[ubuntu-uk] BBC Audio Streams

[Rob Beard]

On 07/11/2009 19:11, David Restall - System Administrator wrote:
> Hi,
>
> up until a few weeks ago, I was quite happily able to download the real
> streams from the BBC, convert them to MP3 and play them in the car.
>
> What happened a few weeks ago ?  Well dear old auntie stopped including a
> link to the real stream in the iplayer meta data.
>
> Does anybody know if they are going to start using real again or is this
> feature totally dead.
>
>    
I gather they are phasing out Real streams.

> It seems as if it's alright for 'doze users, they can download the
> streams in the player provided but for Linux users all we are given is a
> crippled player.
>
>    
What player are you using, the one on the BBC web site or the BBC iPlayer?


> Also can somebody tell me why the BBC are so keen on 'Podcasts' which is
> as proprietary as they come but not so keen on just putting good old
> MP3's on the site to download ?  It irritates me when they bleat about
> 'Podcasts' but they won't say 'Hoovering'.  Why should Apple's product
> be any different 0- why should I as a licence fee payer provide Apple
> with free publicity ?
>
>    
It's one of those things, 'podcasts' have become a kind of generic 
term.  Bit like 'netbook' has even though technically the trademark is 
owned by Psion.  I guess in a way it's like how to some people, games 
consoles in the 90's were just known as playing 'Nintendo' and then 
'Playstation' and how personal stereos were generalised by most people 
as 'Walkmans' even if they weren't Sony Walkmans.
> Apart from me sitting down and reverse engineering the javascripts that
> the iplayer seems to rely on to obfuscate the retrieval method currently
> used, does anybody know of any other methods to be able to download
> streams again available to a Linux user ?
>    

Not sure if the get_iplayer script would work.  That works for TV shows, 
and I believe previously broadcast radio shows.  It can capture live TV 
streams, haven't tried it for radio though.  On the other hand, do the 
BBC offer Windows Media streams, as if they do you might be able to feed 
them into mplayer.

Rob