Product summary
The good: Wi-Fi radio with an alarm clock design; Slacker streaming; graphical weather updates; USB port for playing MP3, WMA, and Real Audio files; AM/FM tuner; can record Internet radio and AM/FM content to internal memory; relatively inexpensive.
The bad: Annoying hiss audible when music isn't playing; connectivity seems less reliable than other radios; no dual-alarm functionality; has a cheap look and feel.
The bottom line: The Acoustic Research ARIR200 offers lots of unique features with an alarm clock-friendly design, but it has a few quirks and shortcomings that keep us from wholeheartedly recommending it.
Specifications: Product type: Network audio player / clock radio / digital player ; Sound output mode: Stereo ; Amplifier total output power: 4 Watt ; See full specs
Price range: $96.37 - $114.99 check prices
CNET editors' review
* Reviewed by:
Matthew Moskovciak
* Edited by:
John P. Falcone
* Reviewed on: 07/27/2009
Wi-Fi radios would seem to be a perfect bedside companion, but surprisingly few of them are designed to work as an alarm clock. The Acoustic Research ARIR200 is one of few that is designed to (at least try to) wake you up in the morning, with a big snooze button on top and easy access to the alarm via buttons on the top. In addition, the ARIR200 is packed with many features not seen even on more expensive radios, including the ability to record stations to its internal memory, Slacker streaming, and weather updates--all for a very reasonable street price of about $100. So why the half-hearted praise? Unfortunately we ran into some connectivity problems (although only at the office) and the ARIR200 tends to emit a hissing sound that's annoying even at this price. We were also disappointed that Acoustic Research didn't throw in dual alarm functionality, especially because it's available on the competing Aluratek Internet Radio. The Acoustic Research ARIR200 doesn't have any deal-breaking flaws and the price is right, but a few critical improvements would have made us like it a lot more.
Design
The exterior design of a product is always subjective, but we'd be surprised if anyone considered the ARIR200 better than average. It has an unusual trapezoidal shape that tapers toward the top, and the majority of the unit is covered in glossy black plastic that attracts fingerprints very easily. That's more of a problem than usual, since you're likely to be groping the ARIR200 in a sleepy daze to hit the snooze button. Aside from smudges, there's no denying that the ARIR200 has a "cheap" look and feel, but it's worth noting that it doesn't affect the usability of the product..jpg)
The snooze button is prominent enough that you should be able to find it, even if you're half awake.
Like the competing Aluratek Internet Radio, the ARIR200 is designed to function as
an alarm clock, rather than a Wi-Fi radio with alarm functionality as an afterthought. On top of the unit there's a big snooze button, and there's a handy "alarm" button for quickly setting the alarm. The silver wheel on the far right is for volume. We also appreciated the easy access buttons that bring up weather and change sources..jpg)
The directional pad on the front of the unit is easy to use, but we found it a little slower than knob-based navigation offered on other units.
The rest of the controls are on the front panel. Buttons line the display on both sides, with the handy home button on the upper right hand corner. Below the display is a directional pad for navigating the menus. Although the directional pad works fine, we tend to find that knob-based navigation is faster on devices like these.
Features
The ARIR200 is technically a Wi-Fi radio, but to us its design really makes it feel more like an alarm clock with a Wi-Fi radio as a bonus. That's why we were a little disappointed that the ARIR200 only offers relatively basic alarm functionality. The best part is that you can set your alarm to go off to a variety of sources, like an Internet radio or Slacker station. However, there's no dual alarm functionality and you can't set alarms to reoccur on a specific schedule--for instance, only on the weekdays. The competing Aluratek Internet Radio offers dual alarms.
Particularly useful for an alarm clock is the ARIR200's weather feature, which uses the WeatherBug service. Press the weather button once to get today's forecast and once more to get a three-day forecast. There's a strange note in the manual that the ARIR200 comes with "complimentary four-year weather, on-demand subscription from WeatherBug." Yes, four years is a long time, but we still feel a little uneasy that the weather feature will stop working eventually, especially since we tend to use alarm clocks for decades.
Like every Wi-Fi radio, the ARIR200 can access thousands of Internet radio stations available for free online. If you can't stand what's available on AM/FM (neither can we) and don't want to pay for satellite radio (neither do we), there's plenty of great stations available online for just about everybody.
One of the unique features of the ARIR200 is its ability to record content, using its 512MB internal memory. We haven't seen this functionality on other Wi-Fi radios and perhaps for good reason; we didn't find ourselves using it very much during our testing. With so many ways to get access to music these days--from Rhapsody to LaLa to iTunes--the idea of recording songs off the radio just isn't as appealing as it was in 1980s with cassettes.
The ARIR200 is also one of the few Wi-Fi radios we've tested with access to the Slacker streaming music service. The basic service is free (after you sign up for an account) and you can choose from a large variety of genre-based radio stations. This is a contrast to the many other radios that offer Pandora; luckily, it's easy to try out both services online, so you can see which better fits your tastes..jpg)
Hanging off the back of the ARIR200 is the FM radio antenna.
Also somewhat unique on the ARIR200 is the fact that it includes both AM and FM tuners. As much as we like to rail on the current state of terrestrial radio, we actually did appreciate the functionality on the ARIR200. There are still some content that you can't get via Internet radio, most notably sports broadcasts. Likewise, if your Internet connection is flaky, you'll still be able to get your local stations..jpg)
Acoustic Research also throws in an AM antenna and an Ethernet cable with the ARIR200.
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There's a battery compartment on the bottom of the unit; in the event that you lose power, the batteries kick in.
The back panel contains some additional connectivity, including an Ethernet port, a headphone jack, and a USB port. The USB port can be used with USB memory drive filled with MP3, WMA, or Real Audio files; unfortunately that means songs purchased from iTunes (the AAC format) won't work. There's also a battery compartment in the bottom; the batteries act as a backup in case you lose power. If you're looking for compatibility with your iPod, Acoustic Research also offers the step-up ARIR600i ($200 list price), which adds an iPod dock to the ARIR200's feature set.
Performance
As essentially a souped-up alarm clock, we didn't have high expectations for the ARIR200's sound quality. We played through a bunch of different music styles, and while nothing wowed us, it never sounded awful either. There's very little bass and the sound isn't particularly detailed, but it's fine for casual listening in a bedroom. Overall, the sound quality was a little better than we were expecting, given the low-rent styling, but it's still nothing to get excited about.
While the sound quality is passable, we did notice that the ARIR200 emits a hissing sound in between tracks or when paused. To be fair, it's not that loud and when music is playing it covers it up, but it's hard to accept when other radios we test don't have the issue at all.
Our initial experience streaming music with the ARIR200 was disappointing. We had the ARIR200 set up in our CNET testing facilities and the ARIR200 had difficulty connecting to our network, wired or wirelessly. The few times when it actually connected to the Internet, music playback was unacceptably choppy, rarely getting more than 10 seconds into a song before buffering. Our corporate network certainly isn't exactly like a home network, but we had no issues connecting any of the other Wi-Fi radios we had on hand, not to mention other devices we had running off Wi-Fi. And the fact that the ARIR200 wouldn't connect via a wired connection was even more confusing; we've never had that problem before.
Testing the radio in a more traditional home environment was much better. We didn't run into any of the connectivity or buffering problems present in the office. That doesn't give us a definitive statement on the ARIR200's reliability, but since other radios we've tested haven't had a problem in either location, we'd at least make sure you have the option to return the ARIR200 in case it doesn't work for you.
Acoustic Research ARIR200 Internet Radio
Turbo.264 HD
USB dongle speeds encoding but some quality lost in the process
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com
Today’s Macs are miracles of speed and efficiency, but there are particular tasks that can take seemingly forever. One of those tasks is encoding and converting video. A couple of years ago, Elgato offered a tool to help strip some time from this process in the form of its Turbo.264, a USB dongle that took over much of the burden of encoding QuickTime video.
Earlier this year, Elgato released the Turbo.264’s more-powerful sibling, the Intel-only $150 Turbo.264 HD. Like the original Turbo.264, the HD model is designed to speed up video encoding. In addition, it speeds the process of converting video directly from AVCHD HD camcorders, lets you trim video clips before converting them, allows you to combine multiple clips into a single clip, and outputs video to HD formats including YouTube HD, 720p, and 1080p. And it’s faster on both slow and more-powerful Macs.
To the test
The proof is in the pudding and one of the main ingredients in this pudding is how long it takes to convert video with and without the Turbo.264 HD. To find out I tested the device on both a current 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac mini (with 4GB of RAM) and an older 2 x 2.66GHz Dual Core Mac Pro (with 8GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT graphics card).
I performed two tests. In the first I used RipIt ([Image]) to convert the DVD of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to an unprotected Video_TS folder. I then converting the main feature from that folder to a single Apple TV-compatible movie with the Turbo.264 HD application. To compare its performance to an unaccelerated conversion, I used HandBrake (which doesn’t take advantage of the Turbo.H264 HD) to convert the Video_TS folder again.
I also attached a Sony HDR-SR11 ([Image]) AVCHD to each computer and imported a 6 minute and 44 second clip. I first used the Turbo.264 HD application to import the clip and convert it to the Apple TV ([Image]) format. I then imported the clip using iMovie ’09 ([Image]) and then employed iMovie’s Share command to save the movie in the large, Apple TV-compatible format.
Timing is everything
In regard to speed, the Turbo.264 HD performed admirably in each test. In the DVD tests, the Turbo.264 HD gave a nice boost to the both the Mac mini and Mac Pro. On the mini it took 36 minutes and 13 seconds to convert the movie. The unaccelerated HandBrake performed the same job in 2 hours and 13 minutes. The Mac Pro, with its extra oomph, helped HandBrake, but not enough to best the Turbo’s performance. On that Mac the Turbo converted the movie in 35 minutes and 40 seconds. HandBrake took 57 minutes and 10 seconds.
Pulling a movie clip from an AVCHD camcorder and converting it to an Apple TV-friendly format was also dramatically faster with the Turbo.264 HD. On the Mac mini, I was able to convert the test clip in 9 minutes and 29 seconds. It took iMovie ’09 10 minutes and 7 seconds just to import the clip from the camera. It took another 17 minutes and 5 seconds to export it. With the Mac Pro, importing the clip into iMovie ’09 was similarly slow—6 minutes and 28 seconds to import the clip and then 9 minutes and 36 seconds to export it. The entire job was accomplished by the Turbo.264 HD in just 5 minutes and 12 seconds on the Mac Pro.
The compromises
Regrettably, you pay a price for this speed—image quality. When comparing the videos created with HandBrake, iMovie, and the Turbo.264 HD application, the Turbo videos had more visible artifacts. Not jarring, “Aack, my eyes bleed!” artifacts, but noticeable if you look for them. Specifically, these were evidenced as jagged lines and video that looked a little soft.
Within the Turbo.264 HD application you have the option to create custom settings to deal with this kind of thing, but it’s a problematic solution for a couple of reasons. First, some Mac users may have no idea how to effectively tweak an overscan or data rate setting (much less a more advanced setting such as H.264 Profile, GOP Size, or Picture Coding). Secondly, when you tweak those settings it’s possible that the results won’t play on the intended device—set a video’s data rate too high, for example, and an Apple TV will refuse to play it.
And honestly, you shouldn’t have to go through the bother. Even more than Handbrake, the Turbo.264 HD is designed to be a plug-and-play solution. What comes out of it should be great looking video. Unfortunately, it doesn’t currently meet that standard.
The Turbo's results (left) are less crisp than what you get from a tool such as HandBrake (right). Note that these images are blown up 2x so the quality appears worse than it is.
Additionally, the Turbo.264 software wasn’t completely robust. There were times when the software failed to recognize that the dongle was plugged in—there one minute and gone the next. Plugging it back in solved the problem. And the current-as-I-write-this version, 1.0.2, got hung up when attempting to encode the Harry Potter Video_TS folder on the Mac Pro (it had no complaints on the Mac mini). Installing a beta 1.0.2+ version solved the problem.
Macworld’s buying advice
If you own an Intel Mac and routinely encode QuickTime-compatible videos or import clips from an AVCHD video camera, have just about had it with the time it takes to do the job, and are willing to sacrifice a small measure of quality, the Turbo.264 HD will be a worthwhile addition to your computing life, particularly if you’re using a slower Mac.
[Christopher Breen is a Macworld senior editor.]
VoodooPad Pro 4.1
MacWorld - According to August Mueller, proprietor of Flying Meat and purveyor of VoodooPad Pro, the concept behind VoodooPad Pro is simple. It’s a garden for your thoughts--a place where you plant ideas, cultivate and develop them, link, tie, and combine them, and grow them into something real. After a couple of weeks playing with VoodooPad Pro 4.1.2, I’m pleased to say that’s not just a pile of marketing hooey. In fact, it may even be an understatement.
VoodooPad Pro looks like a basic text editor. It bears a striking resemblance to, and shares the same feature set as, Apple's TextEdit, which is enough to make you wonder why you wouldn't just use TextEdit. The answer's simple: VoodooPad Pro is able to link your ideas and other information together. VoodooPad Pro is designed to work like a highly customizable, personalized wiki, a type of Web site that allows you to quickly create, interlink, and cross-reference information. For example, type a name into VoodooPad; if that name appears in your Address Book, you’ll see a hyperlink underneath the name. Click that link and a menu appears, giving you the option to either e-mail the person whose name you’ve just typed or open their card in Address Book.
Create a new page within your VoodooPad Pro document and you’re required to give it a name. Type that name anywhere on a different page and VoodooPad automatically creates a hyperlink to that document. Click the link and you jump to the page; click the Back button and you’re back where you started. Also, as is the case in a normal wiki, if you type an intercapped word, like "InterCap," that word will appear to be hyperlinked. Click the link and VoodooPad Pro creates a new page titled InterCap in your document where you can begin adding new information.
he first time you open VoodooPad Pro, you see a home page that includes examples of the kinds of information you can add to a document, including images, Web links, and custom text and paragraph formatting. Any document you create in VoodooPad Pro can be encrypted and secured with a password.
As a word processor, VoodooPad Pro is not as powerful as programs like Apple’s Pages ([Image]), but I found it more than sufficient for what I typically do with a word processor and perfect for typing basic notes. The main document editing window looks exactly like TextEdit, right down to the location of the buttons, but VoodooPad Pro gives you better access to other text formatting options, such as font type, style, size, color, and spacing, using a floating palette. My only complaint about this palette is that the extra formatting options are buried at the bottom of 12 other document-related items, so it was sometimes a hassle to get to the tools. It would have been much easier if these formatting tools were grouped with the other tools on the program's toolbar.
VoodooPad Pro gives you several ways to create new pages in your document. You can type information, you can use the PDF button in the print dialog window of any application to send a PDF directly to VoodooPad Pro; you can drag text or images from a document or the Finder to a page; or you can use the Services menu to send selected text directly to the program.
I did find that PDF support was a little dodgy in VoodooPad Pro. PDFs sent via the print to PDF option could not have the viewing percentage changed via the program’s View menu item. The viewing percentages were inactive, so I didn't discover that it was possible to change them until I right-clicked the PDF document. PDFs dragged to VoodooPad Pro had these options enabled, but the percentage by which the size of the document changed never corresponded to the percentage I selected. In fact, in some cases, selecting a larger percentage made the PDF document smaller. Also, PDFs dragged to VoodooPad Pro could be double-clicked and opened in Preview, but those printed to VoodooPad Pro could not. The vendor is aware of this, and plans a fix in a future version. What I was really pleased to learn was that, because VoodooPad Pro really works like a Web browser, the program retains all the links within a Web page when you paste linked text copied from a Web page or use the Services menu to push selected text into a page.
For portability, there is a free VP Reader at the App Store that, as the name implies, lets you read VoodooPad docs you've synced to your iPhone ([Image]) or iPod Touch ([Image]). While you can't edit anything using VP Reader, all the reading features work just like they do in the desktop application. Internal and external page links are all accessible; embedded PDF documents are subject to some of the same limitations, but otherwise it's a useful way to carry your VoodooPad Pro documents in your pocket. Also, any VoodooPad document can be exported into several formats, including a Web export that creates a complete Web site based on your VoodooPad document. And VoodooPad documents can be shared and updated by multiple users on any WebDAV server, such as MobileMe.
Macworld's buying advice
VoodooPad Pro 4.1.2 is an excellent tool for collecting, storing, and linking information. The program's ability to intelligently create links to other pages in your document makes it easy to cross-reference information that you've already collected. While the program has some limitations when it comes to embedded PDF documents and access to some text formatting features, these are small complaints about what is otherwise an excellent program. The standard version, which is $20 less than the Pro version, contains most of its general features, but lacks event triggers, the built-in server, and whole document encryption. The Lite version, though free, is extremely limited and has relatively few features.