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Adams' Dirk Gently Serialized on BBC Radio

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hard-not-to-appreciate-a-robot-that-can-believe-stuff-for-you dept.

happy monday writes "Douglas Adams' 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' is being serialised by BBC Radio, starring Harry Enfield. The first episode can be listened to on Radio 4's website now." The Times has a fairly glowing review of the program, and (for US folks like myself) some incomprehensible British-isms to boot.

3 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. For those who want MP3s... by tajmorton · · Score: 5, Informative

    Use mplayer to decode it and lame to encode it:

    $ mkfifo inandout
    $ lame inandout --tt "Episode 1" --ta "BBC Radio 4" --tl "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" --ty 2007 --tn 1 --tg "Speech" Episode1.mp3 &
    $ mplayer -prefer-ipv4 rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/wed1830.ra -ao pcm:file=inandout pcm:fast -vc dummy -vo null

    Or, if you want a script that cron can run: http://www.wildgardenseed.com/Taj/record-dirk-gently.txt

    --
    Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
  2. Real player by Neon+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Informative

    I hate real player too, but installed it a while ago to listen to BBC radio programs (some of which are worth it).

    In case anyone cares, this is apparently why they persist in using this abomination: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/broadband_faq.shtml#latelyFAQ8

    --
    Azural - instrumentals
  3. Re:Oh good, RealPlayer by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Realplayer format is actually pretty decent compression wise. Of course, you should never use the standard realplayer viewing software for this. The best method I know uses MPlayer:

    1) Open a terminal and type the following:
    mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile dirk.ra rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/wed1830.ra

    2) Wait about 30 seconds, then open another terminal and play the file dirk.ra from disk while it's still downloading:
    mplayer dirk.ra

    This has two benefits: you can put the stream in your collection (maybe convert to ogg later etc), and you won't get the annoying buffering pauses.

    This method also works with realvideo files, and wmv urls (mms://) if you want to save those types of movies. Finally, note that MPlayer lets you skip around an audio or video file, even if the file says you can't fast forward in other GUI oriented video players.