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Canadian Public Radio Streaming Ogg Vorbis
d00dman writes "CBC Radio, Canada's major national public broadcaster is now streaming in ogg/vorbis. Recently CBC had switched from realmedia streams to windows media streams for their radio broadcasts. After receiving a plethora of complaints, suggesting ogg/vorbis as an alternative, CBC has begun a test ogg stream of the toronto stations. They boast in their ogg FAQ that they're encoding with oddcast and streaming with icecast."
hopefully the cbc will completely change over to Ogg format. Its difficult for older computers (like the one my parents have) to play media cleanly through Windowsmediaplayer as its a resorce hog, and if they want to do anyhting else while listening it gets choppy.
Cool, now it's up there with the classical station WCPE!
Does anyone know of any other Ogg Vorbis streams? The only other one I know is a police scanner.
Happy about this?
From CBC's Ogg FAQ:
We're currently testing the streaming of Ogg Vorbis, an open, free audio codec. Please contact CBC Audience Relations if you have suggestions or comments.
Virgin Radio have already been streaming Ogg Vorbis for ages, they even have a 160k stream: http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/
People in Canada always harp on the CBC because it receives public funding, but it really is the best news organization in the country and to top it off they actually innovate. They had a decent website back in 1998 (the earliest Wayback is from '99). They stream CBC radio and all of their TV news broadcasts for free, in multiple codecs. And if you want local news that isn't about a dog or a whale they might be your only option. Bravo CBC. They can take it from my cold, dead hands.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Despite the parent article stating there were a plethora of complaints when the CBC switch from Real Media streams to windows media, they do, in fact, provide information on their site for unix users to access these streams.
For the ogg streams, they only provide access to the stations in Toronto, rather than the local stations.
Whichever format, though, I'm happy that I can listen to the CBC on the operating system of my choice. However, I think it is appropriate that a public service broadcaster use a format that is unencumbered and hence accessible to all.
At the start of September the CBC switched exclusively to Windows Media 9. I fired off a few e-mails to hosts I'd corresponded with before, and to their news desk. I noted they were denying "universal access" to their internet radio (that's a good push-button word in Canada) because the latest codecs were not supported by Linux/Unix based media players. I strongly suspect I wasn't the only one, since it only took about a week for them to switch to WM7/MS-MPEG4 for their streams, which Xine and Mplayer seem to handle more reliably.
On one of their promo-spots before the news they even explicitly said "even linux users" could listen on their internet streams. :-)
The switch to testing Ogg was a little later, which runs against their stated "one-stream" policy. I also strongly suspect Akamai was behind the original switch. Akamai streams the CBC content and are a "Microsoft Partner" company in the venture. It sounds a bit to me like Akamai sold them a bill of goods in the name of cost cutting, and that the response was not what they expected. I'm quite sure listeners in Europe, where MS does not reign quite as supreme, were not pleased. I've had notes from friends over there asking how to stream WM7 on Linux.
Then, three weeks ago, I submitted this story. (...but I'm not bitter...) :^)
The CBC is not only great radio and television, it's also an organization full of really nice, really smart folks, and has been voted in the top 100 places to work in Canada.
Expect to see an "update" or "security fix" for Media Player that messes with the association to always make it point to WMP whenever you start windows or log in...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Achille Talon
Hop!
CBC Radio has always been ahead of the rest of CBC in terms of technology. They've been making one of my favorite radio science shows, Quirks and Quarks available in mp3 format for years. It's been available in Ogg since September 2002. I think they were broadcasting in stereo well before CBC Television, too.
[ReidNews]
It's a little over a year old, but this is still one of my favourite columns by an American looking at Canada. It's not just the weather that's cooler in Canada, by Samantha Bennett at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The best quote is probably
Enjoy.~Idarubicin
Currently living in Canada, that's great to see. And as a French, I have to point out that Radio France public radios have been broadcasting in ogg for a little while now (that's 8 different radios).
There are tons of MacOS Ogg Vorbis players, here are some:
e .php?story=20021 103065300430
Sourceforge Quicktime Components
Play Ogg Vorbis file on QuickTime (including QT-based players, like iTunes). Note that this is still under development and may have bugs.
http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/
A Better QuickTime Ogg Vorbis Plugin
Try this one if the Sourceforge one above dosen't work for your configuration.
http://www.macosxhints.com/articl
MacAMP
Like WinAMP or XMMS.
http://www.macamp.com/
Whamb
Whamb player, haven't tried it.
http://www.whamb.com/
More Ogg Vorbis Software for MacOS X
Here's a list from the Vorbis folks.
http://www.vorbis.com/software.psp/