| BBC has begun testing higher bit rates for the live Internet streams15th November 2008 The BBC has finally begun testing higher bit rates for the live Internet streams, as they've launched 96 kbps WMA test streams for all BBC stations apart from Radio 5 Sports Extra and the World Service (the World Service isn't changing yet). The BBC is planning on using the WMA format for both the live and on-demand streams that are delivered to Wi-Fi Internet radios, because Wi-Fi radios don't support the Flash format, which the BBC is already using for the on-demand streams available via the BBC iPlayer website, and it's going to start using Flash for the live streams as well over the next few weeks, when they begin using AAC+. The following table shows the URLs for the 96 kbps WMA test streams. Clicking on the links should launch whichever media player you use that plays WMA files. To manually play the streams, copy the URL, open your media player, click File > Open URL or File > Open, paste the URL in and press enter.
BBC live Internet radio streams updateThere have been some other developments for the BBC live Internet radio streams lately as well:
A note about the Flash formatJust to clear up any confusion over the fact that the Internet streams are both going to start using the Flash format and they're going to start using AAC+ shortly as well: Flash is a "container format", which means that it's a format that contains other media types -- or in streaming terms, it carries other media formats. For example, the on-demand radio streams available on the iPlayer website are already using the Flash format, and the Flash stream carries the audio, which is using the MP3 format. And when the BBC switches to using AAC+ for the live and the on-demand streams over the next few weeks, the Flash streams will just contain AAC+ audio streams instead.
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Playing streams with WiFi radio
So it'll just be a bug with the info the radio is displaying - I'll report it to someone at Frontier-Silicon, so hopefully it'll be fixed in a future version of firmware.
BBC Streams on iphone
BBC Streams on iphone
Re: BBC Streams on iphone
The reason why the URLs in the table on this page were originally of the form (I've changed them to the proper bbc.co.uk URLs now):
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/internet_radio/bbc_test_streams/Radio1_96_kbps_WMA.asx
rather than them being URLs for bbc.co.uk was because when I wrote this article the live streams were only testing, and if I'd have given the official bbc.co.uk 'playlist' URLs, such as:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/wm_asx/aod/radio1.asx
then anybody clicking on those URLs would have ended up listening to the old lower bit rate streams (because the higher bit rate streams were at the bottom of the playlist, and people receive things at the top of the playlist first), which would have defeated teh whole object of this article being about the new higher bit rate streams.
BTW, playlist files are files with an extension of .asx, .pls and .m3u, and they're just text files (albeit the text is structured according to a specification) that contain the URLs of the streams themselves. For example, if you right click on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/wm_asx/aod/radio1.asx
save the file and open it in a text editor such as Notepad for Windows, you can see the list of stream URLs.
BBCstreams.com
No BBC Radio via PURE Flow in Australia
Any ideas appreciated.
Real on Iphone