I hear the question .... "Sturdy-looking" is that some sort of euphemism?
The answer - Yes it is. My first reaction was that it looked like a car battery!
However, beauty is more than skin-deep. It looks like a capable device. It has the classic radio facilities (FM with RDS and DAB - including a telescopic aerial and 5 presets per band) plus Internet radio via Frontier Silicon portal over wired and wireless (b and g modes) and playback of media files on USB flash disk and from local LAN via UPnP-AV.
There are 3 speakers and audio connections both in and out (headphone, line in, line out)
Access to last.fm to play back music (and "scrobbling" of non-Internet radio tracks) is supported - with dedicated buttons for love/ban on both the radio and the remote control.
It looks like this has been designed to be sit well in the bedroom (as well as elsewhere in the house). For example, 2 different alarms with selectable volume level, dimable display (hopefully including a complete blackout), plus sleep and snooze functions.
The alarms can be set to play a buzzer, Internet radio, DAB radio, FM radio or Last.fm - an can be set as a one-off, daily, week-end or week-day.
For those who plan to move the radio between different locations - for example taking it away on holiday (for you not it!) there is the ability to store four different connection profiles - which should make it easier when you bring it back home or if you visit the same places regularly.
No mention of DAB+ on the site on the manual - which might be a problem in the future (or it could simply be an omission in the documentation).
More details over on the Roberts site including a detailed User Guide
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"No mention of DAB+ on the site on the manual" - true. But have you tried receiving a DAB+ broadcast with it? It seems to support AAC+ when playing streamed media without any issues. If the codec is there, then why not also for DAB+ ?
No DAB+ broadcasts in my area to test with. I'm not saying that it cannot do it - just that it is not documented.
The latest FS devices can handle DAB+ (potentially requring a firmware upgrade) so it is quite possible that it can be made to do it.
Still no dates in UK for DAB+ - but if Sangean start selling it in Australia then that would imply DAB+ is possible.
Like you say, it depends on the Frontier Silicon chip it uses.Chorus 1 (FS1010)makes no claims about DAB+, Chorus 2 (FS1020) does. And note that the FS1010 does claim it can do AAC, so having AAC is NO guarantee of DAB+.
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