Goodbye to HD Radio (for the moment)

[Bryn]

Dave, the on demand Radio 3 offering I have been accessing over the past few days (including, for example, last night;s Hear and Now, are c. 320kbps ABR AAC-LC. The actual average tends to be a few kbps above 320. That is using Windows 7 and accessing the Beeb site via Firefox 35.0.1

[Dave2002]

Bryn/johnb

OK - so it seems that the problems are localised to some people, with some kit - possibly expensive, which currently has not been fixed to pick up the "correct" (new) streams. So has it been a storm in a teacup, or have there been major failings by the BBC? It would appear that things haven't been completely seamless, and that there has been a lack of communications and transparency in some quarters, but that some of us haven't really been seriously affected at all.

Personally I shall give up worrying about it, unless there are clearly major quality issues, or access becomes problematic.

[french frank]

Bryn/johnb

OK - so it seems that the problems are localised to some people, with some kit - possibly expensive, which currently has not been fixed to pick up the "correct" (new) streams. So has it been a storm in a teacup, or have there been major failings by the BBC? It would appear that things haven't been completely seamless, and that there has been a lack of communications and transparency in some quarters, but that some of us haven't really been seriously affected at all.

Personally I shall give up worrying about it, unless there are clearly major quality issues, or access becomes problematic.

I suppose it most affects people who have bought expensive equipment in order to get the best possible results and have been enjoying it, but who aren't necessarily into the related technology/workarounds that our techies are into, who are happy spending time investigating the problem and all the possibilities. My guess is that most people aren't 'techies' (or am I just judging by myself? ).

[Phileas]

The problem is that a lot of older internet radios are not and never will be compatible with the new streams.
Squeezeboxes are unusual in having a very adaptable software based system although that does require a PC running at the same time.

[johnb]

Bryn/johnb

OK - so it seems that the problems are localised to some people, with some kit - possibly expensive, which currently has not been fixed to pick up the "correct" (new) streams. So has it been a storm in a teacup, or have there been major failings by the BBC? It would appear that things haven't been completely seamless, and that there has been a lack of communications and transparency in some quarters, but that some of us haven't really been seriously affected at all.

Personally I shall give up worrying about it, unless there are clearly major quality issues, or access becomes problematic.

Storm in a tea-cup? Well perhaps it is to many people but, say, for a blind person who relies on a radio player specifically designed for the blind might well disagree with you when they can't receive anything because of the BBC's changes (as has been the case)

From what I can glean, the situation is as follows (please correct any mistakes):

- The changes affect all hardware devices and software packages used for BBC internet streaming, whether cheap or very expensive. However, the BBC website player is streaming correctly (they really had to make sure that worked).

- It seems that only live radio streaming is affected at the moment. However, WMA will soon stop being streamed for on demand - the other on demand streams will continue as before for some time. EDIT: it now seems likely that on-demand will also be subject to similar changes from the end of this month.

- The BBC decided to rationalise its radio streaming and concentrate on HLS/HDS and (in the future) DASH. (There have, in the past, been very diverse stream formats to support various devices.)

- Live streaming had been via Shoutcast (which is widely used) and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) such as Limelight and Akamai.

- As part of the changes Shoutcast now only carries mp3 at 128kbps for all BBC Radio channels. This is intended to be an international stream (whether listened to in the UK or abroad). So the people who bought kit to listen to R3 at 320kbps are very disappointed (not to say furious). Also people who enjoy listening to sport are rather put out because (it is reported that) the sports events are cut out from the streams, presumably because the stream is intended to be international.

- the CDN's (Limelight and Akamai) now no longer carry the previous AAC-LC streams which were widely supported by both software and hardware devices. They have been replaced by AAC-LC (320kbps/128kps) and HE-AAC (96kbps/48kbps) streams in an Apple HLS wrapper - which has limited support outside the Apple world. (Non-UK is limited to the 96/48kbps streams.)

- The good news is that the HLS/AAC-LC 320 kbps is now available across all BBC radio channels apart from the World Service. Or it would be good news if people could actually receive it.

- The bad news is that the way the BBC has introduced these changes has been truly appalling. Although they have made announcements and have been in contact with manufacturers, etc the changes have not been publicised and have come out of the blue for the vast majority of people affected. Also there might well have been some misunderstanding between the BBC and the manufactures as it appears that many were caught on the hop about AAC-LC disappearing from Shoutcast and the move to HLS. (Perhaps the BBC stressed the disappearance of Windows Media format but didn't give sufficient emphasis to the other AAC changes.)

- So there are a plethora of affected internet radio devices out there ranging from the inexpensive through Sonos to Linn and Naim. Some of the manufacturers will develop firmware patches, providing their boxes actually have the grunt to cope, but some devices will never be upgraded to play with the new streams, leaving them with 128kbps mp3 or nothing at all (depending on whether the device streams from Shoutcast or another CDN).

- Although the BBC have released the new URLs to manufacturers and developers they appear to have done their utmost to prevent them from entering the public domain.

The irony of all this is that (as far as I know) one of the very few device ranges currently capable of accessing the new streams is one that went out of production almost three years ago (Squeezbox) - mainly due to the efforts of a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs.

[johnb]

As an example of the BBC's mismanagement of the changes, the following is a snippet from a post by a member of Naim's R&D staff on the Naim forum:

Naim were informed in September that the WMA streams would be leaving us, but the communication indicated that AAC would continue. The communication (and test streams that we tried using a development variant of Naim Choice) all indicated that things would be fine and we had sat back thinking we were ahead of the curve. Sadly as the switch over occurred, the aac streams have been embedded within the m3u8 container that we cannot currently decode.

The full post is: http://forums.naimaudio.com/topic/bbc-radio-streams-1

[jayne lee wilson]

Feedback on R4 dealt with this problem last night (20:00 15/02/15), I don't think there were any new revelations, busy whilst half-listening etc., but it might be worth checking out...

[OldTechie]

I could not play the HLS URL in my 30-day trial version of JRiver yesterday, but now the URL produces audio - but it is 128kbps mp3. I think the BBC must have changed something to allow the URL to provide an alternative feed if that is what the player asks for. The JRiver forum contains a post from the developer saying he has fixed it for the next release, but can't test it because he is in the US. I might be persuaded to buy a copy, but I don't really like its library organisation and I have no use for all its video options.

I have found code to play it in Windows at http://phonesm.codeplex.com/ (no downloadable program available.) This plays it without consuming all the processor time and cannot be fooled into playing the audio segments out of order, so that is better than VLC. I don't know whether it suffers with the occasional audible glitches I heard using with VLC. I thought it did - but then I listened on FM and the fault was there as well so I should not blame HLS or the player.

The new HLS feed seems to be about 50 seconds behind real time and it is delivered in large chunks at about 20 second intervals. The older feeds were only a few seconds behind - but that has its problems and the extra delay should result in more reliable delivery. The HDS feed on iPlayer/RadioPlayer seems about 40 seconds behind real time.

[johnb]

I've edited my post #17 to include the URLs for non-UK residents.

[Dave2002]

The new HLS feed seems to be about 50 seconds behind real time and it is delivered in large chunks at about 20 second intervals. The older feeds were only a few seconds behind - but that has its problems and the extra delay should result in more reliable delivery. The HDS feed on iPlayer/RadioPlayer seems about 40 seconds behind real time.

So not much use for air raid, or incoming missile warnings then, should they ever be needed!

[johnb]

BBC (partially) backtracks over old R3 320kbps AAC-LC stream

The BBC has come under a great deal of pressure from both listeners and manufacturers and have partially backtracked on their prior position that it was impossible to reinstate the AAC streams on the widely used Shoutcast.

The old R3 320 kbps AAC-LC stream will again be available on Shoutcast as a transitional measure, the other channels on Shoutcast will remain at 128 kbps mp3.

They have also provided a URL for this R3 320 kbps AAC-LC stream but I haven't tried it yet:

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/version/2.0/mediaset/http-icy-aac-lc-a/format/pls/vpid/bbc_radio_three.pls

This 'backtracking' only affects Shoutcast, not the Limelight and Akamai streams.

The full blog article is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/...6-723303f2887e

[Russ_H]

Dave, after checking the bandwidth of R3 on-demand (Windows 7) it certainly isn't 128kbps. It does seem to average around 320kbps (the stream comes in spikes every few seconds so it is only possible to get an approximate kbps).

I have just bought a Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100. This is to replace a (very) cheap DAC that I used in conjunction with
my Freesat box. As an experiment, I have listened to Radio 3 via my new DAC, and it works.

My question: how can I measure the bitrate of the live stream I am receiving?

[johnb]

Russ, I have a utility running on my PC that reports the network traffic, so I can use that to roughly measure the bit rate of the Listen Live/On Demand streams playing on that PC (assuming there is no other network traffic).

[johnb]

There will be changes to on-demand streams at the end of this month.

What we know is that WMA streaming will end, but that isn't a major concern for most people.

We also know that the BBC have set up new HLS streams for on-demand (similar to the new live HLS streams).

What we don't know is whether the existing AAC on-demand streams will be turned off from the end of the month. The BBC is carefully avoiding stating whether this is the case but, going on recent experience, we shouldn't be surprised if the current AAC steams are switched off in just under two weeks time. They might provide a transitional R3 HD AAC for on-demand, as they have now done for live R3

What is somewhat worrying is how BBC staff stress how WMA is ending (almost as if it is a diversionary tactic) together with vague talk of rightholders and DMR - so heaven knows what they are planning.

[Russ_H]

Russ, I have a utility running on my PC that reports the network traffic, so I can use that to roughly measure the bit rate of the Listen Live/On Demand streams playing on that PC (assuming there is no other network traffic).

Thank you.