Listen again to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio shows on the iPhone: Your Comments
Thanks for all your questions and comments on my earlier post about audio-on-demand for the iPhone.
Rather than answer them all independently, here are answers to some common questions:
Is audio-on-demand only available on the iPhone?
iPlayer video and audio-on-demand will also be available on the Nokia N96, which Nokia is due to release on October 1st (see Matthew Postgate's previous post). We initially launched this service on the iPhone as it's a very popular device amongst our audio and music audiences, but the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s new media teams are working hard to bring audio-on-demand to other mobile devices in the very near future.
Can I stream live ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio on the iPhone?
The iPhone is currently only available on the O2 network in the UK and continuous streaming of audio and video content is not permitted under the terms of O2's flat-rate packages. We're currently working on supporting live streaming when you're connected via wifi.
Can I stream live ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio on other mobile devices?
I would love to make iPlayer available on all mobile devices but as the media support and browser functionalities vary so widely, this may take some time. Where we can be certain that a wifi connection is being used, and that this connection is also used by the device's media player software, then it's already possible to access live streams. For more details see here.
Unfortunately, many mobile devices swap to 3G or GPRS connections without informing their users - which can be very expensive. The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is in discussions with network operators on this issue and hopes that consumer demand will help to drive this change.
Why doesn't ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio podcast all their programmes?
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ negotiates rights with collective bodies and artists' representatives to make streamed material available for up to seven days after broadcast. Where rights allow, we also make ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ programmes available to download as podcasts. We currently make over 170 titles available as podcasts and this number will continue to grow. The limits we place on this growth are largely down to cost.
Why have on-demand mobile services been prioritised before improving on-line audio quality?
Improving the audio quality of live internet radio streams remains a key priority. This is a much larger piece of work and will take a little longer to complete. There'll be a post later tonight on the Radio Labs blog detailing progress towards this.
Why do some programmes appear as 'currently unavailable'?
The audio-on-demand facility for iPhone, giving people the chance to listen to programmes from "the past seven days", only launched on Monday. So, the complete list of programmes is being built up over this week. All listed ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio shows should be available by Monday September 29th.
Once again, please feel free to leave me your comments about how this service affects how you listen to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio.
Mark Friend is Controller, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Audio & Music Interactive.
Comment number 1.
At 26th Sep 2008, pete-online wrote:You currently supply the radio podcasts as an RSS feed that my Apple TV can read. Is it not possible to do the same for TV content since you already have the programmes encoded in H.264 for the iPhone?
In this way you have a standards based approach to listing and viewing ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content (RSS+H.264/AAC). I guess the problem is that for some reason you don't want TV content (unlike radio content) downloading and remaining on people's computers?
If so, could you sense the device that was requesting the RSS feed. A full list could be sent to devices which control downloaded content (Apple TV, iPhone, Windows Media Center?). A smaller list (of the programmes with more liberal licensing) is available to general PC's and other 'insecure' devices. Obviously the linked content would have to be restricted in the same way.
In this way, any hardware or software capable of supporting RSS and H.264/AAC has a good chance of accessing ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content. After-all the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ can't code for every device - new ones come out every month!
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Comment number 2.
At 27th Sep 2008, Topher Allan wrote:That's fine, but the vast majority of radio content on the iPlayer isn't continuous, it's of finite length. Why are these blocked as well?
I also don't see how it is the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s responsibility to enforce an agreement that O2 has with its users.
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Comment number 3.
At 27th Sep 2008, sjp4 wrote:Re: live streaming.
I have an unlimited internet add-on (with the network 'Three') which does not prohibit live streaming.
It does not cost me massive amounts to use 3G data.
But you are still stopping me from accessing the live streaming webpage unless I use WIFI.
Why?
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Comment number 4.
At 27th Sep 2008, Ed Lyons wrote:O2 allow streaming of YouTube over 3G, I can use LastFM and numerous other apps too, that stream similar 'finite length' programmes...
Supporting these things over the existing infrastructure (i.e. 3G) seems to make much more sense than all these special Mobile TV systems...
As said above, why does the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ need to do what O2 wants? The agreement is between the customer and O2, not O2 and every provider of content on the internet...
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Comment number 5.
At 27th Sep 2008, jeremybailey wrote:Hi
I seem to be having a problem when trying to access the service... it says, only available to users in the uk.
I am connected to the BE network, and accessing other bbc services works great, for example, iplayer on the ipod is brill! - any ideas why the radio bit is not working?
Cheers, J.
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Comment number 6.
At 28th Sep 2008, elialp wrote:Are there plans to make iPlayer radio streams available outside the UK? I live in the US, and would love to be able stream ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio on my iPod touch.
Thanks
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Comment number 7.
At 1st Oct 2008, Codingmonkey wrote:The question that was asked when the N96 announcment was made, and not answered, was why the iPlayer was only made available for the N96 and not other S60 3rd Edition phones. Is there some technical limitation of non-N96 S60 phones that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is exploiting or some other reason.
It seems ridiculous to create an application for a phone that doesn't exist in the wild but ignore all of those virtually identical earlier models that are out there in their millions ( I couldn't find recent s60 sales figures but they hit 1 million N95s last November).
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