Tonight I’ve updated BBC Live Radio to version 3.0, and I believe that it now works with the new BBC Radio live streams for Windows XP and later. Last week I updated BBC iPlayer Radio to version 9.1, and I believe that this now works for playing 7-day catch-up radio programmes using the new HLS format, again on Windows XP and later. Thanks for bearing with me, and let me know of any problems you find.
Here’s some notes about the new versions:
- The BBC Live Radio programme is now using the new HLS streams for Windows 8 and later. Windows 7 and earlier won’t play these streams, so it falls back to the ShoutCast MP3 streams. These will be turned off by the BBC in 2016, on current plans, so Windows 7 and earlier will break again.
- In BBC Live Radio at present I simply pick the first HLS stream available, which is probably not the best choice (non-optimum bitrate, or wrong international/not international version, or whatever).
- The BBC iPlayer Radio programme simply converts the downloaded AAC file to MP3 to play it, using FFMPEG, which can take a little time, and there is no progress indicator yet. Users will probably think it has hung, but give it a little time.