WebbIE

Real Audio

The BBC provides all of its radio content as Real Audio. This means that you have to get a program that plays Real Audio to listen to and use Accessible BBC Listen Again or Accessible Radio.

The official program you can use, RealPlayer from Real, is very difficult to use and pops up lots of confusing messages. Real Alternative from Edskes is free and is much better and easier to use, so is much recommended.

Download and install one of the programs and both the Accessible programs should work fine.

Problems with Real Audio

Real Player or Real Alternative can sometimes not work on some people's machines. Here is a link to the BBC Radio 4 Real Audio stream. Copy it and use Real Player or Media Player Classic to try to play it (look for Open in the File menus of either of them). If you can hear it, all is well. If not, then your Real Support is not working yet and the BBC Listen Again and Accessible Radio programs will not work either.

Some users have managed to get RealPlayer working by telling it to use HTTP only (that is, change the way it tries to get audio over the Internet) which may help people on company networks or behind firewalls. Real Alternative does not appear to have a setting to do this, so you will have to try it on RealPlayer:

  1. Start RealPlayer.
  2. Select the "Tools" menu (Alt and T) and "Preferences" from that menu.
  3. Select the "Connections" category and "Network Transports" subcategory (you can use the down arrow to do this.)
  4. Check "Manually configure connections settings." (Alt and M).
  5. Press the "RTSP Settings" button (Alt and R). In the "RTSP Transport Settings" dialog, uncheck all the check boxes for "Attempt to" except the last one, "Attempt to use HTTP for all content." Press OK (Return) when you're done to close the dialog.
  6. Press the "PNA Settings" button (Alt and P). In the "PNA Transport Settings" dialog, uncheck all the check boxes for "Attempt to" except the last one, "Attempt to use HTTP for all content." Press OK (Return) when you're done to close the dialog.
  7. Press OK (Return key) to close the Preferences dialogue.