The Source: Centrios Hi-Fi Internet Radio / CD Micro System $99.98

[AndrewRFD]

It looks like The Source has a pretty good deal on an internet radio system at the moment. It's the Centrios Hi-Fi Internet Radio / CD Micro System for $99.98 (http://www.intactearnings.com/handleclicks.asp?affID=10122&mID=11222&bid=3222&link=www.thesourcecc.com/estore/Product.aspx%3Faff=IntactEarnings%26language=EN-CA%26ref=2000%26product=1315117).

This unit works as an internet radio, CD player, AM/FM radio, and alarm clock and it includes an 802.11b/g Wi-Fi dongle so you can connect wirelessly to your network. A $100 Sanyo internet radio (which I bought, dangit) featured in a Days of Deals event not too long ago didn't have extra perks like the CD player or 40 presets.

Based on the 23 customer reviews, it looks like people are pretty satisfied with the product. Also note that you can have items shipped for free to The Source retail locations for local pickup.

http://www.thesource.ca/images/Online/13/1315117l.jpg

[triniboy75]

the fan (which is always on) inside this unit is ridiculously loud. if you are in the same room as this unit you WILL hear the fan above the music.. unless of course the volume is to max

[RunnerForDeals]

the fan (which is always on) inside this unit is ridiculously loud. if you are in the same room as this unit you WILL hear the fan above the music.. unless of course the volume is to max

I am thinking you may have a defective unit, the one I listened to didn't have that affect.

[triniboy75]

I am thinking you may have a defective unit, the one I listened to didn't have that affect.

this was in the store. when the customer service guy turned it on and i heard the fan i did not buy it.. numerous reviews on the CC site state the fan is extremely loud

[andreid]

Indeed the fan is too loud but it needs a lot ventilation space. The system does work well enough (Shoutcast station portfolio) and has some interesting features like mp3 from SDHC or USB and some weird like the wireless setup or the navigation menu.
The sound is just OK but then how many stations are more than 128Kbps stream? It sure lacks a woofer.

At this price, it is the lowest priced iradio (DELL did a promo of the SANYO for that price too) and is very usable.

Cheers

[LonesomeDove]

Price wise this is a good deal but I don't know about the quality. I have the Sanyo radio and that is a great high quality radio.

[CalgaryRunner]

Price wise this is a good deal but I don't know about the quality. I have the Sanyo radio and that is a great high quality radio.
+1 for the Sanyo. Nice radio.

[NG]

Price wise this is a good deal but I don't know about the quality. I have the Sanyo radio and that is a great high quality radio.

Considering the Sanyo has been on sale for the same price imho the Centrios one really needs to be @ around the $50 mark to get people interested.

[andreid]

Considering the Sanyo has been on sale for the same price imho the Centrios one really needs to be @ around the $50 mark to get people interested.

You are quite right as this has been on "sale" a few x in TSCC flyers at $100 in the last few weeks and is peddled by RFID too. I suspect they have a warehouse full of this and might take a loss on the lot. $100 is for those who understand and want iradio and $50 is for the usual RFID cock following the its-cheap-ill-buy-it-even-I-dont-need-it.

The SANYO has been on sale once for one day at $100 and its price is more like $150.

Cheers

[Tha DraGun]

Which Sanyo are you guys talking about?
I've been interested in buyin a wifi radio, but I'm not sure what the best one to get is..

[CalgaryRunner]

Which Sanyo are you guys talking about?
I've been interested in buyin a wifi radio, but I'm not sure what the best one to get is..
It's this one (http://www.sanyo.ca/Internet-Radios/Internet-Radio). I'm waiting for Dell to put it on sale again for under $100 so I can get another one.

[Tha DraGun]

It's this one (http://www.sanyo.ca/Internet-Radios/Internet-Radio). I'm waiting for Dell to put it on sale again for under $100 so I can get another one.


Looks nice. Only 8 presets tho. And how many radio stations are on the net. hmmmm..

Between this centrino one, the sanyo and the Squeezebox, what one is better?

[hta]

I love the sanyo iradio, I use it everyday and it has yet to disappoint. Waiting for dell to put it on sale again, for friends and family.

[bbhunter2007]

Come on, this is the thread for the Centrios, not the Sanyo... anyone has the experience with the Centrios one?

[LonesomeDove]

Come on, this is the thread for the Centrios, not the Sanyo... anyone has the experience with the Centrios one?

If you go to the link on the Source site, there are quite a few reviews of it.
The main complaint is a noisy fan. But why they need a fan is beyond me.

[NG]

If you go to the link on the Source site, there are quite a few reviews of it.
The main complaint is a noisy fan. But why they need a fan is beyond me.

A lot of no name brand Chinese made electronics have heat issues due to design flaws and high power consumption (notice how many/most of them aren't Energy Star complient).

Often when they go tits up it's because internal components are cooked by the heat inside of the unit so actually the ones that have fans built in (most Venturur products also have fans inside for example) are the ones that actually last longer.

[PaulieG]

I picked this up a couple of months ago. It's true, the fan is noisy and the audio quality leaves much to be desired. But it has line out, and I had Logitech Z-2300 speakers sitting around. I tried the speakers it came with for about 5 minutes and promptly put them away. It sounds really good with the Logitechs. The fan noise is remedied by a simple match that I stuck in there. I figure that it doesn't heat up as much when I'm not straining it's built-in amp. I think it's worth the $100, provided you have something to hook it up to.

[Shazam]

does the Sanyo radio allow u to enter your own url and bookmark it? (as opposed to just using pre-established stations from shoutcast.com as is the case for the Centrios radio...)

[LonesomeDove]

does the Sanyo radio allow u to enter your own url and bookmark it? (as opposed to just using pre-established stations from shoutcast.com as is the case for the Centrios radio...)

No, you have to search for stations through a menu. But they have thousands to choose from.

[klown]

Does anyone know where this thing gets its channels? It says Shoutcast in the manual but it's lying. It gets some channels from Shoutcast under the Shoutcast menu item but others under the Worldwide menu item which I cannot for the life of me find on Shoutcast (i.e. NPR Worldwide).

Thanks,

klown

[Wildfire]

No, you have to search for stations through a menu. But they have thousands to choose from.

I think you can actually. I have the Sanyo and if you register the device on the RECIVA website that provides all the stations that Sanyo uses, you have the option to add your own manual streams to the system.

I use it on a regular basis, on the web I can add favourites from the pre-existing lineup and add my own streams. They get updated within a day to your radio.

Worth Checking out.

www.reciva.com/

[HunkaHunkaBurningLove]

I've been using mine at work now for the past 3 months, and the Centrios has been a very good internet radio which has been running about 10 hours a day non-stop. It has developed a weird glitch where the CD player turns on searching noisily for a CD for a few minutes on power up though. I just place a CD in it to quiet it down.

The rear cooling fan isn't all that loud unless you have your music down really low or if it's very quiet in the room. Really it's hardly noticeable at all. I think the one poster might have heard the whine from the CD search on power up as that is quite noisy?

The speakers that come with the unit are actually quite good as the enclosures are made of wood so you do get some decent quality sound. The new firmware upgrade lets the radio turn on the last internet radio station playing after powering up.

[PaulieG]

Does anyone know where this thing gets its channels? It says Shoutcast in the manual but it's lying. It gets some channels from Shoutcast under the Shoutcast menu item but others under the Worldwide menu item which I cannot for the life of me find on Shoutcast (i.e. NPR Worldwide).

Thanks,

klown

I did some sniffing, because I keep getting "Service Not Available" intermittently.
Here is what it looks like:
The radio requests the station list here, for a particular genre:
http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/newxml.phtml?genre=Trance
You can see the response xml in a browser.
It parses it, takes the stream id and connects like so:
http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/tunein-station.pls?id=9685
It looks like genres are in the firmware (i.e. no query for genres).

Now, for the worldwide channel selection, it goes here:
http://station.penbex.com.tw/island.csv
When a selection is made, it grabs the csv file specified in the island.csv file, e.g.
http://station.penbex.com.tw/userdef/europe.csv
This process is repeated until the url defines the actual stream.
Easy to check with a browser.
Also, see http://station.penbex.com.tw. Apparently, there is an add station form. I have not tried it. Interesting disclaimer on that page: "Penbex reserves the right to change or discontinue any aspect or feature of this web site at any time and without prior notice."

It's definitely possible to hijack this entire process to define your own stations, etc. Just set the network settings for static IP, and use your own machine as DNS server to fool the radio into connecting to your own server for the csv files, which you can then easily customize. Sounds like an interesting project! The WRT54GL (hacked) could do this, no problem. I might end up using my NSLU2 instead.

BTW, I am a little frustrated by the fact that the shoutcast server is at times unavailable, hence "Service Not Available" messages.

UPDATE: There is some hacking info here: http://penbex.wordpress.com/

[homeless06]

Thanks, PaulieG!

Really interesting with the Curtis GPS hacking, now this internet radio is another fun.

He can already hack the firmware, it just another step towards reading the database cvs file directly from the usb stick instead of an alternative server. With this, you can add your own url.

[krypto]

A couple of days ago, I used the company's "Add New Station" form on their website ( http://station.penbex.com.tw/add.php ) and added BOB FM and CHEZ 106 from Ottawa. Lo and behold, there they are today!

Feel free to add stations (as long as they don't use a Flash-based player) and your fave should show up shortly!

[Penbex]

A couple of days ago, I used the company's "Add New Station" form on their website ( http://station.penbex.com.tw/add.php ) and added BOB FM and CHEZ 106 from Ottawa. Lo and behold, there they are today!

Yeah, in some cases it takes a few days, in other cases it takes much longer or it is just ignored.

Right now I have created a firmware that will connect to an alternative server (penbex.mine.nu) and I am coding a website to control the database.
The idea is that everyone can submit stations there and registered users and/or moderators can approve, add, modify and remove the station links.

Next step is to look at the firmware again and try to do some fixes.
(like additional wifi dongles, telnet/web access, editing favorites etc. etc.)

William

[homeless06]

I am really excited about news from Penbex and PaulieG.

I hope that future firmware would allow me to add my stations much easier such as via cvs file on usb stick, etc.

I submitted a request for new stations. After one day, one of my stations showed up when I search on the station.penbex.com.tw website. However, going to that particular US-California csv file, the station is not listed. This explained why the station is not shown up on my radio. Maybe I have to wait another day for the cvs files to be uptodate?

[herc]

I bought this and can't get the wireless part to work. It connect via ethernet but not USB wireless. It doesn't even find my network. Does anyone know if it a problem using non-broadcasting SSID? I am using WPA encryption with a MAC address filter (which I figured out is listed on the back of the unit), but nothing more complicated than that. I have a Sanyo R227 and it works fine wirelessly on my network.

[tomthegreat]

I bought this and can't get the wireless part to work. It connect via ethernet but not USB wireless. It doesn't even find my network. Does anyone know if it a problem using non-broadcasting SSID? I am using WPA encryption with a MAC address filter (which I figured out is listed on the back of the unit), but nothing more complicated than that. I have a Sanyo R227 and it works fine wirelessly on my network.

I thought for the wireless you had to plug the included usb dongle in to your computer, and then it connects to that... But I could be wrong.

[PaulieG]

I thought for the wireless you had to plug the included usb dongle in to your computer, and then it connects to that... But I could be wrong.

The included dongle plugs into the back of the radio. You don't need a computer at all to use the radio, a wireless router is enough.


Does anyone know if it a problem using non-broadcasting SSID?

This could potentially be an issue. I assume you upgraded the firmware, as the original firmware didn't support WPA. Also, perhaps the MAC address is for the ethernet port? The wireless dongle should have its own MAC address.

[herc]

This could potentially be an issue. I assume you upgraded the firmware, as the original firmware didn't support WPA. Also, perhaps the MAC address is for the ethernet port? The wireless dongle should have its own MAC address.

You are probably correct about the wireless dongle MAC address. I wonder how I can find that one out. Any ideas? I'm going to try it without the MAC filtering and see if it works. Thanks for the info!

[mrbernsca]

What I don't like about this "deal" is the fact that TSCC posted it as a circuit breaker months ago and then they had tons of returns (I talked to a local store manager) and no one wants it .. $30 I may consider it for a stereo on the garage.

[PaulieG]

You are probably correct about the wireless dongle MAC address. I wonder how I can find that one out. Any ideas? I'm going to try it without the MAC filtering and see if it works. Thanks for the info!

One of the relevant TSCC reviews for the product mention that SSID broadcast has to be enabled. After you disable MAC filter and enable SSID broadcast, you should be able to see the MAC address in the DHCP lease info pages of your router provided the radio connects successfully. Then you can re-enable the MAC filtering as you wish.

[herc]

One of the relevant TSCC reviews for the product mention that SSID broadcast has to be enabled. After you disable MAC filter and enable SSID broadcast, you should be able to see the MAC address in the DHCP lease info pages of your router provided the radio connects successfully. Then you can re-enable the MAC filtering as you wish.

I tried this and it did see the network. So I tried to connect and the router showed there was a connection but the radio didn't look like it was connected so I rescanned and it couldn't see the network anymore. I tried everything and it wouldn't work so I give up and it is going back tomorrow. >:( At least I have my faithful Sanyo R227 internet radio to listen to.

[PaulieG]

I tried this and it did see the network. So I tried to connect and the router showed there was a connection but the radio didn't look like it was connected so I rescanned and it couldn't see the network anymore. I tried everything and it wouldn't work so I give up and it is going back tomorrow. >:( At least I have my faithful Sanyo R227 internet radio to listen to.

My main wireless network has a strong password of 63 random printable ASCII chars :D and I don't think I could type it into the radio, so I set up another wifi gateway last night exposing a separate subnet for the radio specifically. I actually experienced similar issues - it didn't want to connect initially. I didn't know what the problem was so I played around with all the different encryptions and DHCP/static IP configurations. In the end, I'm not sure what it was. I think power cycling the unit helped. Now, the radio works fine over WPA2 wifi with MAC address restriction and DHCP, even though packets pass through two routers and get NAT'ed twice.

[Penbex]

For those who are interested, I have put a firmware for the centrios online.
info: http://penbex.wordpress.com
database portal: http://penbex.mine.nu

[Penbex]

I have released firmware version 2.0.0.15 for the Centrios that makes use of the listenlive.nl database. You can find it at the download page of listenlive.nl.