Internet Radio

I installed AccuRadio (free) on the iPad this morning and gave my Dad a brief demo. I found a great baroque music station on it which should please him as the CBC Radio programming (which he used to love) became distinctly "contemporary" after the new director (who recently left) came to power a few years ago. The bandwidth usage should tell me 1) how heavy the streaming is, and 2) if he listened to any radio.

When he returned from a trip to Portugal recently, he mentioned the Internet Radio Station "Radio Amalia" which streams the audio as an MMS feed. I think he would definitely like it if that station was available on the iPad.

WunderRadio ($7 which my boss has on his iPhone) definitely has that station. But I don't know if it's worth the cost.

It would be nice if there was an iPad app that could input mms:// URLs; Fstream (free) seems popular, however it's iOS4 only and there are many complaints by iOS 3.x users about the upgrade.

Update Sep 30, 2010: This morning, my Dad asked my whether the radio could recieve Portuguese radio stations! I said mentioned that by November, I would be able to install an app that could do it. He listened to AccuRadio for about an hour and the data-usage was 52MB-- so the stream is approximately 1MB/min.

Update Oct. 1, 2010: I found an app called Streamer (free) that can handle mms streams and the radio worked. However, the app has the most appalling user interface. I think I am going to have to write-down the steps so my Dad can listen to his station.