BBC is trying to avoid using 128 kbps AAC for the live Internet radio streams

19th November 2008

When the BBC announced back in February that the quality of the Internet radio streams was at long last going to be improved later in the year, they also said that they wanted to provide the live streams at lower quality than the on-demand streams. James Cridland, the DAB supporter who's in charge of the BBC's Internet radio streams, tried to justify this blatantly biased decision by saying that if higher bit rates were used for the live streams then people listening on "congested office networks" would suffer from reliability problems — even though he said he's in favour of the on-demand streams using the very same high bit rate levels that the BBC claims would be unreliable.

However, this reliability issue (if there ever was an issue in the first place) has been solved by people working on the BBC iPlayer TV streams, but James Cridland still looks to be refusing to use 128 kbps AAC for the live streams anyway, which in my opinion confirms that the BBC wants to nobble the Internet radio streams so that they don't outclass DAB in terms of audio quality.

Automatic bandwidth detection solves reliability issues

A few weeks ago, Anthony Rose, the BBC Controller who's in charge of the iPlayer, announced that 'automatic bandwidth detection' was going to be implemented on the iPlayer TV streams later this year, and that this would allow the BBC to automatically deliver the higher bit rate iPlayer TV streams to people with a sufficiently high bandwidth connection, and the lower bit rate streams would be delivered to everyone else (automatic bandwidth detection works in a similar way to how broadband speedtests work, where a file is delivered to a user, and the bandwidth is calculated by timing how long it takes for the file to be downloaded).

Automatic bandwidth detection would therefore also solve James Cridland's supposed concerns about the live Internet radio streams being unreliable on "congested office networks", and James Cridland later confirmed that automatic bandwidth detection would be implemented for the Internet radio streams too — it would have looked extremely suspect if he hadn't implemented it when it's going to be used on the TV side of the iPlayer anyway. However, when he confirmed that automatic bandwidth detection was going to be implemented for the Internet radio streams, James Cridland reiterated that the BBC was still going to provide the live Internet streams at lower quality than the on-demand streams, and he repeated that his justification for doing this was the supposed reliability issue for people listening on "congested office networks" — even though automatic bandwidth detection solves that issue!

The BBC won't provide 'normal' and 'high' quality streams either

Once James Cridland had confirmed that automatic bandwidth detection was going to be implemented on the Internet radio streams, I suggested that the BBC should provide "normal quality" and "high quality" buttons (like the ones shown below, which are used on the iPlayer TV streams) for lower and higher bit rate streams, respectively, in the meantime until automatic bandwidth detection had been implemented.

This has been the tried and tested way to provide Internet streams at higher bit rates for years, but James Cridland doesn't want to provide this because he ridiculously said it would be "too complicated" for some listeners, and he also said that it would cost more money to provide streams at different bit rates. Yet he's already said that automatic bandwidth detection is going to be implemented, and it only makes sense to implement automatic bandwidth detection if streams at different bit rate levels are being used. So it wouldn't cost more money at all.

James Cridland performing his famous disappearing streams trick

James Cridland has also previously said that cost wasn't stopping him from providing the streams at higher bit rates, it was only his supposed concern about reliability. So he's contradicted himself again there.

The BBC has kept the live streams at low quality for an additional 5 months

The original plan was that the live streams would switch to using MP3 at higher bit rate levels straight after the on-demand streams had switched to using MP3, and then both the live and on-demand streams would switch to using AAC/AAC+ (which would be delivered using the Flash format) later in the year. But the on-demand streams started using MP3 at higher bit rates back in July, and now it's clear that the BBC has simply skipped switching the streams to MP3, and they'll simply switch straight to using AAC/AAC+, which will probably be in December. This means that the BBC has kept the live streams at low quality for 5 months longer than necessary. How kind.

James Cridland first announced that there would be a delay in switching the live streams to using MP3 at higher bit rates about two weeks after the on-demand streams had started using 128 kbps MP3 in July, and he said this delay had been caused by there being a "BBC-wide code freeze" for all networking activities, which is because the Olympics is a busy time for the BBC website, and the live streams would start using MP3 straight after the Olympics had finished at the end of August. Then just one week after the Olympics had started the BBC launched the higher quality iPlayer TV streams, thus making a complete mockery of James Cridland's claims that there was a BBC-wide code freeze for networking configurations!

I also think that the reason why James Cridland is refusing to provide lower and higher bit rate streams in the meantime until automatic bandwidth detection has been implemented even though lower and higher bit rate streams are going to be used anyway is just another excuse to keep the live streams at lower quality than they would otherwise be at.

Overall, the way the BBC has acted throughout the course of this year on the subject of the live Internet radio streams has been nothing short of a disgrace, and if they go ahead with their outrageously biased plans to limit the quality of the live streams -- even when the issues they claim to have been stopping them using higher bit rates have been solved -- then I will certainly be complaining to the BBC Trust both about the current issue and about the grossly incompetent or totally biased way in which the BBC's Internet radio streams have been managed over the last few years.

Comments

internet radio rates for BBC

By Brian Brown

5th January 2009, 17:06

I hadn't been on your site for a few months and saw article about Beeb's procrastination. I've got a ROKU streaming radio bought to stream my CD collection via itunes on PC; I only ever use radio for listening to the excellent (256kbps) AVRO classical stations as putting on Radio 3 a year ago sent me straight back to my (10 year old) Cambridge tuner and FM. The "new" sound radio 3 on internet is infinitely better than the old stand-alone platform and DAB is not even worth mentioning. Still doesn't compare to FM though - if they switch off FM it will be akin to the record industry foresaking vynil! Keep on campaigning against the blind trying to lead us to the bland!