Even penguins can listen to BBC Radio
Post categories: Radio
| 12:13 UK time, Tuesday, 29 January 2008
One of the good things about working at the BBC is the wide range of listeners that get in contact with us. One such listener, Tim, sent a series of emails to us detailing his issues on listening to BBC Radio on the iPlayer for Radio.
From some of the press coverage we got last year, you'd probably think that we're a Microsoft house. We're not. As a senior manager within the BBC, I wander about with the near-ubiquitous BlackBerry (naturally), and a smallish under-powered HP laptop running Windows XP. But many of our designers and developers use corporation-supplied MacBook Pro machines; some bring in their own iBooks to supplement their Windows PCs, and some have even surreptitiously installed Debian on their desktops and pretend that I haven't noticed. While we're careful about what connects to our internal network - which, incidentally, is called 'Reith' after our first Director General - we also have a 'dirty' internet connection within the Audio & Music Interactive offices, so my team can use what's best for them.
It turns out that our listener Tim was also using what's best for him - he was running Ubuntu, the wildly popular version of Debian which has, for many people, been their first real experience of a GNU/Linux system. Tim was having problems installing Real Player so that he could listen to BBC Radio online. Well, it just so happens that I, too, run Ubuntu on two laptops at home, so when I got home last night, I spent a while writing Tim some proper instructions to install Real Player on his Ubuntu machine. Yes, I lead an exciting life.
Alongside Windows Media, we use software from Real Networks to enable the widest possible range of listeners to hear our radio programmes - and, while we're beavering away behind the scenes properly integrating with the stupendously successful iPlayer, I thought that if you, too, are having the same issues with installing Real Player on Ubuntu, that you might find this set of instructions useful. (Incidentally, I know I'm using a Dapper repository when I'm really running Gutsy. For whatever reason, Real Player isn't in the Gutsy repository. It works, and that's the main thing.)
As an aside, I do recognise that Real Player is free (as in beer), but not free (as in freedom) - and the Helix player, which is free-libre, won't apparently decode our streams. I want to let you know that we're constantly evaluating additional ways to listen to BBC Radio online. And failing that, there's this thing called a DAB Digital Radio which is really rather popular these days.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~53~RS~)
Great, thanks. So I assume we'll be able to access the iPlayer on the Asus eeePC?
On your instructions, the word "helpful" is mis-spelled as "helpgul"...
Al Cann, as long as flash is installed on Xandros (the version of linux the Eee comes with by default), or you install Ubuntu on it (I've heard a number of people have done this successfully), then yes, you can use iPlayer on the EeePC.
On your instructions, the word "helpful" is mis-spelled as "helpgul"...
Al Cann, as long as flash is installed on Xandros (the version of linux the Eee comes with by default), or you install Ubuntu on it (I've heard a number of people have done this successfully), then yes, you can use iPlayer on the EeePC.
I can confirm that the Radio Player (OK, iPlayer, whatever) works very well with the Eee 'out of the box' under Linux. To be honest I didn't expect it to, having previously suffered the pain of installing Real on a Windows machine, so was pleasantly suprised.
Also, if you maximise the Firefox window (F11) it fills the EEE screen almost prefectly :-)
The new now-and-next thing is nice. Kudos to whoever implemented that.
Since I listen to BBC radio almost exclusively through a computer (Mac at home, hopefully Ubuntu at work after reading these instructions) and a Freeview Playback Box (despite also owning a DAB radio) I've often wondered why the solution of using a USB Digital TV Tuner isn't more popular for listening to BBC radio on linux. As I see it the advantages are many:
* better sound quality
* standard codec
* recordable/rewindable incuding timed subscriptions
* frighteningly cheap these days and also does TV (I note maplins seems to have similar DAB things for slightly less)
It's certainly the route I intend to follow when I get around to setting up my den in my new house but despite keeping my eye on various related software projects they seem to be generally missing the possibilities.
(Another similar thinking outside the box solution, with similar benefits but analogue is the Griffin Radio Shark, supports Windows and Mac officially but both version 1 and 2 apparently)
Small correction about the eee PC. It doesn't quite play "out of the box". You need to install "Update of Internet Radio" which is one of the few additional bits of software that can be installed using "Add/Remove Software" on the Settings tab. This is very easy to do but, without it, firefox will complain of missing plugins and clicking the button to install them won't work.
If Penguins Could Fly - I Player
what a fantastic advert, my daughter thought it was for real!