Screamer Radio is a well-designed internet radio player.

An attractive interface works just as you'd expect. It opens with a list of thousands of stations, double-clicking any of these starts playing it immediately, and there are simple controls to start and stop playback, or tweak volume.

The program is smarter than you'd expect. The list doesn't just have the name of the station, for instance. It also has tags describing its content ("USA", "Classic Hits", "Talk and Comedy"), and clicking any of these filters the list to display similar stations.

Playback options are just as helpful. While other tools just have "Play" and "Stop", Screamer Radio can mute playback; automatically stop playing after a fixed period with the sleep timer, and automatically resume playing the last station when it starts.

There are convenient low-level touches. If you've ever used another internet radio player you'll know the frustration of waiting for a site to connect, and wondering what the problem might be. That could happen here, too, but Screamer Radio can optionally display a log view while connecting, letting you see exactly what's going on.

Experts will find more handy extras in the Settings dialog, with options including network buffer size, custom proxies, and a DSP compressor to keep volume levels constant.