Roberts Radio Robi DABs up your iPod

Look, if you absolutely, positively must get some DAB into your iPod lifestyle, then you'll probably be somewhat interested in the Robi -- a new tuner from Roberts Radio which lets you pipe in smooth digital broadcasts via your regular old player. There really aren't a lot of plusses here; for £49.99 (or $100) you get a DAB tuner that also does double duty as a remote. Does this second function justify the cost? Probably not, considering all those extra cables and unsightly middleman, but if you've got a bad desire for digital radio, you could do a lot worse (you could also consider players with built in DAB functionality). Available now, it would appear.

[Via Crave]

[Mar @ Oct 31st 2007 1:39PM]

It is tiny enough to go running with it, but the wires are really uncomfortable, and the price for a device like this using wires... I think it is a bit high

http://tandil.seasky.com.ar/

[silverblackvoid @ Oct 31st 2007 1:59PM]

whats DAB? (im not a troll)

[Martyb @ Oct 31st 2007 2:22PM]

Digital Audio Broadcasting, its the digital radio standard in Europe and Canada (some other places as well). Its pretty common in the UK you can read about it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting

[Marky @ Oct 31st 2007 2:53PM]

DAB (aka Eureka 147) is 'Digital Audio Broadcasting'. It's the digital radio standard used in most of the world save the US where although trails were sucessful suffered from the 'not designed / made in america' problem that resulted in American mobile phone technology being a few years behind the rest of the world. DAB uses compression to squeeze multiple channels with data (and pictures if desired) into a single channel. Because multiple channels can be broadcast from a single transmitter it's main advantage is in transmitter sharing which allows one company to broadcast the full set of channels knowing that it's competitor is doing the same. In the US this was one of the main failures of the trails as transmitter sharing caused too many lawers to step forward. You can read a bit more about DAB here, http://www.worlddab.org/ . Quality is not always better than FM when many stations are squeezed into a single channel. The BBC in Britain comes under criticism for this a lot, especially when it droped Radio 3 from 192 to 128 bit compression and the loss of quality which came from it and broadcasts Radio 4, 5 and World Service in mono on many occasions. A new DAB+ service is presently undergoing trails in most of Europe presently.

The article writer here, however, seems to imply that those who want DAB are better off ditching their iPod's in favour of a combined unit. That is a foolish position. If you have an iPod and a collection of AAC files from iTunes and/or are happy with an iPod, why should we ditch it for a combined player? Is the same argument to be applied to the many FM receivers for iPods too?

[Bob @ Oct 31st 2007 2:57PM]

Screw this. When is someone going to put out an AM tuner for the iPod?

[DaveW @ Oct 31st 2007 3:01PM]

Hey Engadget- I do enjoy your coverage, so I can only assume that your negativity towards DAB is due to you not living in the UK where we use it. The FM stations we have are pretty poor for music (either easy listening, classical or idiot-kid music stations, or else dire local commercial radio). Compared to FM, a huge number of quality or special interest stations are available through DAB, some of excellent quality (stand up BBCradio6music) and in hiss-free quality to boot. True, it's can be too compressed (not as in the digital sense but in the dynamic range of the audio) but even CDs are these days; neither have to be, they're just catering to the unlucky people who use little speakers.

£50 is about the entry level for a desktop DAB radio and has been for some time. For a portable DAB player, it's actually cheap. It might be possible that you have overlooked the uncommonly high PoundSterling at the moment (which wold make UK prices look high to you, and to us Brits your US-priced gadgets looks soo affordable, if only I had the money...) so we'll let you off.

Keep up the good work.

[Chris @ Nov 3rd 2007 8:47PM]

Urgh, what's wrong with the writer of this post. If he's not an 'ignorant American' he does a good job of sounding like one. Roberts appear to have done a damn fine job with this little thing. We don't have Satellite Radio in the UK, we have this instead. So where's your XM Radio/iPod remote combo, America?