In a New York Times article called ‘State of the Art: After TiVo, Radio Rewound’ reporter David Pogue describes the technology of ‘rewind radio’ and compares it with the replay TV function within digital video personal recorders (TiVos).

Here is some of what he wrote:

… Having
become addicted to the seven-second replay button – an
essential movie-watching tool in this era of special
effects and mumbled dialogue – TiVo twitch sufferers are
often seen reflexively pressing a nonexistent seven-second
replay button, even when they’re not in front of the
television.

Their brains helplessly fire the deeply
ingrained “Let me catch that again” command when they’re
listening to the car radio, enduring a flaky cellphone
connection or savoring a hard-won apology from a spouse.

Truth is, you can’t blame the brain for misfiring. It’s
bizarre that five years into the digital video-recorder
era, you still can’t buy a digital VCR for radio. Why has
the electronics industry developed so many machines that
let us time-shift Dr. Phil and “Saturday Night Live,” but
so few that do so for Dr. Joy Browne and “Science Friday”?

Actually, there is one such device. Radio YourWay
(pogoproducts.com) looks at first glance like a pocket-size
(2.2 by 3.9 by 0.7 inches) AM-FM transistor radio, which,
in part, it is. But it also contains a built-in timer, so
that you can set up a schedule for recording radio
broadcasts. Programming it is exactly as easy – or as
difficult – as programming a VCR…

At the specified time, the radio turns itself on. It tunes
in the station, records for the requested interval and then
turns off.

Once you’ve captured a show, you can play it back at a more
convenient time (or in an area with no reception), pause it
while you take a shower or a meeting, fast-forward through
the ads, or even archive it to a Windows PC using a U.S.B.
cable…

But wait, there’s more. The RYW can also play MP3 music
files from your computer and even act as an external PC
hard drive for transporting data files from place to place.
All of this comes in a package about the size of a deck of
cards for $150 (for the 32-megabyte model, which holds 4.5
hours of recordings) or $200 (128 megabytes, 18 hours).
Both models accept Secure Digital memory cards that can
hold even more recordings.

The bad news is … the recording quality… The RYW records in mono, and at – get this –
32 Kbps. Recorded music sounds like muffled party tunes
coming through your wall from the apartment next door.

Talk radio doesn’t suffer nearly as much. It still sounds
much duller than the original broadcast, but it’s
tolerable. As Captain Kirk might say, “Set expectations to
Low…”

[And] the player doesn’t “bookmark”
your spot. If you listen to the first half of a recording
(say, “Car Talk”), switch to live radio or another
recording, and then return to “Car Talk,” you have to start
from the beginning or manually fast-forward to the spot
where you stopped.