BBC Real Player - please discuss..

stormfield · Post by **stormfield** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:15 am

I pretty much agree.. .realplayer sucks balls.

Does the Beeb have some sort of service contract in place with RealPlayer? When does it expire? When does it get reviewed?

I think the decision-makers Beeb need to have these explained to them in very simple terms:

1. Realplayer is a hassle to use, regardless of how much someone likes a particular show

2. People would rather download or use Flashplayers
(back that up with listener figures - show them how many mp3 downloads there are of Mary Anne's show - I'm sure it's a huge number)

3. The number of listeners has NOT dropped, but a lot of them are waiting for archives instead of the realplayer stream.

4. Listener numbers will probably increase when the Beeb switches over to a better system mentioned in all the previous posts.

it's just stupid bbc bureaucracy, I suspect... no fault of the listeners or mary anne.

rob_booth · Post by **rob_booth** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 1:54 pm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/ ... nline.html

corpsey · Post by **corpsey** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 1:58 pm

real player is gash

le_hardcore_chiefus · Post by **le_hardcore_chiefus** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 2:20 pm

never really had problems with it apart from the sound comes and goes with quality, and also the fast fwd 5/15 is irritating, and with no rewind,

yeah that corenews site is pretty good if u want stuff, but i religiously always hit the rewind button at least once a week, even if i`m not so interested in the artist on ur show ma

pk- · Post by **pk-** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 5:48 pm

When we launched the BBC Radio Player, now known as the iPlayer for Radio, in 2002, we added the chance to listen again to most of our programmes. This is something that, for now, is still mostly unique to the internet

lol

joe muggs · Post by **joe muggs** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 6:01 pm

The BBC cannot offer downloadable versions of music shows without re-negotiating the way they pay PRS royalties to artists, which would be a MASSIVE, MASSIVE undertaking.

Realplayer is indeed a shit bit of software that I wouldn't recommend anyone let into their PC but you can use Realalternative instead as someone has already pointed out. It works absolutely fine for me, more reliably than RealPlayer, in fact!

irv · Post by **irv** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:27 am

Joe Muggs wrote:It works absolutely fine for me, more reliably than RealPlayer, in fact!

Sure, but the audio quality just isn't up to scratch, particularly for a show like MAH because the content is so bass-heavy. It's fine for your bland daytime pop, because the people listening to it probably don't care about the quality, but for dubstep you need it high quality.

death_cafe · Post by **death_cafe** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:55 am

Hi Mary Anne

The only thing I'd add is that I find it really hard to find the show that you want to listen to.

The way forward has got to be a free download service aswell as a stream. This is how things will go in the long term - why not get the BBC ahead of the curve?

Thanks for consulting us.

Jon

stormfield · Post by **stormfield** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 9:39 am

The thing is, iPlayer works for films and tv programs where you're sat in front of a screen.

For radio shows, there's no need to sit put. A lot of people wanna be able to listen back on their mp3 players while they're on the move. Hence downloading seems the logical thing for such archives.

As Joe said there's some heavy PRS issues involved, but still, there's gotta be a way to work around stuff...

mary anne hobbs · Post by **mary anne hobbs** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 1:54 pm

thank you very much for all your posts..
i will ready this thread tomorrow and pass on your comments to the BBC management...

love
m/a.. x

struktur · Post by **struktur** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 2:15 pm

We use Real Media on www.kaizenrecords.com, and I must admit the issues we face with it day in day out are concerning. However from an encoding point of view we can offer smaller files sizes at higher qualities - thats not to say all our clips are great bitrates but real player does have some benefits for streaming audio content.

But like many we don't agree with Real Media's privacy invasions and recommend for PC users the Real Alternative plug-in, as mentioned a few times here. Which is an unobtrusive player with no advertising, no registration forms, nothing annoying - but support on Mac's is limited and you need Real Player basic so we're eventually going the MP3 / Flash route in future.

BBC's issues with offering up free downloads as podcasts / downloads though as again pointed out in this thread is MCPS issues, concerning royalites so artists actually get paid.

It's really a 2 edged sword, something the labels and artists and radio stations need to work together on as they can't offer up peoples hard work for free for someones two week listening pleasure.

I'll also add that Real Media probably pay for a CD quality copies of BBC's content which they syndicate and sell on, I know they do this with others content. Which is then encoded by Real Media and sent back to the BBC; as they are very private about there codecs.
So the BBC is probably making a few ££. - Its a shot in the dark but if this is true maybe the BBC could become less reliant on someone elses technology.

I'm really unsure what to recommend here, maybe someone will come along with the technology like Apple have implented in iTunes in the US - a one off payment per film, were you can rent Films that have a shelf life of 30 days or what not, and once started viewing them you have a week to finish watching (something like that).

Something like this could do wonders for the unsure digital market. But for the time being I'm happy to keep hitting the Listen again function with 'Real Alternative'. Best of luck Mary.

efa · Post by **efa** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:06 pm

For me it really is about the sound quality and the freedom to listen to a mix on my MP3 player. I used to listen to Fabio's set and stopped for the same reason

The Burial preview is an example of this, whilst I clicked listen again I had to stop it cos of the quality. Burials stuff has enough bitmashing without being dropped down any further.

I do my best wherever possible to at least press the listen again button but would rather wait for someone to host the set at higher resolution so I can listen where I want and skip back AND forward in real time.

I completely understand the issues raised above but sadly with internet radio run from peoples homes able to offer this maybe something needs to change.

I hope you sort something out, surely other shows are seeing the same issue?

Good luck Mary!

EDIT: Can we sticky this and get some more replies B4 tommorrow please?

yooamatwa · Post by **yooamatwa** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:33 pm

I can't believe the BBC is still using such a frustrating and archaic piece of software. MP3 Downloads have to be the only way forward surely? I know there will be a lot of legal wrangling and there would have to be a lot of compromises but it’s what people want. Besides you can quite easily download the real audio stream and convert it to what ever you want so what difference would it make?
It would be great to have a Breezeblock archive as well!!

daggus · Post by **daggus** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:37 pm

It's fine for your bland daytime pop, because the people listening to it probably don't care about the quality, but for dubstep you need it high quality.

exactly

think i agree with most folks real player is fuckin awful.

I'm pretty much always interested in your show, but rarely im able to listen live. I've tried to click the listen again a few times over past few months only really to show my support, but it never works for me. I never use it as it hardly works for me ever an the quality is so poor. I normally find a rip somewhere quite easily im afraid.

Is there anyway we can petition the BBC or anyone we can pester to try sort something better??

Paying my licence for once at mo! An now i think about it there aint a whole lot on the BBC i would check regularly, but Experimental show is definitly something i do listen to regularly! So any possible improvements in the service would be welcomed

stormfield · Post by **stormfield** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:44 pm

good luck with the meeting... hope it works out.

izc · Post by **izc** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:07 am

from the perspective of a mac-user, real player is still way better than windows media - both suck due to their closed format, but i can't even install the wma-player because it really screws my system.

mp3/m3u/icecast would be most convenient for me

__________ · Post by **__________** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:12 am

i don't use the bbc playback feature - it uses realplayer, i don't.

fact: realplayer is shit!

pangaea · Post by **pangaea** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:48 am

i hope you manage to get the point across to management that listen again hits are a rubbish way of measuring the popularity of the show. the fact you've got people making their own recordings and distributing them through non-bbc channels should be a testament as to how valued the programmes are!

downloadable podcasts are the way forward. not only because people like to put music on their mp3 players and not be tied to the pc to listen back, but because the majority of people aren't awake to listen live if radio 1 insist on putting their most interesting programmes on in the middle of the night...

ytee · Post by **ytee** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:54 am

irv wrote:Hi mary anne,

You've hit the nail on the head really - why would anyone listen to a low audio-quality player that you have to install a very poor piece of software for, that can only skip forward 5 or 15 minutes, can't rewind, crashes all the time and is only there for a week when you can get a perfect quality rip in minutes, usually no longer than a few hours after the show is broadcast and that you can keep? As someone I know on another forum mentioned, offer an inferior product and people will go elsewhere.

The only reason you'd want to is for the obvious reason you mention of giving you hits on your show to show its popularity. It's very unfortunate that this is the way that the popularity of shows is decided though, your show gets 100s of downloads elsewhere that never get recorded. You know a system is messed up when you yourself have to encourage people to click on the listen again feature, even if they're not going to even listen to it that way, just to prove that people like your show.

Cheers,

irv

cure · Post by **cure** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:58 am

ytee wrote:
irv wrote:Hi mary anne,

You've hit the nail on the head really - why would anyone listen to a low audio-quality player that you have to install a very poor piece of software for, that can only skip forward 5 or 15 minutes, can't rewind, crashes all the time and is only there for a week when you can get a perfect quality rip in minutes, usually no longer than a few hours after the show is broadcast and that you can keep? As someone I know on another forum mentioned, offer an inferior product and people will go elsewhere.

The only reason you'd want to is for the obvious reason you mention of giving you hits on your show to show its popularity. It's very unfortunate that this is the way that the popularity of shows is decided though, your show gets 100s of downloads elsewhere that never get recorded. You know a system is messed up when you yourself have to encourage people to click on the listen again feature, even if they're not going to even listen to it that way, just to prove that people like your show.

Cheers,

irv

Maybe speak with the popular hosting sites (ie barefiles and getdarker) and look at the stats of downloaded past shows?? Even with those two alone there has got to be a solid amount of numbers there...

BBC Real Player - please discuss..

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