Radio 3 HD dropouts

[OldTechie]

Sorry I should have explained Content Delivery Network - CDN. I had at one stage but the post was getting too long to be useful.

The two CDN suppliers the BBC uses, Akamai and Limelight are in a legal battle in the US. Akamai has a patent on the process used. It seems the Limelight system uses all the steps of the Akamai patent, but Limelight does most of the steps, but others are done by their customer (in this case the BBC.) If the customer was acting as an agent for Limelight, the patent would be infringed, but where the customer is merely undertaking the steps as instructed in order to consume the service provided by Limelight it may not be. They have been fighting over this since 2006 and it is now on the way to the Supreme Court in the US. See http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...two-new-cases/

[Gordon]

Sorry I should have explained Content Delivery Network - CDN. I had at one stage but the post was getting too long to be useful.

The two CDN suppliers the BBC uses, Akamai and Limelight are in a legal battle in the US. Akamai has a patent on the process used. It seems the Limelight system uses all the steps of the Akamai patent, but Limelight does most of the steps, but others are done by their customer (in this case the BBC.) If the customer was acting as an agent for Limelight, the patent would be infringed, but where the customer is merely undertaking the steps as instructed in order to consume the service provided by Limelight it may not be. They have been fighting over this since 2006 and it is now on the way to the Supreme Court in the US. See http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...two-new-cases/

Thanks OT, fascinating patent dispute, they can be entertaining in themselves [having been in the midst of a few!]. The patenting of software - as such - although it is allowed, has always been a bit moot anyway.

This is an interesting comment:

https://<i>..the top patent court fo... infringe.</i>

IOW by selling its wares to a client, eg BBC, the vendor caused those parties to be complicit to the infringement. The client is negligent if they do not get indemnity from such claims, so if the BBC lawyers were on their toes, they should have got this indemnity unless the licence agreement did not allow it, but, even then, the BBC had a choice and so, if they took it, they admit liability!! This case is being held under US law in some juridiction or other [usually the most lenient - or where the lawyers are most amenable] and has drifted up to the top. The final finding will be valid in the US but may/may not percolate elsewhere. The international patent treaty may cause this to escalate.

What I still don't know is what protocols are used/required to get the delivery as good as it can be and then, most importantly, what does the receiving device need to have in the way of resources to assure optimum reconstruction of the audio and how does that device assure itself of getting them?

The BBC and its associates can do all they like [and the network can sustain the average bit rate needed, which is hard to maintain] but unless the receiving/decoding environment can provide, at all times, the local support needed then there is no guarantee at all that the stream will not occasionally fail to deliver uniterrupted audio. Or am I being stupid?

[geoffm]

Use 320 kbps AAC not WMA for no dropouts,

[OldTechie]

fascinating patent dispute, they can be entertaining in themselves

More on this: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/court...t-infringement