Slashdot Mirror
BBC Reopens Ogg Streams
garf writes: "Once again, back by popular demand, the BBC has opened up live streaming of Radio 4, to test with the new codecs, especially for modem users. Hop over here.
And for those wishing to listen to Radio 1 try these (link one),
(link two).
But beware: '[Radio 1 streams] are available sporadically at the moment. Don't be surprised if it cuts off, as I've probably just killed it ready for restarting with different settings.'
Please email support to the BBC for their continued support for the ogg format. Happy listening."
NPR should do this since they're kind of the "GNU/Linux" of the radio world. Instead, they only offer support for QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media streams.
In my opinion, National Public Radio (whose mission is to aid the growth and development of noncommercial radio) should definitely be supporting an open audio standard such as Ogg Vorbis.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
That's like testing a car for highway safety with a hydrogen bomb, you know.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Even lame supports ogg coding through libogg.
merkac
Cool, but useless.
I seriously don't think .ogg files will ever be able to reach the ascendancy of .mp3 files. The reason is aesthetic- .mp3 sounds slick and space-age, whereas .ogg sounds like egg and/or the noise of vomiting. I do not like eggs or vomit, and I would put neither into my computer.
This might seem like a minor quibble, but I would venture that it's the little things like this (design considerations) that distinguish popular products/formats from the scores of unpopular ones.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
I'm glad to see this... MP3's have received so much attention, none of the other codecs haven't been in the news much. Sure, there's the random article comparing 4 or 5 codecs that no one's ever going to use, or the little articles saying that people hear an improvement in Ogg over MP3. But have you seen people using .ogg's? I do. Everything I've ripped is now in Ogg. Better quality, more flexibility, and a superior acoustic model.
I thought listening to the BBC over Ogg was cool. I remembered the first time I'd heard it over shortwave. Not to mention that it worked flawlessly. Then again, I'lve always got the latest plugin for my Winamp, and my XMMS. No annoying RealPlayer crap. No proprietary codecs. It works on my non-Windows boxes.
I sent a brief, yet eloquent note to the BBC webmaster when the original test completion was finished, and will probably send another encouraging this continued project. I would encourage the same from others.
Support your local hackers. (no, not crackers. hackers. Damn Hollywood crap.)
Primary ogg-related feedback address: oggfeedback@bbc.co.uk
The BBC itself has a pretty extensive feedback gathering mechanism: here are online feedback forms you can fill out:
Feedback form about the BBC website/services
Feedback form about BBC Radio
BBC News suggestions form
But remember: you can gush all you want about the BBC's OGG decision--but I have a feeling the BBC is more interested in how many people are actually tuning in. The best way to get this to stay up is to really listen... and it's worth doing, especially if you're in the US and want 15% less state propaganda in your news. I don't just mean now, as long as this story is on the /. homepage, but next week, too...
Honestly speaking commercial streaming providers are suffering from outragous fee charged for using proprietary codecs. My friend was surprise when RA charged them per *access*. Talking about *free* educational streaming-media website for charity...
Proprietary codec hurts the widespread of multi-media information exchange. WWW would not be the same if it started out as pay-per-acess. I can foresee free codec format could make a revolution, now we only need some big corps create the market drive.
*Hat off to BBC*
Trolling? Karma Whoring? Whatever it is, it seems you've spent to much energy trying to be creative and not enough realy thinking this through.
.ogg format. So what better way to introduce .ogg to a wider audience then to have BBC radio stream in .ogg format? So in a major way it is hoped that every "Tom, Dick and AC" jumps on this.
.02 euro"
Chapter 1: "Tom, Dick and AC"
Why is this an interesting story? Because a lot of us are interested, and would like others to be interested in the
Chapter 2: "handle the slashdot effect (very few have)"
As most of us know, this isn't the first time BBC radio has implemented a streaming radio service, more specifically not the first time on this project. They're aware that people are interested and I'm sure they're planning accordingly. If they're truly serious about this then I'm sure they've made provisions to scale hardware according to demand.
Chapter 3: "at the end of the day, BBC will think this is a bad idea"
When any service is initially introduced, you'll usually see disproportionately low or high traffic. Either way, the time immediately following the introduction is absolutely not when to judge your average traffic. This actually holds tru for many IT services. Anyone in the industry knows this, and I'm sure the BBC do as well.I'll assume this is not your line of work.
Chapter 4: "just my
While this could be considered creative, you've missed the mark. The BBC is a product of the United Kingdom. Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom are members of the European Union but are not currently participating in the single currency. Denmark, though, is a member of the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II), which means that the Danish krone is linked to the euro, although the exchange rate is not fixed.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Note that you need the latest Ogg release (RC3, download here) to play the streams; older versions didn't work for me. They seem to be using some features of Vorbis not available previously (e.g., the web page says, "I've decided to drop Radio 4 to a 32kHz samplerate and use the RC3 'quality' settings instead of enforcing an upper bitrate").
With RC3, things are working beautifully. Good to see such support for an open, free standard.
I encourage others to give the BBC positive comments, and encourage them to continue the testing, and beyond.
Send them to oggfeedback@bbc.co.uk
Here is what I sent:
Subject: Thank You! Keep it up!
Thank you for testing your streaming with ogg. Myself and hundreds of thousands of unix and unix-like operating system users around the world truly appreciate this.
It's often hard to have faith in large media companies. The BBC has always been the exception in my mind, and here it's shown again.
This is especially useful being in the USA, as it is very difficult to get your radio programming. I'll surely be listening using ogg frequently.
I hope the testing goes well, and ogg streaming becomes a future daily stream.
Good Day
Yes I know its not just unix / unix-like operating systems.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
The answer of course is probably obvious; technically superior technology doesn't guarantee success. VHS vs. Betamax. QWERTY vs. Dvorak. Windows vs. Macintosh. By the time VQF came on the scene, MP3 was firmly entrenched in internet culture. VQF never had a chance.
Here's an interesting, naive snippet from the VQF FAQ: While you can find thousands and thousands of MP3s out there, the number of VQFs is comparatively tiny. But this is only a matter of time. Once people begin to realize how incredible these are, their popularity will skyrocket. VQF.com says "Copyright 2000" at the bottom. They've had a year or two to skyrocket. Raise your hands; how many of you have even one VQF on your hard drive?
Now, listen to how familiar this sounds: Though not as popular as an MP3 file yet, Ogg Vorbis will eventually replace the MP3 format by popular demand, and like cassettes and 8 tracks, MP3's will be a thing of the past. This will happen because the Ogg Vorbis file format is a smaller file size, has a higher quality of sound clarity, and is FREE.
I'd like to believe in Ogg, but I've been burned one too many times.
Radio 4 also has a lot of varied content.
;-)
I think it is worth pointing out that they have some of the best origonal content in radio.
If you like comedy there is grounbreaking stuff there as well as old favourites.
Most of the best comedy coming out of the UK in the past 10-15 years has had it's roots in radio 4.
As for Radio 1 I would reccomend anyone into music checks out John Peel, one of the longest running DJ's in teh world an the man who has broken almost every major genre in the last 30 odd years.
There's pretty much music for everyone there, best to check out evenings and early mornings (GMT) as they put their more challenging programmes on, but tehy do have top class DJ's on these shows.
As for handling the load. The BBC is better placed than many to deal with it. I don't know teh stats these days but at one point they were the largest web presence in europe and second in the world only to M$
Anyway, good on Auntie Beeb, that's what I say
Working for the (other) man
Well, since it's a test transmission to see if Ogg is popular, then slashdotting it sounds like a plan.
BTW, for those not familiar with the BBC radio staions, R4 is speech and R1 is pop music for young people. That sounds dreadfully patronising, doesn't it? Perhaps I should explain, they have R1 for young people and R2 for people who aren't young, so that ancient 30-year olds like me can listen to pop without our heads hurting. Of course, there's a certain amount of Jazz and Big Band music in the R2 Schedules as well, but that can be fun too.
It is a rite of passage in the UK when one grim day you wake up and don't like R1 anymore, and subsequently begin to mutter "dreadful noise, when I was a kid we had proper musicians like Duran Duran". Oh, except you can continue to listen to John Peel as long as you like.*
R3 is classical, R5 is rolling news and sport.
World Service is a mixture of new programming and "best of" to make one channel for world-wide broadcast. Consequentially it is a popular choice at home as well.
*I thought that CowCube session last week was excellent; why has this guy got a hotmail account instead of a record contract?
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Multiply the radio number by 20 and that's the oldest age that you should be listening to that station.
Radio 1: up to 20 years old
Radio 2: up to 40 years old
Radio 3: up to 60 years old
Radio 4: up to 80 years old
Radio 5: Well, does anyone actually listen to radio 5?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Thank you for the interest that the majority of you have shown in these trials. The feedback has been invaluable and supportive, with very little of it being just "real sux, ogg rulez!" etc but instead very clear, concise, technical and useful - keep it coming!
:)
:)
Please continue to bear with me as I test different settings or versions of ices/ogg libraries. The high bitrate streams are fine, but I'm trying to get the optimal quality for modem users at the moment. This may not be possible, but I've had a few suggestions which might work. This will mean, as I said in my post to the announce list, that streams may come and go as I try different setups - please be patient
Hopefully soon we will be able to offer these streams on a larger scale going through our content distribution network and available in pop-ups on the homepage, as opposed to the current setup (which seems to be coping remarkably well
Many thanks have to go to the BBC management for letting us continue with these trials - as a few people have noted, the language used on the ogg page suggest we're not management, but techies who have been given the opportunity to play with stuff we think is cool, and hopefully we can eventually persuade people higher up to take this really seriously - after all, it's in our interest as a public broadcaster to do so as we're making our services available to the highest number of users - plus of course, it's free software so we're not limited in what we can do with it.
Thanks! Let the trolling begin..
I think you underestimate the importance of a lack of adverts. The BBC show no adverts. The average American watches 44000 pieces of carefully crafted pieces of corporate propoganda every year, each 30 seconds long. These encourage them to eat more fast food, drive more, consume more, go into debt, and vote for the politicians who are most friendly to corporate interests (the candidate with the most corporate sponsorship can afford the most adverts).
If you watch US television for long, you will start to understand the obesity levels. Sandwitched between 10 minutes worth inane rubbish featuring potentially beautiful but dangerously starved people, you be subjected to 5 minutes of carefully crafted inviting you to go further into debt, then pig out on sugered drinks and ultra high fat junk.
Paying a paltry £100 a year to make a dent in the level of brainwashing we are subjected to is peanuts. The cost is justified by the decreased load on the NHS alone.
Of course, a better solution is to avoid TV altogether. If you must watch TV, at least buy a mirror to put up above the screen. That way you can look up from time to time and compare the excitement on the screen with the futile existence of the vegtable on the couch.
Why would anyone want to go outside, meet people or do things ? Instead, you can watch others have fake adventures or get your opinions and desires programmed in rather than going to all the trouble of figuring them out for yourself. You can achieve a state of lower consciousness - it helps pass the time while you wait for death.
For those too weak to avoid TV altogether (like me), advert free TV is the low-fat/filter-tipped option.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Please excuse the slight change of topic - there has been a bit of wierdness on /. about off-topicness recently so i am a little worried about posting this. However, it is still pertinent to the conversation.
;-). Which is a good thing, and seems to be sticking to the original remit of the bbc. They also seem to be doing a good job of raising the british profile abroad, which in an economic sense is a good thing.
;-)
if you're in the US and want 15% less state propaganda in your news.
This is an interesting comment about the British Broadcasting Corporation (a not for profit organisation funded by the british taxpayer). Its primary role is to provide non-biased News, Education and original entertainment to the british populace both home and abroad (through the fantastically cool world service). However, the bbc website throws this role wide open. Plenty of non-british (particularly ossies and usians) now use the website. And they use it for good reasons - its (relatively) non-biased, apoliticol and non-commercial nature. However, these people pay nothing towards the upkeep of the site, unlike british taxpayers like myself.
So, what is the role of the bbc website in a global market? Should they seek avenues for revenue from non-british peoples?
As this thread shows, they seem to be quite good at pushing new technologies and investing/experimenting with the internet (furthermore, news.bbc.co.uk is apache on linux, which is nice
But i cant help feeling a little bitter. Do any other rich countries have any non-commercial websites, up to the standard of the bbc? What I really, really want to do is get my revenge by leeching some taxpayers money back from America or Australia