If you own a WiFi radio that relies on the Reciva aggregator, the company has given you an additional eleven weeks to enjoy your device before it effectively loses its ability to search an index of thousands of radio stations or possibly even recall your station memories. Indeed, if your radio relies on Reciva to gather stream info each time it’s turned on and tuned to a station, your radio may not function at all after Reciva has shut down.
We first posted a notice that Reciva would be closing down on November 2, 2020. That post received over 90 comments, mostly from readers who are incredibly frustrated.
Reciva has now changed the announcement at the top of their website stating that they will close on April 30, 2021.
In the meantime–and I suppose it goes without saying–do not buy a new or used WiFi radio that relies on Reciva as it will not function properly without the Reciva aggregator service. I’m sure there are a number for sale. Research the aggregator a WiFi radio uses before making a purchase.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Karl, for the tip!
Post readers: If you’ve found a Reciva work-around for your WiFi radio, please share details with us in the comments section.
It appears the deed is done. Reciva finally shut down all the host servers of the various wifi retailers.
Sometime in the past week. I first noticed last night.
RECIVA HAS DIED!!! LONG LIVE RECIVA!!!
T+133 days. RECIVA LIVES!!! Fortunate in my case.
Today is now T+100 days since April 30th.
August 8th and Reciva lives on (with the Reciva login still available on Rotel and other sites that still maintain a server on Reciva’s site).
My theory of why? They received a legal challenge and so they postponed the full shutdown. I cannot prove this.
Rotel and others may have stepped in to force Reciva to stay alive until everything is settled.
Enjoy the time you have but no new updates from any official source seem available yet.
77 days later and Reciva still up and running.
If you need to log in, make use of the rotel.reciva.com site but after that you can go back and use radios.reciva.com again and you’ll see you’re still logged in despite the banner.
ROTEL’S RECIVA HOST SITE IS SHUTTING DOWN JUNE 20TH, 2021:
https://rotel.com/blog/reciva
YOU HAVE TWO WEEKS!
I’ve discovered a workaround to keep your Reciva based radios playing without extra junk daisy-chained to it, like an Echo Dot. Download the Hi-Fi Cast app on Google Play store, launch it, attempt to play something and then look for your device in the discovery list. If it has DLNA or UPnP capabilities, it will be discoverable. Connect to it and you can play your audio library from your phone/tablet and you can access the SHOUTcast lineup of radio stations through the application! If your radio is connected to a 2.4 gigahertz network, make sure your phone is connected to the same 2.4 gigahertz network as well so the streaming doesn’t cut out. The app is free, but costs $3 yearly if you don’t want occasional interruptions with streaming or have to suffer advertising. Thankfully, there’s a one-time fee lifetime option for $8.99. Very importantly, you can create custom radio stations using stream URL’s that you can manage to find on the internet. I still haven’t found a minimalist way of getting SiriusXM playing on my old Grace Victoria nostalgia radio, but if anyone has any suggestions, please share them. This method is an easier way of playing radio than navigating hard to read menus with small screens on these legacy devices anyway, so give it a try. ?
Receiva still working today, May 2, 2012.
May 13th now. For the moment everything remains on my Grace Digital Mondo. Internet stations, Pandoro, iHeart Radio working. Of course Sirius has been gone for a while. Wish Reciva wouldn’t tease me like that. I just want it to be done so I can see exactly what I have to work with.
Not one peep on the Sangean web page about this, and the WFR20 uses this aggregator. I gave a WFR20 to my brother for Christmas a few years ago, so I’m assuming it uses the Reciva service and is about to become a large, expensive doorstop.
Everybody!
There is a lot of discussion on another swling-blog page, keep this url in mind for the next few weeks!
Rob
https://swling.com/blog/2020/11/the-reciva-internet-radio-station-aggregator-closing-down/#comments
5 reciva radios, why dont they just stop development but keep the existing service going, surely someone can afford the server electricity ? Most have their radio lists on the server.
Short sighted and thanks for taking over reciva and now dumping it.
5 Internet radios all use Reciva…………Bloody disgrace. Surely someone can take over the server ? Its cost is minimal I would have thought. They need to sell it not close it down !!
Hmmm, wonder if my current presets will not work. My Sanyo R227 doesn’t indicate it is connecting to Reciva unless I am browsing for new stations. Or is it??
I’m a Canadian that purchased from Grace a radio when in Boca Raton and had it delivered to me there.
I subsequently purchased a second.
One of my radios has suddenly stopped working.
I phoned Grace tech support and told them that my radio suddenly stopped
After a few questions, he must have known the problem but instead he started
giving me instructions on how to get it working again.
(1) It could be over heating, unplug radio overnight
Called back said it still didn’t work.
2 ) they said to bypass the Wifi and get a Grace USB Ethernet adaptor.
Called back and said that didn’t work.
Finally a tech support spilled the beans and told me about Reciva shutting down.
It seemed to me that he reluctantly offered me a 30% discount .
When is a discount not a real discount.
When their 30% reluctant? Discount is the same willingly 30% discount they gave me when I originally bought them.
It will cost me to replace the 2 radios in Canada $487.77cdn. after discount plus 13% HST. Tax.
What will it cost Grace Digital?
You figure it out.
Sure, I’d pay 3.00 a year to keep Reciva. Sangean still must pay us 100% for the radios that are bricked though.
This is really bad news. I have two old internet radios (BT and Tangent Quattro) that use the Reciva database, but, fortunately, I have another radio (Ruark) that DOESN’T. I am fearful of the future. I enjoy the range of internet stations so much that I would be lost if the whole concept was consigned to history. I know I could find some on my computer, but I don’t think anything could compare to the way stations are organised on the internet radios. I hope someone can come up with some sort of work-around..
I wonder why the moved the date out? If they charged a yearly fee they might be able to stay in business. That is what vtuner did as they charge $3.00 a year which I don’t mind paying at all to keep getting internet radio on my Denon AVR-S900W.
My guess would be that they moved the date out because of backlash from the OEMs that use their system (who in turn had heard from customers like us) — at least the C Crane people told me that they had not heard the news about Reciva before end-users brought it to their attention.
I can completely see why a company would want to cut off service like this — not that it makes it the right thing to do, but the technology is “legacy” in Qualcomm’s eyes, and takes time and effort to maintain / service that they would rather see spent on other efforts.