Steam Radio

THIS IS STEAM RADIO - WIRELESS LIKE IT USED TO BE!

STEAM RADIO IS NOW BROADCASTING A COLLECTION OF SPEECH AND MUSIC BASED
OLD TIME WIRELESS PROGRAMMES 24 HOURS A DAY - TUNE IN NOW AND ENJOY.

I set up Steam Radio for myself and you! I love to listen to old time radio programmes so put this station on the internet. If you are not familiar with internet radio then let me explain that all you need do to listen is click the links below and you will hear the music on your computer. That's one way of listening but the preferred way is to use an internet radio. If you are not familiar with these devices then take a look at www.horstedkeynes.com where it's all very well explained. Basically it's a small box that you plug into the mains, it then connects to your broadband router - the same as you are using now with your computer. Switch on and without paying any money select from more than 12,000 radio stations from all over the world! A bit like an old fashioned short wave receiver but with no fading or interference! My favourite radio station is Radio Matariki which comes from a small beach side studio on the Cook Islands in the Pacific.

Some of the talk and voice shows that you will be able to here on Steam Radio are..

The Lone Ranger
Journey Into Space
You Bet Your Life
Yours Truly Johnny Dollar
The Saint
Top Secret
The Black Museum
Superman
Flash Gordon
Dragnet
Journey Into Space
Green Hornet
Archie Andrews
Much Binding In The Marsh
and many, many more, we have thousands of hours of 'em!

We also have many hours of music from 78s and old cylinders and are presently broadcasting a selection of these on test.
We bet you won't have heard many of the tunes before!

To tune in please click the link or logo below corresponding to the player that you want to use. If in doubt use the brown logo on the left.

Windows Media Player

Winamp / ITunes

Real Media Player

Quicktime

A NOTE ABOUT WHICH COMPANY YOU USE FOR YOUR STREAMING RADIO SERVICE

Can I make a comment about the server provision company that you use if YOU decide to start up your own internet radio station. When I first started I looked around and found a company called internet-radio.org.uk. They were cheap and appeared to offer a good service but when I started streaming I found that the music kept stopping and starting - it was awful! I contacted these people and was told very firmly that there was nothing wrong at their end - the problem simply HAD to be with either my computer, my internet connection speed, my isp or possibly the software that I was using. Despite trying everything that they suggested and that I could think of - including installing a new uplink computer and a replacement server - I could not fix the stuttering, I then looked on the company dedicated support forum where I noticed some others users were reporting the same problem to a greater or lesser extent.

All were told that the problem was to be expected or was caused by their setup. When I posted messages on their boards saying that I found their service poor it got quite nasty and some of my posts were deleted. I do accept that internet-radio did try to help they even gave me a free second server to try. I don't think they knew what was wrong and were so confident that they were not at fault they just weren't that interested!

Now what internet-radio.org.uk didn't know was that I am fairly experienced with electronics in general and radio streaming in particular - I have helped set up the streaming for a large station on the south coast. I had quite an argument with the above supplier but they would not have it - they said that the problem simply MUST be at my end! What really annoyed me was that they just HAD to be right and when I eventually told them of my experience they sent me an email questioning my validity! The problems that other users and I were experiencing might well have been simply caused by internet-radio having too many users on a server at one time. In that case it would have been a simple matter to move my service to a less over loaded server.

After this I found another supplier called Citrus3.com and signed up with them. Citrus3 are in fact cheaper than internet-radio.org.uk and I was impressed by their service and technical support. Guess what happened when I first switched on my radio using their server, using by the way precisely, exactly the same equipment and software as before? Yes you guessed it - not a glimmer, not a hint of a stutter did I hear or have I EVER heard using their service.

Just think of the time and money that I wasted installing a new computer and a replacement server and try to understand why I am feeling so bitter!

So if YOU decide to set up your own internet radio please don't take poor service for granted - look around, try before you buy and don't accept poor service or poor or biased technical support departments who will do anything but accept the problem might be at THEIR end!

Finally, I listened to a couple of feeds supplied by internet-radio.org.uk just now - BOTH broke up several times whilst I listened!

I stand by EVERY word written above which is EXACTLY what happened from my point of view. If internet-radio.org.uk would like to respond they are welcome to do so.

Q.E.D.