Q: howto listen to rael audio in 74-bit edgy?

[Rod Joyce]

On Saturday 14 July 2007 15:29:07 D. R. Evans wrote:
> Does anyone have step-by-step instructions for how to listen to listen
> to Real audio (from the BBC) on 64-bit edgy?
>
> I have seen various things that suggest that it's possible, but I
> don;t know what packages to install to make it work in either Firefox
> or Konq.

It's possible and easy, if not always neat and tidy. The BBC radio and video 
players use 32-bit plugins which don't work in 64-bit browsers. The 
nspluginwrapper is supposed to make this possible, but I haven't ever been 
able to get it to work with Kubuntu, SuSE, or Fedora. 

The easiest work-round for listening to radio streams is simply to click 
the "Listen using stand alone RealPlayer" link on the left hand side of the 
BBC Player - of course you need to have RealPlayer installed on your system.
On my system (64-bit Feisty Kubuntu) this usually  works with Konqueror and 
FireFox, although sometimes I have to close RealPlayer and open it again to 
get any sound. Even though I have cable broadband, I have to admit the sound 
quality is not all that good. I can't get RealPlayer to play any of the BBC 
video streams properly - the sound is OK, but the picture freezes or lags 
behind the audio.

You can avoid the BBC Player altogether by clicking on the links at
http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/
which will open in RealPlayer or Kaffeine/Totem, etc.
Although the BBC misguidedly stick to RealPlayer/Windows Media Player, this 
site features some more enlightened stations such as Virgin Radio, which 
streams its programmes in ogg format.

I've tried two other work-rounds.  
1) installing a 32-bit browser, in my case, Opera. Not very satisfactory - the 
BBC Radio player worked well, the video player delivered a perfect picture 
but no sound.
2) installing CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office - the trial version  worked very 
well on my system, but I haven't installed the paid-for version yet as I 
don't need to run any MS software. Ironically, Kaffeine played the Windows 
audio and video  streams perfectly.

More (and Better advice) is at http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux-amd64.html

HTH
Rod