Internet radio, which for years has played the role of disorganized slacker in the radio family, abruptly hogged the spotlight for a few minutes today when Tivoli unveiled its NetWorks Internet radios. Modeled like most of Tivoli's table radios, the table NetWorks has a wood finish and a reasonably large mono speaker, but it adds a four-line scrolling display and built-in Wi-Fi for tapping those online radio streams. Tuning into, say, WWOZ in New Orleans or Radio Russia from Moscow is reportedly as easy as using a regular radio, though you'll have a few more stations to choose from than on the FM band — Tivoli says there are over 10,000 on its proprietary list.

If radio on the go is more your thing, Tivoli is also releasing the NetWorksGo (pictured), the portable version, which drops the wood finish for a weather-resistant black shell and runs on six C-cell batteries. Both radios can get Net radio via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. See a picture of the table NetWorks and some vague price and availability data after the jump.

Both of Tivoli's NetWorks radios are due to hit stores in the fall. Tivoli boss Tom DeVesto was mum on prices, and didn't even want reporters to take photos of the table NetWorks (since its design isn't final, he says), though we snuck a pic (albeit a crappy one) of it in one of the PowerPoint slides.

In the end, Tivoli's latest merits an enthusiastic shrug. It seems to us Internet radio's unpopularity has more to do with being fundamentally flawed rather than a lack of convenient hardware. Still, if a product could bring it in — or at least closer — to the mainstream, it would need be a user-friendly, PC-eschewing gadget like Tivoli's. We look forward to checking it out. — Peter Pachal