New iPlayer

[OldTechie]

I suspect the reason for getting Radio off the main iPlayer system may have been to allow them to get on with the new plans:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/

also

http://www.tvbeurope.com/theworkflownews-content/full/bbc-announces-new-iplayer

[Bryn]

Here we are, 3:50pm and the most recent addition to the Listen Again facility is this morning's Breakfast. Still no Essential Classics, CotW or Lunchtime Concert. Not what I would call a positive development.

[OldTechie]

Maybe they have found a bit of the radio system that depended on a bit of the old iPlayer that they have just turned off! The problem seems to be across all the channels except pre-recorded packages on Radio 4. It looks like their system stopped updating the audio-on-demand availability pages just after 8:00 am - even the radio 4 one had its last update at 8:01 - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/availability/radio4.xml

[Bryn]

Now back to normal, it appears.

[OldTechie]

It was obviously nothing to do with that availability file I found - that still has the last update as 08:00 and it has availability start times for items later than now - generally 2 minutes after the scheduled end.

[Bryn]

I see that the design of the "pop-out player" has been modified today. Gone are the "HI" and "LO" bandwidth buttons (no idea how to switch from one to the other now) and a heart-shaped icon had been added (clearly aimed at friends or Radio 3, if not Friends). Fotunately, when I tried to 'Listen Again' to Afternoon on 3, the HD Sound version was what was defaulted to.

[Bryn]

Looks like the iPlayer Listen Again for Radio 3 is well and truly on the blink at the moment. Programmes from earlier today that were working fine earlier are now not playing at all. A variety of error messages are on offer. Yet again it looks to be a case of "If it ain't broken, we had better break it".

Listen Live does not seem to be working here either. I get:

The sound of silence

We're trying to play this station, but we're having problems. Apologies.

The station's stream may be broken, or there may be a mis-match between this stream, and your device.

Fortunately, there's another way of listening. Download our free app, and put Radioplayer on your phone or tablet.

My "device" is the same laptop and broadband connection I usually use to access the iPlayer.

[Appears to have started working again. Error messages gone, at least for the moment.]

[[Hmm. Seems to be a bit of an "on again, off again" situation. Lunchtime Concert still coming up with the error message above.]]

[OldTechie]

Seems to be all off now - all radio and TV channels and both live feeds (Akamai and Limelight.) Correction - all back again 21:35 or thereabouts! Still I'll leave most of the rest here

The only working internet feed for me is the experimental one that comes straight from the research dept. It has nothing to do with the new versions of iPlayer - it does not work with the old Flash player or the ShoutCast feed on iTunes or the Apple HLS feed on the iPad IPlayer Radio.

I suspect the media selector process has fallen over - it seems to return a 500 server fault error if you try to access it. Maybe someone has launched a denial-of-service attack to prevent access to BBC News - or maybe BBC IT maintenance is only staffed 9 to 5.

Log from the old Flash player (as used on the discontinued IPlayer Desktop.) It does not report network errors - it reports the media selector as not available which ties up with it crashed/overloaded.

21:05:39.127 [Player] ModelEvent: media_update state: media_queuing 18424 ms
21:05:39.135 [Player] FATAL: true
Title: MediaSelector:MediaSelectorError.NOT_AVAILABLE
Description: onload unsuccessful.
Code: 1 18431 ms

[Bryn]

The email I had from the iPlayer team today did not carry the usual 'do not quote' footnote, so here is its main content:

"Thank you for contacting the BBC iPlayer Support Team.

Last night (Wednesday 19 March) BBC iPlayer suffered a technical glitch that caused our on-demand and live streams to become unavailable for a while.

Our support teams managed to restore service later in the evening and we are delighted to confirm that services are back to normal.

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue; it’s time to get back to that programme you were enjoying!"


This evening I've been editing recordings of "The Big Bang" and "Futurama" for later viewing, so have not been trying to access the iPlayer. I have just done so now and all seems fine.

[visualnickmos]

Sounds like you are having a busy evening! "Happy iListening"

[Bryn]

Sounds like you are having a busy evening! "Happy iListening"

Well I will certainly have to catch up with this performance of Eine Alpensinfonie that everyone is raving about.

[kernelbogey]

Does anyone know - and am I missing something obvious? - whether it's possible to listen to iPlayer as a popout - i.e. so that you can listen to a broadcast from the last seven days and do something else (like reading these boards)?

[Don Petter]

Does anyone know - and am I missing something obvious? - whether it's possible to listen to iPlayer as a popout - i.e. so that you can listen to a broadcast from the last seven days and do something else (like reading these boards)?

Don't you just have them in different windows?

[kernelbogey]

Don't you just have them in different windows?

I use a Mac, and my browser is Safari. AFAIK, I can't open that twice. But I'll have a go.

[kernelbogey]

I use a Mac, and my browser is Safari. AFAIK, I can't open that twice. But I'll have a go.

Oh yes I can! Thanks Don