Greetings to the Forum:

I got an E-mail about the pre-loaded MP3 player referenced in the link below from the senior citizens group I belong to (AMAC).

I don't know anything about the outfit that is offering the player, but I thought I'd pass this along for anyone who might be interested. If you click the link, it will give you a list of the old-time radio programs pre-loaded on the player.

http://www.libraryofradioclassics.com/

Just FYI.

Regards,

Thanks for the info to start! As someone who has been collecting radios shows for 40+years here are my concerns!! My first Issue is that there are only 900 shows on the player and there are 10,000 plus shows out there! 2nd issue for me is the player is not of that good a quality. I feel for $100 plus a person could do better buying a player of choice and down loading them off a service or the internet! However, I could see the appeal of this for someone who is not tech savy, but then what happens after you have listened to all the 900 shows??? Interesting to see this service being offered but they could certainly do a much better job for a much better price!! Thanks for posting it!

When I was on dialup, I'd head to archive.org and download OTR. I couldn't play them online due to slow connection, but could grab some in the background for later listening. Even after getting hi-speed, I kept doing this, since we used a player to listen to them at work and needed the shows as mp3 files anyway.

The biggest problem we had was variable audio quality. Some would be great, others so scratchy or poor audio they were unintelligible. A DVD we bought off ebay was the same way; just a mass download with no attempt to match volume levels or bass/treble balance. I ended up creating custom itunes equalizer settings for specific shows that were muted and bassy or shrill and loud.

Random play kept repeating shows we'd heard multiple times while others never played, so we kept manual track of where we left off. It still took several months of listening while at work to run through 700+ shows. But sometimes it was almost more work than the listening was worth.

Now, it's just easier to stream some online source and let them pick the shows. There's a few that do the legwork for you and pick shows of similar good quality and present them so you don't have to leap up and turn it down or up or crank the treble/bass around just to understand the actor's dialog from one show to the next.

A well-made plug-n-play jobbie might be worth it, though there's far cheaper alternatives. But there's just as good or better a chance that the makers of it just did a raw dump of free shows and you take the good with the bad.

-Ed

Thanks for the info!

That appears very similar to the "Time Traveler" radio concept available on Ebay. It's mentioned a couple a couple topics down under this heading, though the link provided is no longer active. Any "turn it on and play" device is handy, particularly if one isn't internet savvy, or simply doesn't want to fool with it. I bought one for that very reason, because I can take it camping or anywhere and listen.

Here's a link to a current listing for the "Time Traveler" so you can compare. I'm not affiliated with the seller other than buying one, but I can say I am still happy with mine and don't regret the purchase in the least. Plus it's a decent little FM radio.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Little-Red-Radi ... SwgQ9Vwj-X

I had not seen the little Time Travler radio before!! I like it and alot of shows!! Pretty nice!!!

Linda