NETGEAR MP115 Wireless Digital Media Player

Internet radio

Next I tried out the Internet radio station feature found under the Premium Content menu. The "Premium" in the title refers to the fact that you can sign up for a pay-service. Purchasing the feature (a one-time fee of $19.95) provides you with over 2000 stations. The box comes with a 60-day trial, but after your trial is up you'll still have access to 50 stations. As a comparison, I did a quick check of the free set of stations provided in iTunes and it showed 170 available. So if you're really into Internet radio, $20 gives you access to a lot of content.

Playing a station consists of navigating down through a list grouped by genre, country, language, etc. and selecting it. The feature worked well, although one thing I missed was an indication of the quality of the station. When I have a choice between two similar stations, I'd like to know which one is using a higher bit rate.

The only problem I encountered while using the radio feature was a momentary "blip" that's not uncommon with Internet radio. But instead of picking back up after the blip, the MP115 gave up on that station and moved on to the next one in the list. I then had to hit the Stop button, go back to the menu and reselect the station I wanted. It obviously would have been much better if the MP115 just retried for a bit and then, as a last resort, exited back to the menu rather than selecting a new random station to play.