iPlayer Radio is dead, and the new iPlayer Radio is dead on arrival

[Guest]


The long-feared dismantling of radio content from the old iPlayer is now proceeding at pace, and is being replaced by the new 'iPlayer Radio'. Despite the promises of two years ago, much of the functionality of the old system has not been transferred to the new system, or has now been found to be impossible to transfer.


The catalogue of problems can be found in the comments submitted to the various recent blogs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogbbcinternet/posts/New-version-of-radio-homepage-launched

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/BBC-iPlayer-Radio-the-place-to-go-for-BBC-Radio-online

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/BBC-iPlayer-Radio-homepage-your-feedback

Russ

[Bryn]


The long-feared dismantling of radio content from the old iPlayer is now proceeding at pace, and is being replaced by the new 'iPlayer Radio'. Despite the promises of two years ago, much of the functionality of the old system has not been transferred to the new system, or has now been found to be impossible to transfer.


The catalogue of problems can be found in the comments submitted to the various recent blogs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogbbcinternet/posts/New-version-of-radio-homepage-launched

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/BBC-iPlayer-Radio-the-place-to-go-for-BBC-Radio-online

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/BBC-iPlayer-Radio-homepage-your-feedback

Russ

Fortunately, you can still access iPlayer radio programmes via the relevant schedule pages.

[Thropplenoggin]

The HTML5 devolution of the web continues apace. Look at The Guardian's new beta site design. More functional and easy to navigate, apparently. Blocky, baby-ish, and user-unfriendly in this man's opinion.

[french frank]

Fortunately, you can still access iPlayer radio programmes via the relevant schedule pages.

I suppose this ties up with the comment I made (unanswered) on the R3 Facebook page some days ago. The snag about accessing it by the 'relevant schedule pages' is that you have first to decide what you want to listen to by a more tortuous route. The old iPlayer homepage allowed you to glance down each day's programmes and pick something that attracted.

[french frank]

Is there a dedicated Radio 3 iPlayer homepage? What they're apparently calling the homepage just seems to be Radio 3's homepage.

[Thropplenoggin]

My point about the mechanics of the change - the code - goes unremarked upon again, and yet this is key to why this and the R3 homepage has become so user-unfriendly of late. Why is it being done? iPlayer is seen as the future, esp. as used on tablets.

[amateur51]

My point about the mechanics of the change - the code - goes unremarked upon again, and yet this is key to why this and the R3 homepage has become so user-unfriendly of late. Why is it being done? iPlayer is seen as the future, esp. as used on tablets.

What about Radio Times in a hand-tooled Skivvertex cover, fer goodnesse's sake?! It worked For Neville Cardus & Hans Keller

[jean]

The snag about accessing it by the 'relevant schedule pages' is that you have first to decide what you want to listen to by a more tortuous route. The old iPlayer homepage allowed you to glance down each day's programmes and pick something that attracted.

The 'schedule' page gives you each day's programmes in a glance-downable format (I finally discovered).

[french frank]

The 'schedule' page gives you each day's programmes in a glance-downable format (I finally discovered).

Yes, but you only get the programme homepages from there - not the iPlayer page, with more details/availability (which is what I wanted). Then another click to get to the iPlayer page. All right if there's only one programme you want (two clicks instead of one), but if you're browsing, that doubles the clicks each time you inspect a new programme.

Maybe it is the unfamiliarity, and it is the same - I'll have to calculate the clicks again

[Serial_Apologist]

But I'm sure there was talk on Today, one day last week, of three heads of the BBC - one current, two departed - getting together, and discussion proceeding about doing away with free iPlayer altogether and only having it available on subscription. Maybe I was just dreaming!

[Bryn]

Yes, but you only get the programme homepages from there - not the iPlayer page, with more details/availability (which is what I wanted). Then another click to get to the iPlayer page. All right if there's only one programme you want (two clicks instead of one), but if you're browsing, that doubles the clicks each time you inspect a new programme.

Maybe it is the unfamiliarity, and it is the same - I'll have to calculate the clicks again

I was just trying to find the Radio 4 Extra schedule page to access today's re-broadcast of episode 1 of the BBC heavily edited presentation of James Joyce's Ulysses. A fool's errand trying to find the schedule page via the BBC's own 'search' facility. I gave up and quickly found the relevant schedule page by using Google instead. What numskull let this pathetic revamp of BBC online facilities go ahead?

[David Samuels]

I'm afraid that the secret is to get a tablet. I have an iPad now and the iPlayer Radio app. is a joy to use: dial the station, click on the schedule button at top right and scroll through days horizotally and times vertically. It's clear that the children in charge of this site no longer use conventional screen/keyboard computers as we know them.

[edashtav]

I fear that David's analysis is corect, I, too, find navigation on my tablet is facile BUT , I'm yet to hook my tablet to a decent sound system, the miniature oe that I use via bluetooth shows disturbing pitch variations as if voices are coming in and ot of tune.

[OldTechie]

I've just had a play with the iPlayer Radio app on an iPad. I agree with David, it seems very functional and easy to use. It's designed as a iPhone app so its all a bit big when stretched to fit the iPad, but it is designed to scale very well. It plays the 320kbps HD feed (provided you don't select low bandwidth in its settings.) You can navigate around it whilst it is playing. If you decide to play another item whilst it is playing, in nicely fades out the existing item, stops it and starts the new one. If you turn the iPad round to landscape mode, it hides the player and displays the schedule for multiple stations.

The audio engineering seems good - once you feed it to a DAC it bypasses the internal processing as far as possible and disables the software volume control controlled from the rocker switch. BenchmarkMedia did some tests on the iPad a while ago. Their page on it is here: http://forum.benchmarkmedia.com/disc...ion-audio-dac1 but they seem to have lost the images and the pdf (I think they are better at building DACs that running forums.) Google found a copy of the pdf version here: http://olivier.doustens.free.fr/gupp...connection.pdf

My only complaint is that the Apple Camera Adaptor into which I plug the USB lead to my DAC is inclined to fall out of the socket rather easily. I can see a need for a bit of professional engineering starting with a wire coat hanger.

A desktop version would be great, but I wonder whether the BBC has got in a bit of a mess with this by encouraging all the commercial stations to join it in the development of RadioPlayer - and to provide an iPlayer Radio in competition to it might be politically difficult. iPlayer Radio for the iPad does have a link to encourage you to download the RadioPlayer app as well. On the desktop RadioPlayer is just a web app but a desktop app could have a link to it.

They have said that there may be a DRM download version available in the future - so maybe there is a plan to add all the functionality to iPlayer Desktop.