I’ve often bemoaned the fact that – despite video recorders having been around even longer than Betamax hasn’t – you haven’t been able get cheap radio recorder appliances. Well now you can.
Sure you could record the radio with a radio tape recorder, but how many of them have a timing facility like a video recorder? It’s taken the switch to digital radio for the radio makers to think it worth their while to allow you to record the radio, and soon they’ll all be adding timers just like on VCRs.
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The Roberts Gemini 11 is a good example of this new trend, allowing you not only to record but to pause and rewind live radio broadcasts. Great for those moments when you’re absorbed by a good old political ding-dong on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, when a window-cleaner puts his ladder through an upstairs bedroom window (closed at the time, predictably).
The Pure Bug gets top marks for recording though – it can record the radio as MP3 files onto a removable SD card. You can play any MP3 on it too, and even hook it up to your PC via a USB cable to swap tracks between the two.
It’s designed by Wayne Hemingway, co-founder of Red or Dead, and it’s got quite a youthful look if you ask me. Said ‘youf’ will presumably be wanting it to record some ‘urban flavas’ or some-such incomprehensible musical genre – rather than Radio 4 – and amazingly the giants of the music industry don’t seem to be up in arms about that just yet, despite their ‘iPod tax’ silly nonsense, which makes the Netherlands Officially The Worst Place to Shop For an MP3 Player.
Although having said all that, you could always just wait for the next BBC strike and hear radio programmes repeated that way.
