[Swprograms] Fwd: [uk-radio-listeners] BBC internet streams: improvements in sound quality

["Richard Cuff" <rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx>]

I know some folks here are BBCR4 and R3 fans, and might appreciate the
information shown below.

I am not sure how the BBC's capabilities of managing what content is
displayed for non-UK IP addresses plays into this.

Richard Cuff
Allentown, PA  USA


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Barraclough <mikewb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 6:52 AM
Subject: [uk-radio-listeners] BBC internet streams: improvements in
sound quality
To: uk-radio-listeners@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Pasted below is from the BBC Radio Labs blog. I am very pleased indeed
with the iplayerbeta and more improvements are planned:

People have been asking about the bitrates and codecs that we're using
on national radio within the new iPlayer beta.

The quick answer is "they're different per station, they're different
whether live or on-demand, and they'll change at least another two
times this year". If that satisfies you, you have no requirement to
read on. If you want more information, however, I'm happy to help.
Note that I'm only talking about national radio, and only for
listeners in the UK.

First, you'll notice that for "live" we're currently using Windows
Media Player rather than Real Player (for most of you - we still give
Real to some operating systems). We're doing this because we know
online radio is particularly useful in the office, and chances are
that Windows Media is automatically installed on most computers, and
most corporates won't let you install other software. It should,
therefore, 'just work'. I should though say that if you need
RealPlayer for your internet radio or your fridge, those streams
continue; we've no plans to remove them. (Note, there is such a thing
as an internet fridge! Mike)

The future for "live" is firstly to significantly improve the bitrate
(which we'll do in July). In parallel with that we're working on a way
of delivering higher-quality still, using a Flash-based player and an
AAC-family stream. We're working with our distribution partners to
enable this; the upshot is that it should sound even better but use
less bandwidth.

For "on-demand", you'll have spotted that we're using Flash, within
the lovely embedded media player that you're familiar with for TV in
the iPlayer. Under the hood is a protected MP3 stream for now: again,
we're shifting over to AAC-family later in the year. The real
difference here is the quality - we've significantly improved the
bitrates we can offer.

For on-demand content, we're launching iPlayer with four MP3 profiles
based on the content of the programme: and we're using four different
bitrates for these profiles.

Pop music (eg Radio 1 or Asian Network) is 128k stereo.
Classical music (Radio 3) is 192k stereo.
Stereo speech (Radio 4) is 128k stereo.
Mono speech (Radio 5live) is 80k mono.

These are the launch bitrates; we'll tweak things, and moving to the
AAC family will reduce the bitrates we use (to make your listening
more reliable, whilst maintaining audio quality). Again, the Real
listen-again streams that your internet radio uses will still work.

Finally, perhaps I might be able to let you into a bit of a dirty
secret. For the last six years, the online streams from BBC national
radio have been taken from satellite: the same feeds you get on
Freesat or Sky. So we've been taking a lossy MP2 audio feed, and then
encoding it further into even lower bitrates. As we move into higher
quality audio online, clearly this has to stop. So, from July, it will
- we'll be encoding everything within Broadcasting House, plugged in
to the studio feeds. So better bitrate is only part of the story -
it's also better sound.

If you've got feedback about radio within iPlayer beta, we're watching
your blogs; or if you're blogless, please do comment here.

Comments are beneath the item, you need to be registered with BBC
message boards:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/06/under_the_iplayer_hood_for_rad.shtml




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-- 
Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA

International broadcasting / shortwave blog:
http://www.intlradio.blogspot.com
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