Make room for Internet radios

During one of my trips to San Po Kong, near Diamond Hill, in Hong Kong, I had the pleasure of meeting Hip Shing Electronics, who were introducing the Internet radio. I remember, my good friend, Willy Cheng, asking me to meet this company, and I'm glad that I did.

Hip Shing has focused attention on producing Internet radios. One of its models is an Internet radio with WiFi. A desktop receiver picks up the Internet radio station through WiFi and streams the music over the radio.

Do note that Internet radios and DAB radios have different markets, in the sense that Internet radios can be virtually used anywhere!

During our meeting, the executive at Hip Shing was playing for me Paris Hilton’s number "Stars Are Blind, over the Internet radio, after having accessed the audio file over the office network.

There are currently over 10,000 Internet radio stations and growing. Hip Shing’s executive said that users could stream MP3/WMA files via their own network using the Internet radio. The files buffer and then play back.

The Internet radio supports MP3/WMA/Real/AAC formats. It supports all major Internet encryption and decoding formats as well. I believe, it would be just a while when these radios come with features to support video playback. And that would be great!

Hip Shing is using Receiva’s solution for the Internet radio. The WiFi solution has been sourced from Taiwan. It is 802.11a/b/g compatible, and can stream over 6,000 Internet radio stations. Drivers for speakers are sourced from the Mainland.

The Internet radio featured five preset Internet radio stations, though Hip Shing can offer up to 10 preset stations. It had 4Wx1 speaker output power and a four-line LCD. Hip Shing was scheduled to add FM capability as well during Q1-2007.

Hip Shing was also planning to launch an Internet radio adapter and a micro system. It can be connected via WiFi. The Internet radio adapter would not have a speaker. The solution for this product has been sourced from Receiva. Hip Shing was scheduled to launch this product by end of November 2006.

Another supplier in Shatin, Hong Kong, A-Team, also came up with an Internet radio. A-Team's Internet radio also uses Receiva’s solution and plays all key audio formats. It will be sold in Europe, most likely.

I would like to see some updates from readers on this segment. I don't think this product has reached India. Would be interesting to see how it develops here.