[Preston] BBC Radio Listen Again website and Realplay

[Dougie Nisbet]

On Monday 15 March 2004 17:26, Matthew T. Atkinson wrote:
> 'ellow,
>
> The problem you're probably coming up against is the same one I did --
> the URL that is linked to by the BBC Radio player is /not/ the URL of
> the actual media.  Better to give an example than to explain, I think.
> Here is what I had to do to get the URL for Bob Harris' Saturday show on
> Radio 2...
>

Great! :)

> 1. Went to the BBC Radio 2/Bob Harris Saturday show web site and found
> the ``listen again'' link.
>
> 2. Middle-clicked on it to open it in a new tab.
>
> 3. Did a ``view source'' on the tab.
>
> 4. Found the part where it links to the Real media (by searching for
> ``rpm'').  In my case this was quite a way down and the line read:
>
> document.write('<embed
> src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/rpms/bobharris.rpm"
> type="audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin"
> pluginspage="http://www.real.com/products/player/bbc.html" width="0"
> height="0" name="RP" autostart="true" console="one" />');
>
> 5. Downloaded this RPM file with wget, i.e.:
>
> wget http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/rpms/bobharris.rpm
>

Ah - Step 5. I'd got as far as step 4 and drawn a blank. 

> This is *not* the real media file -- it is just a pointer to it.
>
> 6. Then I ``cat''ed the RPM file and got this:
>
> matatk at obsidian:~$ cat bobharris.rpm
> rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio2/bobharris.ra?start="44"matatk@obsidian:~$
>
> 7. Finally:
>
> mplayer rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio2/bobharris.ra
>
> Not that I would ever do the following (lol) but if you want to keep a
> record of the stream then you can use:
>
> mplayer -dumpstream rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio2/bobharris.ra
>
> But you wouldn't do such an illegal thing, would you? ;-)
>
> (Personally, I buy all the music I like on CD but I have no problem with
> listening to the radio version a few times before I decide it is worth
> it -- the quality (or lack of it) is such that you feel compelled to buy
> the CD anyway, I find.)
>
> I hope this helps you out.  The steps should be the same for any BBC
> Radio player.  Possibly other such ones on the 'net too.
>
> bye just now,
>

Thanks for the detailed response. It's a great help. I can play it in 
Realplayer now. I've just tried it with mplayer but I can't get it to work. I 
get:

dougie at nick:~$ mplayer rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/science/wotw1.ra


MPlayer 0.60-2.95.4 (C) 2000-2002 Arpad Gereoffy (see DOCS!)

CPU vendor name: GenuineIntel  max cpuid level: 2
CPU: Intel Celeron 2/Pentium III Coppermine,Geyserville (Type: 6, Stepping: 6)
Testing OS support for SSE... yes.
Testing OS support for SSE unmasked exceptions... yes.
Tests of OS support for SSE passed.
CPUflags: Type: 6 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with features: MMX MMX2 SSE
Reading /home/dougie/.mplayer/codecs.conf: can't open 
'/home/dougie/.mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Reading /usr/local/share/mplayer/codecs.conf: can't open 
'/usr/local/share/mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
(copy/ln etc/codecs.conf (from MPlayer source tree) to ~/.mplayer/codecs.conf)

I tried copying the codecs.conf file from etc as it suggests but get a parse 
error on line 6. I've probably got a bit of mixed mess and I should really 
download the source and compile it by hand but I can't be bothered at the 
moment. (Did you get it from http://www.princessleia.com/MPlayer.html ?). I 
like the idea of using the -dumpstream option. Under MS I've used a utility 
called Total Recall to not copy stuff for later listening. I agree entirely 
about the quality. It'd be nice to have a copy offline for all sorts of 
reasons - for instance being able to rewind or fast forward during a 
documentary with a bit faster response. 

Dougie