Slashdot Mirror
BBC Testing Ogg Vorbis Streaming
jregel writes: "Credit must go to AirLance who posted a comment on Slashdot that the BBC are currently testing Ogg Vorbis streaming. As the comment says, users should email the BBC and show support. It would certainly suggest that someone at the BBC is quietly pushing open source. Is this the first major media outlet to use the format?" I hope someone from NPR is reading this, too :)
but for personal music jukeboxes of all shapes and sizes, I wish people would use FLAC or some other lossless audio codec. As broadband and microstorage become more common maybe these will become more used.
If this goes over well, this could be the first big step in terms of OGG's popularity, and a step towards
entering the realm that formats like MP3 and RealAudio have dominated for far too long.
I opened the Radio 1 stream in XMMS, and it sounds much better than an MP3 stream at 60 kbps.
I always understood ogg had a lowest bitrate of 64k, which is still a bit high for us modem-connected users.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
yes, this is a small evolutional step. but when does the simulcasting revolution begin? i'm itching for something akin to broadcast: where we only use bandwidth once, not in multiples of however many listeners we have.
The low-bandwith music on BBC-1 is still pretty bad, but about as good as anything else I've heard. It's stellar on the high bandwidth BBC-1 stream, however. It's heavy on the treble, where I'm used to having to boost that range.
I'm having a little trouble EQing to correct for the high treble. It seems to have a huge upward curve on the high end where other CODECs just chop or only represent simple harmonic overtones. That makes it a little harsh on some things, but it's nicer than the sensation of listening underwater or through a tube that Real & MS give.
And it begs the question "Why?" Lossless = Zip, Rar, Jar, Ace, Arj and a bunch of other compressions.
FLAC is specialized to and optimized for acoustic signals. Try compressing the same WAV under zip and FLAC.
But if I can't hear the difference, what's the difference?
Err, because you're not everybody, and some people *can* tell the difference? Or perhaps you could tell the difference if the rest of your system is good enough - reader, amplifier, speakers, room acoustics, the whole chain.
Whoever set the human ability to hear equal to the 44,1kHz of a CD? For a select few it's maybe more, but for me it's definately less.
Your sampling frequency needs to be *at least* twice the highest audible. 20 KHz is supposed to be the highest audible frequency for humans, and for many it's more than adequate (especially for those who never wore earplugs in nightclubs or at rock concerts). I personally was tested up to around 22 KHz, so the 20 KHz limit is bunk. Not only that, but the 2X rule (think about it) is only *in theory*. It assumes perfect filters, which don't exist. In fact you get artifacts well below what's supposed to be the high cutoff for a 44.1 KHz sample stream.
Lame using the --remix command is more than enough for my ears (actually overkill, but I assume I someday *might* regret not setting it that high). Considering that many ppl are happy with 128kb CBR, I'm probably even picky.
I glad for you, go ahead and listen to the sound the way you like it, but to me and many others the artifacts in 44.1KHz sound are quite audible. As for streams at 128kb, it sounds like it's being played through a phase shifter.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
This is too cool.
:)) and Ogg is the way to do that because it can be used on all platforms. I'm surprised they've been testing Windows Media (they're actually testing that to a greater extent to Ogg) because that limits them so much. Real they use because it does video too, and was probably the best option when they originally setup their streaming services all those years ago.
The BBC, in their nature, are the most bias-free, impartial news reporting service in the world. The biggest alternatives, MSNBC are obviously going to edge more towards the side of MS related properties (whether or not they say otherwise) and CNN... well CNN is owned by the world's largest media-congolomerate - AOL Time Warner (a company much more scary and powerful than MS could ever hope to be). The BBC is owned by the people and is therefore advertisement free. It's fabulous.
Replacing their Real streams with Ogg is great for many reasons. It means I can get rid of the horrible, bloated application that is Real Player (now Real One) and use Winamp instead. It means on my Mac I can listen with the various OS X players (Real for OS X isn't available I believe) and it means that if I decided to move to a Linux desktop, I'd have it on there too.
In fact this is probably why the BBC want to move to. Not counting the fact that licensing Real costs them money, but part of the BBC mandate is to provide their services to as many people in the UK as possible (sorry to disappoint the folks across the world, but the BBC is a public service over here, so we come first
It'll be interesting to see if they find an alternative to Real for video too, I believe they want to start doing BBC News 24 (their 24 hour digital TV news service) streaming over the net as well...
From the point of view of the British TV license owner, for a little over £100 a year the BBC provide us with at least 2 TV channels (more if you have digital), an amazingly comprehensive online service, countless radio stations (at least 5, with others depending on your region) and all of it is completely and utterly advertising free. And, thanks to their promise (they make yearly promises to the British public of things they'll do) to reach out to as many people as possible, and make everything integrate as well as possible - all the radio is available online too. Programs on digital TV are interactive, most programs have a website, and they don't treat the Internet as some mystical magical place for geeks, but as another part of everyday life, just like the Radio and TV.
So three cheers for the BBC.
I'll shut up now.
Slashdot, Dec 25, 2001
In a fully precedented and wholely unsurprising post on Slashdot, heretic108 made the same blinkered mistake that many idiots repeat. In his post, he made the classic mistake of thinking that the BBC, the UK state owned broascaster, would give two fucks about a court decision made by the San Fransisco District Court.
When faced with this news, heretic108 immediatly looked confused, at first refusing to believe that anything could possibly exist outside of the United States of America. "No way man! Those places are made up for like, episodes of Jackass. The UK was invented by MTV!"
No one was available for comment from Slashdot at the time of going to press.
BBC using ogg has nothing to do with open source, they are using it to reach a wider audience and because it is superior, because it suits them better, they dont care if it is open source or not.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
You really should visit Project Mayhem - there's a lot more to audio coding than "256 kbps MP3 is transparent to everyone because I say so".
News flash. You're not everyone. Neither is the guy waving 256 kbps about (in this case, Roel).
1. Learn what phrases mean before you use them. Esp. "begs the question"
2. I don't know of anyone who "set the human ability to hear."
(my apologies if english is not your primary language, it's difficult to learn, but please strive for more precise wording)
3. Sounds near the 20kHz mark are essentially converted to sine waves by the 44,100 samples/sec of CDs. CD quality is not the best there is.
4. Most people listen to their music as a background without their full attention. 128kbs is enough for that (and if that's all you've heard then you can't compare), but if you pay attention to the music you'll need higher.
Its awesome to be able to recieve Radio-1 With better quality, the stream running 64kbps on Ogg sounds noticibly better than the old streams i used to listen to.. .great to put on at a party in the background a radio 1 essential mix.... :)
only one question... How would one save the files after broadcast? (i.e. to save the essential mix broadcasts?)
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche