I'm totally stealing this idea from a friend, but how cool would it be to have a time-shifted radio in my car? I know satelite radio is starting down this path, but why hasn't this been out for years? The storage requirements would be miniscule compared to the video time-shifting TiVo offers. An ultra-cheap 10GB hard drive mounted in the dash board would commuting my life so much better.
And while we're at it, throw away the CD and tape players, and have an 802.11 adapter sync the drive with iTunes while it's parked in my garage.
C'mon people, let's move into the 21st century here!
I totally agree. As a fan of AM radio, I would love to be able to record 10 or so hours of my favorite radio shows and listen at a later time.
I think the Delphi XM portable should jump start this trend, as it seems to be one of the devices most popular features.
It looks like there is at least one device on the market for home, called the Griffin RadioSHARK. It looks like there are other devices in the works as well: ON-DEMAND AUDIO .
If the RadioSHARK saves the radio in a format that is portable, I guess you could put the recorded shows on your iPod and listen to it in the car.
I picked up a RadioShark a few weeks back because there are a few radio shows i like but usually miss. After using it for those two weeks, I am very happy with the device, but the PC software leaves quite a bit to be desired. The latest version, 1.1.7 i think, is very buggy - sometimes when you begin a recording it will mute the audio with no way to get it back without stopping the recording. I get very clippy audio once in a while while playing audio (recordings are always perfect) the scheduler ui is less than useful, and (would be silly if it wasn't yet another bug) sometimes you can't move the window.
Also, while it does have a timeshift mode, it's not nearly as well done as Tivo's - if you are timeshifting and hit record, the recording starts at the moment you hit the button, instead of allowing you to include the timeshift buffer in the recording. (there is a menu selection which seems to have zero effect)
Finally, the PC file formats are limted to WMA or WAV. Ideally, there would be a way to run an external encoder on the .wav files so that you get nice compressed files, but there is no automated way of doing this in current releases.
All that said, if you want to use it to record files to take with you, the radioShark is your best bet. Despite the bugs, it's a great way to get audio off the air and into your machine/mp3player. Besides, Griffin seems to keep code current, so maybe these bugs will disappear in the future.
I have a feeling that the situation above is less extreme on the Mac side of the house - if you are smart enough to have switched, then go out and pick one up.