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honeypea

Listed below are comments made by honeypea between Wednesday, 25th June 2008 and Friday, 27th June 2008.

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BBC iPlayer & Radio 2:30pm on 27 Jun 2008 Thanks for the post Mark. "We're not dropping RealPlayer entirely (if you've a wifi radio that uses it, don't worry)" - how long for? Will my internet radio I just bought be able to listen to the BBC in 2 years time? Or might these formats be termed legacy in the next round of budget cuts and be dropped?
Under the iPlayer hood for radio 2:26pm on 27 Jun 2008 Thanks for the information James. I still have concerns for the future of internet radios, as the BBC is obviously concentrating on the newer formats (AAC+ and protected MP3) which *aren't* compatible with the millions of internet radios out there. In a previous Radiolabs post in March, stress was placed on not supporting a huge number of formats (for cost issues) and that Real streams would co-exist "for now".

What reassurances can you give us that the "legacy" streams that our internet radios (and Linux machines) can play won't be lost in a future budget cut? Could you please give us a projected time period in which the existing streams will be protected for - or during which unprotected open mp3 streams will be made available? Five years?
BBC iPlayer 2.0: Sneak Preview 7:04pm on 26 Jun 2008 Nick,

I hate to keep bashing away at this, but in the new iPlayer beta I now see for instance at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayerbeta/radio/bbc_radio_four/entertainment

that all Listen Again material seems to be playing in Flash, not mp3 format as reported by The Register - unless I don't know how to see that it's mp3 underneath the Flash front page or something? This makes me very concerned that the old RealPlayer/WMA formats that we all listen to on our Reciva Internet radios will be kept going "for now" to cite the posting in March over at RadioLabs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/03/streaming_radio_online_your_co_1.shtml

- but that they might later be dropped citing budget cuts and figures of how many people using the new Flash format iPlayer, say (because that's all they see available).

I don't mean to flog you to death on this, but I think we all deserve more technical details of what formats are proposed for both live and Listen Again radio, and some commitment to keep Internet radio-friendly streams available for the long haul, else this will just run and run. I just bought an internet radio, love it, and would be horrified to think that the BBC might cut access to it in the foreseeable. Thanks in anticipation of some techy stream details.
BBC iPlayer 2.0: Sneak Preview 5:05pm on 25 Jun 2008 Looks nice, but is this the beginning of the end of the BBC's RealPlayer and WMA streams for radio? Millions of internet radios using Reciva.com's interface depend on these formats, for live listening and listen again. Please Beeb reassure us that you're not going to switch off these streaming formats?

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