[Swprograms] Changes to BBC Radio streaming, future impact on World Service formats?

Subject: [Swprograms] Changes to BBC Radio streaming, future impact on World Service formats?

From: Steven Clift <1radionewstech@xxxxxxxxx>

Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2015 18:29:24 -0600

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Heads up:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/2ff95543-7547-4b2d-9305-563428fb74f5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/977a1954-658f-4fb2-a23c-71680c49882f

Some links I have gathered including forums sharing unearthed streams URLs which the BBC decided not to publish but instead share selectively:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/bbcradioforall/

I am encouraging use of #bbcforall tag on social media posts:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23bbcforall&src="">

In terms of global access to BBC domestic stations, the big loss is lower bandwidth AAC+ which works great on mobiles via the right apps.

Apparently the World Service is not currently streamed via this infrastructure, but if cost savings are the big motivator I'd watch this one closely.

Finally, I have put a bunch of new Radio 4 and BBC London streams in both version of my app for testing. They state that the 128KB MP3 streams will be turned off at some point, so I am trying to figure out which streams are the most reliable for mobile listeners: http://1radionews.com

In the mix, someone did share a new WS stream out there:

http://bbcwsen-lh.akamaihd.net/i/WSEIEUK_1@189911/master.m3u8

According to VLC, this is MPEG AAC Audio (mp4a) with AAC Extension: SBR - it is coming in ~65 kb/s.

My take is that for the broadest access you want low bandwidth options for news radio in particular and AAC+ gives you the best quality at lower bit rates.

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