That talented Bug

The poor old wireless is going through a few changes. Adventurous owners of Pure's The Bug DAB radio can now download an experimental version of its system software that receives the beta version of the electronic programme guides (EPG) broadcast - sometimes - by the BBC and commercial stations.

Did I risk my bedside Bug? For you, anything. After just twenty minutes faffing with USB cables and pernickety device drivers, and only one complete failure resulting in an utterly dead radio, I reset, resurrected and had my EPG.

It's not Radio TiVo, but it's not far off. I can find and tag programmes up to a week ahead, and the radio dutifully records them to its SD card. Things are a bit clunky, as you have to tune to the EPG channels and wait in silence while it downloads stuff, but that will be fixed in the release version. The designers did a good job fitting a lot of info into a small display, and when the BBC gets a few little things sorted at its end - like broadcasting its EPG more often than not - it'll be yet another boost to a medium already prancing around on monkey glands.

Just to make British radio nuts even happier: the Bug is the only stand-alone radio in the world with an EPG that can record to removable media. It's also by some way the weirdest.