The MCE version of our free online radio guide is now available.  This is our first release and it has the following features to enhance the MCE radio experience:

• Local Radio - See local radio stations in your area and listen to them over the internet or with your FM Tuner.
• Radio Guide - Browse radio stations around the world, find and listen to your favorite radio programs and discover new content.
  
• Favorites - Bookmark your favorite stations and programs for easy access.

You can find the installer, screenshots and more info at http://radiotime.com/mediacenter

We're open to feedback so if you have any issues or suggestions contact me or email support@radiotime.com.

David

I love it! This is exactly what I have been looking for.  Does it work over extenders?

 

Yup.  We tested it using a xbox 360 as an extender.

If I sign up for your service online, can I pause, rewind and record radio just like I would live tv? If so, is there a way to search shows and set record times?

 

Is this just a pay service?  Can I listen for free like Screamer Radio?

@Kanebrake: The add-in is totally free to install/use/listen/etc.  You need to sign up for an account on our site to use the favorites but that is free as well.

cool beans

@Trenn: Sort of.  If you register online you can download a trial of our RedButton recording software.  It's a seperate product and doesn't currently have any MCE integration but it does let you pause, rewind, record and set up recording schedules from the guide.  We'd like to have all that available in our MCE add-in but MCE doesn't provide any support for scheduling radio recordings.  You could run RedButton in the background and then playback the recorded files in MCE.

We have a $30 off RedButton coupon available for thegreenbutton.com users if you decide to purchase it.  Just enter "green" as your promo code during checkout.

The plugin works great!  I also use the RadioTime plugin for SqueezeBox.  But how can you find/play stations in radiotime that are not local or featured?

@radiobill: The MCE version will let you browse most of the same stations that are available on the SqueezeBox.  The UI for browsing is slightly different though.  The top level "Browse By Location" and "Browse By Genre" options on the SqueezeBox have been replaced by the "More Locations", "More Talk" and "More Music" options under World, Talk and Music radio.

You can also search for a station or program on our website and add it to your favorites.  You'll then be able to access it through "My Favorites" on MCE.  The MCE version will only display playable stations (WMA, MP3, or local FM) so if you add a station that only streams in real player format it won't show up.

The radiotime web search worked great.  Also I tried the RedButton recorder on my MCE machine.  You can't setup recording with the remote interface, but it worked great in Wndows mode.  And the recorder runs in the background anyway. 

The glitch was logo album artwork from the mp3 recording files isn't isn't shown like on my iPod or even WMP.  But recordings are labled with stations as albums and the program name as a song title.  The recorder worked with streams and my Pinnacle FM/TV card.  I even tried recording the BBC's real stream then used MCE to hear the mp3 file.  This is cool.

good job with the first release.  How do you handle popular programs like Car Talk and BBC which are not supported formats?

@Rohlica: Thanks for the feedback.  A program like car talk is carried by a lot of stations.  If your local station only streams it in real we'll find you another station that streams it in the appropriate format when you try to listen to it in MCE.  Unfortunately, if the program is only streamed in an unsupported format then you won't be able to listen to it from within the MCE version of our app.  However, you could try something like radiobill mentioned and use RedButton or some other stream recorder to save it in a different format and listen to it later.  We may try to add real stream support in a later release if there is enough interest.

I've put in a few fixes over the past few days.  That should have fixed some weird UI issues as well as some issues with items showing up in the search results even though they weren't playable.  They were all on our end so there's no need to download the installer again. 

Let us know if there are any other features you'd like to see or if you run into any issues.  If you think we've got the data wrong for a station or you can't find your favorite station/program let us know too.  We're constantly tuning our database to make sure the data is accurate and we're adding new content all the time.

I've really grown to like this app, will you be releasing a version for Vista?

@ericr34:  Yes.  The plug in actually works on Vista but unfortunately our installer doesn't.  As a workaround until the new installer is available you can hit this link:
http://mce.radiotime.com/MCL.aspx

That will prompt you to download a shortcut file.  If you save and then run the shortcut it should launch our app.  From there you can choose the "add to more programs" link in the main menu to add a link to our app in the media center menus.