Starplayr 1.7.7 brings Sirius Radio to your Mac with style
Above: While I am ashamed to admit I already own this Bulletboys album, it’s nice to be able to know I could record an MP3 of it off Hair Nation if I had to.Don’t let those fugly, horribly designed control buttons fool you, Starplayr by NiceMac is the best-designed Sirius player you will find for the Mac, and yes, it’s free (well, free assuming you have a Sirius subscription of course).
What makes Starplayr so cool? Well, first off, not only can Starplayr play your Sirius music, but it can also record the Sirius channel streams and convert them from their broadcast ASF format to MP3’s which are then automatically added your iTunes library. This is awesome for a million reasons, but for me I know it means I now have a new way to record The Howard Stern Show for later iPod listening while at work. My favorite feature of the recording ability is that if your computer should temporarily lose its internet connection due to a flaky WiFi signal or modem reset, the Starplayr will reconnect to Sirius and resume recording. Starplayr also boasts a great library of easy to use iCal scripts, allowing you to automate the recording of your favorite shows. This means if you want to record a show that starts at 6 AM, you don’t need to wake up, go downstairs, log in to Sirius’s flaky web player, and then begin recording use a separate (and sometimes costly) app like Audio HiJack.
Above: Assuming you have the desktop space, Starplayr can also display album art of the currently playing track.Another great recording feature is the ability to record one channel while listening to another, something I have gotten used to on my FiOs dual tuner DVR for my TV, and something I love now having in my Sirius!
Of course Starplayr has all the other features you would hope to find in an online music player, such as displaying track info (artist, title and album) and album art for the currently playing song. There are user-selectable streamrates for those with slower connections, as well as selectable recording quality settings. In addition to the ability to record a program, you can also “paws” the music, thanks to a constantly running buffer (get it? Paws? like Pause, but since Sirius is the dog star… oh forget it).
Starplayr is truly a great application, but by no means is it perfect however. There are a bunch of minor flaws in the program that need to be addressed in order for it to achieve true awesomeness, but what NiceMac got right here far outweighs what they got wrong, and I cant wait to see how this program evolves. Hopefully we’ll see an iPhone version of this app come June.
I could go on and on, but either you have Sirius or you don’t, and if you don’t, you don’t care about this. But if you DO subscribe to Sirius, you need the Starplayr. So go get it.
Wow!!!! I am so happy!! Now if only someone can design software or some form of interface so I can connect my Stiletto radio with my Mac I will be in heaven!
Wow! This is much MUCH better than Sirius’ attempt at a Mac Player. Maybe I’ll keep my subscription now!
How is the sound quality? If it’s similar to what I get with XM Radio in my car, it’s good but would probably sound deficient on an iPod. My question is if there is a similar piece of software for XM Radio on a Mac?
Bummer it doesn’t work on Panther. (my @work machine)
I will see what I can do about Panther 10.3.9 compatibility. 1.7.8 is in the works (a slight redesign).
gt 🙂
I prefer SiruisMac2. It does not have as many features but the channel changing in Star is way to slow for me.
I’ve tried other software to play Sirius on the Mac and I’ve always ended up reverting back to using a web browser. Starplayr just works! No need to install other bits and pieces of software just to have problems with login or non-scrolling windows to pick the station. This kicks butt, can’t wait for an iPhone version (it would be well worth paying for).
Instant Replay is coming in 2.0
In SP2, channel tuning even with the instant replay 3-stage instant replay buffer will only take 4 seconds from click to clunk. That’s just 4 second to tune a new channel. 1 second or less to locate the stream. 3 to create the seekable buffer.
StarPlayr2
Summer 08
Leopard Only, Alpha version of StarPlayr2 is out.
If you liked StarPlayr 1, SP2 will blow you away.
It’s far from being a finished product, but we are very pleased how its rapidly progressing.
Check it out at Nicemac.com
http://nicemac.com/index.php?topic=1454.msg7280#msg7280
StarPlayr2 Alpha3 (currently Leopard only) tunes in 3 seconds even with Instant Replay (a seekable TiVo like buffer that lets you rewind and fast forward using 30 sec, 5 sec, and 3 min jump/seek buttons.
This will improve when we start saving the artist and song data, users will be able to skip to different sections using the jump buttons.
gt 🙂