Majority Internet Radios

[The Natural Philosopher]

[charles]

and the relevance to "Majority" "Digital Radio" and "Sound Bars" is precicely what?

[Tim Streater]

It's bust. Look at the Winky article instead.

About the same as my comment about chocolate bars.

[jim.gm4dhj]

piss off then

[jim.gm4dhj]

yes but that is not the problem

[jim.gm4dhj]

indeed

[jim.gm4dhj]

pisswater

[charles]

at least you had the word "bars".

[Paul]

So what we do, is we take your http thingy and

wget http://...m3u8

For example, in a VM I can quickly load up.

bullwinkle@SUPERFLY:~$ wget

21:03:59-- a.files.bbci.co.uk (a.files.bbci.co.uk)... 23.78.72.148, 2600:140a:e000:2ae::f33, 2600:140a:e000:28c::f33, ... Connecting to a.files.bbci.co.uk (a.files.bbci.co.uk)|23.78.72.148|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 227 [application/x-mpegurl] Saving to: ‘bbc_radio_three.m3u8’

bbc_radio_three.m3u 100%[===================>] 227 --.-KB/s in 0s

2023-08-20 21:04:00 (49.3 MB/s) - ‘bbc_radio_three.m3u8’ saved [227/227]

bullwinkle@SUPERFLY:~$ cat bbc_radio_three.m3u8 # dump the text inside the 227 byte file... #EXTM3U #EXT-X-VERSION:3 # second level URL -----------------------+ #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=339200,CODECS="mp4a.40.2" \

bullwinkle@SUPERFLY:~$ wget 21:07:13-- as-hls-uk-live.akamaized.net (as-hls-uk-live.akamaized.net)... 72.247.244.105, 72.247.244.89 Connecting to as-hls-uk-live.akamaized.net (as-hls-uk-live.akamaized.net)|72.247.244.105|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden <=== geo-check ???

2023-08-20 21:07:13 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

*******

The problem is, the URL inside the m3u8 file (only 227 bytes), is also a m3u8 file. The Akamai server it is hosted on, seems to have geolocation check. That could be why it is 403 forbidden here in Canada. On some other radios, the double-dereference might occur without a problem.

If you can access the second level of URL, using wget on the link stored inside the m3u8 file, you might eventually get a more useful link. As noted in some experiments here. I used the URL inside the m3u8, to find this in Google. (For Windows users, there IS a version of wget.exe , typically a helper file inside the wsusoffline package.)

The actual byte stream has changed from MP3 to MP4a. This would require a less common decoder, a problem I'm having even with news videos on my local news sites. Some of them are, effectively, Apple only. It would cost me $0.99 and a visit to the Microsoft store, to fix Windows 11 to correct some of this.

Jims radio might need new firmware, if the stream is actually MP4A. The older BBC MP3 is a lot more common format.

Paul

[Paul]

This is a cheeky comment about the word "Majority" being a just awful company name.

It destroys the ability of people to parse sentences containing the word.

It took me a few searches, before I realized that was a company name, and not a reference to "most of the radios Jim owns".

The Japanese video game Zero Wing has an opening cutscene done in quite-broken English, which has become a meme. And you were treated to a bit of that. When someone transmits that meme to you, it means "your English, I am having trouble parsing it". Just like when an English player, played this vid game.

Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.

Operator: Main screen turn on.

CATS: All your base are belong to us.

CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.

Captain: Move 'ZIG'. Captain: For great justice.

Paul

[Jeff Layman]

On clicking your link, Linux Mint went to straight to my default browser (Pale Moon) and offered to open the m3u8 file in mpv media player. It worked without problem. I then changed it to open the link in VLC and that worked perfectly in that too. Similar with FF (and it also opened the file in Celluloid without problem when I tried that).

Maybe that's not the same as what you were trying.

[John J]

Now if they apply this principle to BBC TV could we see the end of TV licences in the UK?

[The Natural Philosopher]

MP3 is not a BBC format.

And in fact it was or is an extended version of mp3 - icecasting - that contains program text info in the stream.

All in all the BBC has simply made itself far far less accessible both technologically and geographically.

In line with it making itself less attractive content wise,

[David]

I suspect that it is a PUNE or play on words.

As in bass (sound) and base (military encampment). Also an Internet meme for those of a certain age.

Sense of humour also required, of course.

Cheers

Dave R

[David]

I have read that some Internet Radio protocols have recently been removed.

Cheers

Dave R

[nib]

No better or no worse than bricking loads of perfectly serviceable DAB radios by moving more and more channels to DAB+.

Classic FM in January will be a big test!

nib

[The Natural Philosopher]

Classic FM is great. No geographical restrictions, no M3u8. full online icecast/MP3 URL that always works.

[Jim gm4dhj ...]

they have all started to work again...panic over....

[jim.gm4dhj]

glad you all had a good chat about nothing to do with what I was asking...

[Paul]

It's the CODEC which is changing, at a guess. (And maybe not all the Internet radio stations would be making this change at the same time.)

It should be noted, that some internet news sites, are placing video news items on the site, which only an Apple iPhone can play out of the box. Other platforms, you may have to spend a small sum to buy a CODEC for mp4a . I have been using yt-dlp to view the news items, costing the sites a fortune in downloads, as punishment.

I don't know if the protocol exactly has changed, but the CODEC declaration seems to have changed. And because compression is involved, it saves on the bandwidth bill for the server.

MP3 was also a format that involved "compression" and the quality was set by the "bit rate". That was already saving on bytes necessary to support a stream.

The Majprity brand radio I downloaded the manual for, had such a random feature set, it looks like they may have got the processor card out of a TV set and put that in a radio-shaped box. Just the graphics decompressor would not be used, and the audio would be done by the processor.

Paul