As we wrap up 2020, a few notes about the station.

First off, we're happy to announce that we're natively available on Alexa. Nothing to install, just say "Hey Alexa, play R-X-D-I-O Radio". Notice it's RXDIO Radio-- the "radio" seems to be necessary for it to work.

For those who use TuneIn as a form of station discovery, we're now available there at https://tunein.com/radio/RXDIO-s253620/.

We're having a few bumps with our video streaming. You may have noticed it's been down a few times in the last few days. We hope to have that resolved soon. Unfortunately, it's disabling to our Roku app, since all that does right now is stream the video feed. This highlights that we need to diversify the content feed sources-- but that's what a beta period is for!

Hope you have a great new year, and look forward to talking to you in 2021!

- Richard

^{Photo: Alexa logo.}
 

We've been busy twisting knobs and making improvements and stuff. Here's what's new or changed:

• The audio-only stream was moved to a new, more stable server. We had a little down time earlier this week, and this was the remedy.
• After doing some research, we decided that 128 kbps was more appropriate to use than 320 kbps. It's still better than FM quality, and should accommodate those with slower (or mobile) connections.
• The video portion of our stream (i.e., YouTube and Roku ATM) is now showing arial and scenic views of natural features. We're starting out with sweeping ariel views of the Grand Canyon, shot by the National Park Service and released for media use.
• For video, we're allotted a certain amount of bandwidth per month. If we get close to the limits, we'll switch the stream to a lower frame rate. We have some low-motion video ready to go for when that's necessary. So that's what's up if you notice some almost-still videos.

We've recorded some new music that should be in rotation in the next week or so. Hope you have a great week!

- Richard

^{Photo: A screen shot of the Grand Canyon video.}
 

I'm excited to say that we've developed some more options for you to enjoy RXDIO.

On our main page, you'll now see a pop-up button for our Audio-Only stream. People like me will find this particularly handy. I don't have unlimited internet on my phone, so I can use this. It only takes 320 kbps, as opposed to the 2000+ that the video link uses up. There are also some new direct link options on the "How to Listen" page.

You also may notice, on our YouTube and Roku video streams, that the "title" field was added of the current track playing. I was ready to throw down some complicated PHP scripts to make this happen. It turns out it was much easier and faster than i thought.

On the backend, I changed up the station playout software that I think will lead to a better listening experience for you.

Hope your December is going well so far!

- Richard

^{Photo: A screen shot of our new Audio-Only player.}
 

Hello all! You may have noticed that we have a link to a version of our live stream on the front page of our web site. It's through YouTube. We figured that might be best, since we don't get charged for the bandwidth each user generates. We'll see how that works out. If there are problems or they begin serving ads, we can switch it up.

There are still some glitches on Roku, so we're temporarily switching out the “playlist” format with the live stream. Due to the holidays, Roku says it should be up sometime on 30 November.

Thanks for checking us out!

- Richard

^{Photo: A screen shot of our stream as viwed through YouTube.}
 

It's been about a week since we launched our Roku channel app. We're appending the word "Beta" to it, because there seem to be a few glitches that didn't appear in testing. This is just to give users of the channel an idea that we're still working on it, which is the case.

In other news, there's a bunch of exclusive new music being added into the library. We're optimistic that this library will grow fast.

Hope you're having a great week!

- Richard

^{Photo: A Red Betta splendens, of course spelled different, but bad puns are best. (Creative Commons, source attribution)}

 

Hello everyone, and welcome to the "Hello World" post.

This post marks the launch of RXDIO as an OTT audio broadcaster. RXDIO started with a plan for terrestrial broadcasting, and that still might happen, but I thought it might be cool to launch the service as something totally unconventional.

I have a long history of working in radio, and a long history of working in deejay culture. It's all coming together here, in a new chapter that's very different from anything I've ever done.

This blog may look different-- it's not using Wordpress or any other CMS. I coded it myself with PHP and CSS. I just wanted something light weight and simple that didn't collect information about you.

Feel free to reach out to me on twitter: @richardjdalton