Beeb's online music stations get rewind button The BBC has launched a raft of updates to its iPlayer on demand service, including the long-awaited ability to rewind music radio stations online. The new version is set to go live in beta on Thursday and will run alongside the current site for a few weeks. The most significant structural change is the full integration of the …
I use Real Player on WM6 on my phone to listen to BBC Radio London live over the net, it even works great in my car plugged in, in fact its mostly as good as being in London, except no traffic jams, congestion charge etc.
Hopefully these changes won't stop that from working...
Chris, thanks. Re-read it. My addled brain took streaming to mean 'live streaming'. Making the on-demand streams MP3 basically makes every stream downloadable and potentially podcastable. Interesting, considering they've been unable to make podcasts of many programmes due to rights issues...
I'll get a kicking for this I'm sure, but the thing is that as far as I've experienced, only RealPlayer on Windows is crap. RealPlayer 10 on Linux and RealPlayer 11 on my Macbook are fine. The latter even does a 1 hour rolling buffer for chase play already, so this isn't really a new feature at all. You just need to go and pull out the proper links and then something like rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/radio1/live/r1_dsat_g2.ra?BBC-UID=e49845cba76065f17a7ed014a03075e3ab14de6dc0605104f40f5a0f1f52d019_n&SSO2-UID= will give you live Radio 1 whenever you want. I really hope they keep the RealPlayer streams as it means not having to run stuff in my browser which I sometimes need to restart when testing software.
RealPlayer good buy is been fun……
At last I can get rid of the worst ever piece of bloated software in the world and the odd 40 pc’s in our building, as the last IT manager installed it to make sure everyone could watch the webcasts of our “local” community website (they use flash now).
Now I will just plain refuse to use any website that uses RealPlayer, any company who bases their business around this technology deserves to fail – EVOLVE OR DIE
End Rant (wow that was better than therapy)
If they do cancel the overseas streams I vote we mirror all the main bbc stations output to mp3 and bitorrent the lot.
Wack a couple of servers running freeview cards on constant record, cutup the files by show time, seed and enjoy.
I actually do this but with http for recording certain shows to listen to on my mp3 player while abroad, no worries about dodgy connections, nice resumable download.
I can't see the Beeb turning off radio access for overseas people, a fair few presenters make a point of mentioning when somebody has written in from California or Sydney or wherever saying they are listening to the show
Now we've had the download Firefox day, how about an uninstall Real day?
I know this article is abut iPlayer, its great, its part of my life I couldn’t do without it - this is how is should be right? But my rant - RealPlayer is my biggest software bugbear.
Can we try and set another software world record - The highest number of uninstalls in a 24 hour period? Lets go for July the 18th 2008? some one setup a site?
This seems to have turned into some group therapy session over the pain and distraught RealPlayer has caused.
As far as I'm aware, BBC Was the last Major website to use the dreaded .rm format. Without that, I cannot think of a compelling reason to install it; it has been Usurped by iPlayer.
No love lost here, the moment I can gleefully hit the uninstall button... then manually clean out the crap it left on the filesystem and registry.
"Perhaps Sony are paying the BBC to not produce it for the 360."
Much more simple - the 360 doesn't have a web browser, and the head of Xbox UK has said they have "no interest" in working with local content providers for marketplace to make any new solution.
Of course, the 360 can view the files downloaded by a XP or Vista machine as it is compatible with the DRM...
First thing I clicked on, just to try:
... ... is available in Real Media format only. To play this programme, please install Real Player first.
I'm, in India, by the way. I know I can't get Beeb TV, I don't know what stage it is going to check my location, as I'm on a new setup, and don't have Real Player yet.
Would be lovely if I never did have to.
If you're in the uk the BBC will direct you to the flash radio service which is unusable if you're using dial-up; to access the real audio stream use a browser that doesn't have flash and you'll get the old lower bitrate real audio file which is intended for listeners outside the uk.
For some reason the BBC Iplayer help pages choose not to relay this information:
"In the UK can I play radio programmes with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player rather than Flash?
No, because BBC iPlayer detects whether you are in the UK and selects the appropriate player as described here. We aim to give you Flash as this gives the best sound quality."
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