Some of the best web services may not be available to you if that service is limited to users from a specific region or country of the world. This is for instance the case with Pandora and many other entertainment related services. Your only option to access the service is to use a proxy server or virtual private network to bypass the country restrictions.
It is not often that you come upon an application that provides everything you need to access restricted services. Saver 2 Bundle is a free software collection for Windows that is an all-on one solution providing access to services such as Pandora, Rhapsody Radio, Last.fm, Songza or Meemix.
The program installs several programs on your computer that work well together. You can start the core application directly and use the integrated Opera USB browser to load the web services. It is alternatively possible to use other web browsers which may need to be configured properly before they can be used, or the optional Pandora Radio player that can be installed with the main program.
Saver2 uses the Tor Network to establish proxy connections. This basically tunnels the connection so that it appears as if it is coming from one of the allowed locations in the world. For Pandora Radio, this would be an endpoint in the United States.
The connection to one of the supported services should work right away and without the dreaded “country unsupported” message that users would see otherwise. Quality of playback during tests was good; Music streams from Pandora Radio and several other services were playing without buffering issues and errors.
Saver2 can be configured to download music from supported services automatically or on demand. The program is configured to download everything automatically. The preferences offer options to save only on approval.
The program furthermore tries to replace lower quality songs with higher quality versions, looks up album art on Amazon and may query the MusicDNS service for additional information.
Files can be re-encoded, for instance to a lower quality setting or file extension. Other options include configuring a blacklist or whitelist.
New users may feel overwhelmed at first by the applications that get installed and displayed on the screen when the main program is started. The majority of windows can be minimized though. All it takes to get started is to run the main application, wait until a proxy connection has been established to finally load the website that you want to access.
Windows users can download the Saver2 Bundle from the developer website.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: last.fm, music, pandora, video, windows software
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