The R227 came preloaded with several thousand stations that could be searched by location or genre.
There are 2,163 stations on the U.S. roster alone. Also, 1,246 in Britain, 123 in Japan, 103 in China, 33 in India and two in Kazakhstan, one of which was inexplicably playing "Santa Baby" (and not by Eartha Kitt) when I tuned in Wednesday afternoon.
The genre list was extensive, including news, kids, public, oldies, hip hop, pop, Bollywood, gospel and ambient.
I looked for one of my favorite classical stations, BBC 3. Not only did the R227 have it available, but it also allowed me to tune into archived shows on the channel. The NPR channel likewise allowed for archive listening.
The choices included the ultra-niche. There was "Psychic on Air," the "Saturday Night Knife and Gun Show" (a QVC-type program selling weapons) and a police-band radio scanner in Las Vegas. But that's part of what online radio is about.
Although numerous public stations were listed, including many in Southern California that one of the best known -- KCRW-FM (89.9) -- was left out. I fixed that by signing on to a programming site that Sanyo uses. Registering this particular unit's serial and Media Access Control numbers, I was able to wirelessly add a listing for KCRW to the radio.
The R227 also could pick up regular local FM stations, with outstanding sound quality, and it was possible to add links to music stored on a computer media player (PC only).
Because it's a clock radio, it could be set to wake up the user from any of these sound sources, or a built-in buzzer.
The R227 is scheduled to become available in the U.S. this month. Online retailers taking pre-orders have priced it at about $150.
That is a lot pricier than most run-of-the-mill clock radios. But they can't find Radio Bartok.
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david.colker@latimes.com
