's reminsicent of the other SoundBridge models. (This one autodims at night--nice touch.)

Unlike its rivals, the SoundBridge is a PC peripheral--it has built-in Wi-Fi and can stream your own music collection (unprotected files and those using Windows Media Player 10 rights management), services such as Rhapsody, and Internet radio stations. (It can cleverly use iTunes as a server, but--like every other streaming device that isn't made by Apple--can't play copy-protected songs from the iTunes Music Store.)

The SoundBridge Radio has stereo speakers and a subwoofer, an SD slot that lets you play music directly from an SD slot, a headphone jack, a remote control, and enough buttons for eighteen presets. The pre-production unit I saw was good-looking in a conservative way, and as someone who does most of my at-home music listening in places other than the living room, I could see a device like this making sense. (As Roku founder Anthony Wood noted to me, it's, broadly speaking, the same good idea as the Kerbango radio--one of those before-its-time products that was much-hyped about five years ago, but which never actually hit the market.)

The catch here is the SoundBridge Radio's pricetag--$400, which makes it $50 more than Bose's Wave Radio, the costliest of the more traditional posh tabeltop radios. There's a pre-release offer at the moment that knocks $50 off the price. (Random side note: I have one of Boston's entry-level Recepter models, which I bought for $129; it does only plain ol' AM and FM, but does them wonderfully well--and it has one of the best user interfaces on any consumer electronics device I own.)

If Roku's other products are any sign, the SoundBridge Radio's price will come down by at least $100 at some point...maybe soon. Then again, $400 is also the cost of a 60GB iPod. And if you're a homebody rather than the out-and-about type, this gadget might bring you more enjoyment than a portable player. It's due to ship in November.