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Live Vorbis Streams Over 802.11b From SXSW.com
chupacabra writes "SXSW.com in Austin, Texas has a group of computers in various music venues around town. The ices/icecast stream is sent over 802.11 to a main server at SXSW. There are 6 venues running as of this moment. Thanks to the folks at Vorbis and their CVS we are rocking.
See sxsw.com/music/livestreams."
But how long until it gets harassed by the RIAA for paying the music fees ?
UPS Sucks
I have to have a 802.11b receiver to listen, why not use an FM transciver?
I know it's cool and everything, but there's a fine line between being cool and useless (see flushing toilets vs. Thomas Jefferson's two documents at once copier)
..thinking about the RIAA, 802.11b streaming music possibilities, and the fact they're a leader in residential WiFi equipment !
My pda's pitiful cf card would be hard pressed to send that GET request over to their WAP. Can anyone report on the usable range of the broadcasts?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
9) An Apple Xserve, also running Gentoo Linux
Why not run OS X? Seems more, um, natural.
And I'm kicking myself over missing Pineforest Crunch! Dammit....drummer from Anglagard!
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
The sound quality sorta sucks. It not vorbis's fault - I can't really hear artifacts. It's just the mics/equipment/soundcards they're using, I guess.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I predict this service will fail. After all, who would possibly be interested in listening to music broadcast via "radio waves" ?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Wow. This is neat - listening to a live feed of a show somewhere in TX. There's a good show at the Mercury at this very moment (23:30 EST).
The only thing missing is a beer and a bit of meta-info included in the stream (e.g. the band and tune names).
True, without WMP support, Ogg has no chance.
... hmmm, maybe some hardware players, too, or at least some handhelds / PDAs that can play this newfangled format. And maybe if people in the music industry take notice of it, that would help -- but that's asking a lot, eh?
Unless they decide to support this crazy upstart format in some other player -- WinAmp would be a good start, since a lot of people use WinAmp. Maybe if they put Ogg support in WinAmp, and if some games start to use it (showing that it's a useful, sustainable format for professional developers), and
If any of those things happen, I think Ogg Vorbis has a chance. But I guess it's toast for now.
Oh. Never mind. As Number One once said. "Ahem. That, also, has already happened."
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Are the Dixie Chicks also banned from these streaming music channels from Texas?
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Well, let's see how fast this sumbitch'll go!
SXSW.com in Austin, Texas HAD a group of computers in various music venues around town.
They are using WiFi to collect the streams. You can listen to them over the Internet anywhere in the world.
~\_/~\_O Burmese
To me, any time we start developing a technology which can be freely used by all without worry of the letter in the mail, its cause for celebration.
They are testing it, and the better the tools we have in the box, the better we can do a job. And thats the end result isn't it? Getting from here to there with a minimum of effort.
I use the efforts of others daily, and it is my hope that before I leave this planet, I can leave something for others.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
My question is would the RIAA be involved in this? If the artists they are broadcasting on this station give them permission to do this. Wouldn't it be out of the RIAA's hands, since the artist gave them permission? I know there are bands like the Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews, and Phish who allowed live recording at their shows fre of charge. You just have to bring your own recording equipment.
It seems to me a lot of posts deal with streaming music over 802.11b to the end user.
However, I took this to be kinda a portable internet brodcasting expirement, in that their ISP is a wireless one. Thus, just like your local radio station can broadcast from a bar during a live performance, so can these fellows. The difference being they dont have to be at a venue that came pre-wired for internet.
As a means of delivery to the end user, I agree, why complicate things with making it an internet stream when there is good ol FM.
However, as the way I saw it, its bringing some benefits that an FM station can have to the realm of an Internet station.
-bart
Actually, the 802.11b network only needs to carry one stream per bar or stage, these single streams are served to the remote listeners via the Ogg Vorbis gateway - and this is on a wired network. Meanwhile, the 802.11b network is carrying other traffic, email and browsing, at the same time as the streaming audio. The links are thousands of feet apart. Winamp 2.81 has the plugin for Ogg already. The target user is somewhere far from this WiFi network.
The player you need (if on Windows) is Winamp 2.81, it could be that RealAudio owns the m3u filetype, but if you can point .m3u to Winamp, it will work.
The 802.11b link is only used for one stream per stage, the icecast server takes this one stream and sends it out to thousands of users at once over a wired LAN. So far, the capacity of the server has not been met. We would like to know what the limit is.
If were to roam onto the WiFi network (ssid = wifi-texas), then you would actually get your streams from the icecast server, not from the stage system directly.
Because of distance limits, Line Of Sight problems, and other factors, three or four wireless hops connect each stage to the icecast server.
hope this helps.
valid point, for streaming mediums other than wired point to point setups, (or basically wireless broadcast to the masses, a stateless streaming setup would be much more scalable, with minimal if any client return data)
I've been listening to DAB radio here in the UK for over a year. The old band II TV stations (around 2/300 MHz) were kicked off the air to make room for digital sound broadcasting. Receivers are still expensive but some good stuff is coming along now at slightly lower cost (e.g. combined DAB/MP3 portable player for around $300 US.).
I have to say that I'm a fan. You can argue about the sound quality but for overall listening experience, for me, it beats FM hands down. I live in a marginal reception area for most VHF/UHF broadcasts (can't really get digital terrestrial TV) but the DAB radio is 100% solid.