MP3 players with an AM tuner

My search to find an 'all-in-one' solution for my needs has failed me. And it's REALLY frustrating as it seems this is would be a no-brainer.

I know at first glance, the idea of a taking a nice, slick modern MP3 player and saddling it with a seemingly-archaic feature like an AM tuner might at first sound ridiculous. But think about it. A large segment of the MP3 player market is young males. Young males (a lot of them anyway) like sports. And for the most part, sports radio is relegated to AM bands, not FM. Now there's several non-CD MP3 players out there that feature FM tuners (and even the ability to record the FM stream which is really sweet.) But there is not a single non-CD MP3 player out there (with storage space over 256MB anyway) that offers an AM tuner. WHY?!?!

I realize the antenna for an AM tuner is a little larger and that it consumes more power. But it can't be THAT much bigger (and I'd gladly sacrifice a little run-time for the extra utility.) I have a little Sony AM/FM radio-only walkman that's smaller than most MP3 players and uses only a single AAA battery. Surely space can't be the only reason?

Maybe the circuity of the MP3 components would somehow interfere with the AM tuner (or vice versa?) I don't know. All I know is that somebody's missing out on a good way to differentiate their product. There's a lot of guys out there just like me looking for this feature judging by the hundreds of forum threads I found on this topic. Apple, Sony, Iriver? SOMEBODY PLEASE ADD THIS FEATURE (yes, it is a feature.)

EDIT: I should point out that I did find one company which offers a product that sort of matches what I'd like. But they only feature 128 or 512MB of internal memory (with the ability to expand to 1GB with an SD card.) With an expansion card, that's ok (although you have to pay extra for a card) but it sure would be nice to find something out there in the 5GB+ range.

http://www.radioyourway.com/

1 comments

Adam said...

damnit.....i want my talk radio and i want now.......i want it smaller, faster, better, and i want it now........damnit........

yes i 2 would enjoy that.

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