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Listed below are comments made by __bc__ between Friday, 27th June 2008 and Wednesday, 21st October 2009.

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BBC Red Button Changes on Freeview 2:04pm on 21 Oct 2009 Ever since it was announced that HD channels would be launched on Freeview it was was always inevitable that one of two things would happen: either the quality of existing SD channels on the PSB multiplexes would lowered or some of them would have to close. The loss of bandwidth available for SD channels was always too great to be compensated for by the use of newer encoding technology (despite some wishful thinking on the part Ofcom). Given this choice, the correct decisioned has been made. It's just a pity it was hushed up until now.
BBC iPlayer & Radio 6:16pm on 27 Jun 2008 "If you're a fan of serious classical music on BBC Radio 3, we're improving it still further, recognising that classical music requires higher bitrates to do the job well - so Radio 3's listen-again will be at 192k stereo."

By all means argue that Radio 3 will use a higher bitrate because you believe classical music is more artistically deserving, but I'm highly sceptical that there are any objective technical reasons for this. Difficult to encode sounds occur in all genres of music and are certainly not limited to classical music.

I suspect the clue are in the words "serious classical music" with the implication being that other genres of music are not serious enough to warrant high quality.

Apologies if my comments come across negative as overall this is a welcome improvement to the iPlayer.
Under the iPlayer hood for radio 4:25pm on 27 Jun 2008 The new iPlayer for radio is a massive improvement, both in terms of sound quality and usability. Well done to everyone involved in making this happen.

It's a little disappointing to see the bitrate snobbery though. Surely all music deserves to be broadcast at an equally high sound quality? Despite what some people would like you to believe, there is no objective evidence that classical music requires a higher bitrate compared to other musical styles.

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