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Resco has been quite active with updates to several of their applications, and version 2.0 of Resco Radio is the most recent.
Speaking for myself, I find that I listen to streaming music a lot on my device, particularly when I am at work or in my car. There are certainly many options for listening to streaming radio out there, and I use several of those options, depending on my needs. How does Resco Radio 2.0 shape up? Read on and I’ll tell you! I’ve even put together a quick-and-dirty video as well. More after the break…
Resco has updated the entire skin of the app to be very finger-friendly, which I really like. It is very similar to the navigation seen in Resco File Explorer, an app that I use numerous times a day. The skin rotates nicely in landscape mode as well - something developers occasionally omit for some strange reason! There are 14 preset buttons in portrait mode, and when rotated to landscape, 9 of those presets will show. While at work, I keep my device tilted in Landscape mode, so I’ve made sure to keep the “top 9″ stations at the top so they’re easily viewable. As you can see in the portrait screenshot below, I haven’t even filled all 14 slots yet!
Portrait and Landscape mode
The preset buttons are very convenient and nicely sized. I listen to streams in my car, and these presets make it easy to access the stations just as easily as operating my car stereo. Not that it’s hard to pick a station from the All Stations menu - it’s easily scrollable. And if you have certain stations that you’d like to save as Favorites, those will be right at the top for quick access.
There are numerous pre-loaded categories of stations, and the database is updated regularly by Resco. Adding stations is fairly simple too. If you know the URL to a stream, you can add it that way, or if you come upon a stream and save the M3U or PLS file, you can import it.
Something I’ve discovered as I’ve explored the world of streaming stations - there are a lot of formats out there! I found a few stations that I wanted to import, and when I added the URL and tried to play the new stream, Resco Radio told me the codec was unsupported. Just know this is the case for any of these streaming apps - it is very difficult to support every single format that is out there. I think that M3U and PLS support comprises a good number of offerings out there, so you won’t be lacking! I frequently peruse Shoutcast for stations, and all of those streams can be saved as PLS files, so I’m a happy camper.
You can modify station settings by going to Properties. This is handy if you want to rename the “short title” for use on a preset button, or in the case of streams that you personally add, you can indicate the format and bitrate, as well as add your own custom comment which will display in the list of stations.
For a while now, Resco Radio has had the ability to record, which is pretty slick. You can manually begin recording right from the control screen of the player, or you can schedule a recording as well. That could be handy if you wanted to listen to something that plays in the middle of the night while you are sleeping, and check it out later. Yes, there are podcasts for such things, but it’s nice to have the ability to record whatever, whenever! The Sleep function is pretty handy too.
And while I didn’t see anything mentioned about the Accounts feature in the menu, my best guess is that it can be used to access things like Sirius, XM and the like - any membership accounts you might have. I will update this after I find out more from Resco what that is really for…
Conclusion
Resco Radio is a solid performing app with some very cool features. One-handed operation is a breeze, which is a strong plus in my book. Wish list: it would be nice to have a search feature to locate stations to add. It would also be great to see additional format support, but both of these things are just icing on the cake.
Give it a try for yourself - there is a 7-day fully-functional trial. The app costs $19.95 which is a little steep, considering other alternatives price for a bit lower, but if you like listening to streaming stations half as much as I do, you will be pleased with Resco Radio!