• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Calling all experts on RECEIVING streams

G

Goat Rodeo Cowboy

There has been a robust discussion of how to send streams, the services to use, the encoding protocols to use. A very interesting thread.

However, on the other end of a streaming effort are the listeners and potential listeners. Daily I will click on various streaming feeds just to take a listen. Often as not all I get is an error message. Over the next few days I will collect some of the error messages to post. Typically it will say something like: "Windows Media Player Cannot Open this File". The Real Player window may be displayed. The QuickTime window may be displayed. So I peek and poke around trying to get a hint what is being sent. Maybe I can direct it to the target it wants to play with.

Where do I turn to get information on how to know what a stream is willing to work with?

ADDED INFORMATION: I download software to try it and explore it. I have a lot on the machine. I have deleted a lot from the machine. Some of those programs are very aggressive about changing standard settings and installing drivers and replacement drivers. Some are courteous and ask permission. Most are arrogant and do as they please without asking, and without telling you what they are doing. I spent a couple of days last week removing unused stuff and cleaning out the registry. I would like to be a bit smarter about all this going forward.

Suggestions?
 
Off topic: Best suggestion is not to do you banking on that same system anymore.

On topic: I have winamp and WMP which does the trick in 99% of the cases.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
There has been a robust discussion of how to send streams, the services to use, the encoding protocols to use. A very interesting thread.

However, on the other end of a streaming effort are the listeners and potential listeners. Daily I will click on various streaming feeds just to take a listen. Often as not all I get is an error message. Over the next few days I will collect some of the error messages to post. Typically it will say something like: "Windows Media Player Cannot Open this File". The Real Player window may be displayed. The QuickTime window may be displayed. So I peek and poke around trying to get a hint what is being sent. Maybe I can direct it to the target it wants to play with.

Where do I turn to get information on how to know what a stream is willing to work with?

ADDED INFORMATION: I download software to try it and explore it. I have a lot on the machine. I have deleted a lot from the machine. Some of those programs are very aggressive about changing standard settings and installing drivers and replacement drivers. Some are courteous and ask permission. Most are arrogant and do as they please without asking, and without telling you what they are doing. I spent a couple of days last week removing unused stuff and cleaning out the registry. I would like to be a bit smarter about all this going forward.

Suggestions?
Click to expand...

Best suggestion is to pick trusted player software as suggested by F Mister and then if what you are trying to get doesn't play then skip it and move one.

As also mentioned by F Mister you should know that there are a number of not so nice people out there who for one reason or another want to use your computer for their own purpose or to extract identity theft information. This is not to say that the people streaming are in on it but someone who promises too good to be true deals to get you on the web may be getting backdoor money from some not so honest operators.

I spend a good bit of time clearing people's computers of junk they have downloaded that slows down their system and compromises their security. If your computer is badly infested, don't waste time tweaking the registry just do a clean install of Windows and move on. Finally investing in an automatic off site back up service such as Carbonite or Mozy is well worth the money they charge. On site backups are better than nothing and will get you past needing to reinstall the system in case of infections or hard drive failure but are no good for fire, flood, storms or other disasters that can destroy them as well as the computer being backed up.
 
Thanks for the advice. Actually, I am not as "promiscuous" with downloading software as I made it sound. I also participate in a list-serve of people who do sound reinforcement for houses of worship. When I say I download a lot of stuff it tends to be in the category of say something like Audacity. My program of choice was originally Cool Edit and now Adobe Audition. So I download Audacity to learn the menu system and explain to someone how to do on Audacity what I do with Audition.

The one that left me wondering if they are "nice people" was Music Maker by MAGIX.

I dabble in web sites and I tried a couple of web site builders including one I bought at the office supply. Ugh! I own Microsoft's Expression Web 3. They all advise to test your web pages in all the browsers. So. I add to the machine Firefox and Safari and Google Chrome.

Back to the topic:

As I read Radio-Info and other list-serve sources I look up a lot of radio stations... and if the stream I want to give them a listen. Less than half of them come through. In some cases you find they have quit streaming. But usually it is a problem of them expecting me to have their favorite player.

I left this screen sitting here and I went to Radio-locator and randomly tried 14 stations. Three came up. Copied down the calls and browsed for their own web sites and clicked on Listen Live. Three more came up so Radio-Locator does not have up to date links.

I shall add WinAmp as suggested and go through a list and keep notes ... and try multiple computers and see if I can come up with a list of streams that baffle me.

thanks for the suggestions.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy,

I understand your frustration. But there is a solution...

The question arises - what is the most common player across all platforms (Win/Mac/*nix) and which is installed on most computers? Today, the answer is - Flash.

A 98% penetration on any PC regardless of OS that it is running, anybody who ever watched a YouTube video has it installed. Therefore, what broadcasters need to do is make their web streams Flash compatible. Just embed a player in the web page and your listeners won't have to install anything, no pop-ups and errors you need this player or that player...

The future is even brighter - the HTML5 browsers will support playing streams form the web page itself, no need to even have the Flash. Unfortunately different browser have decided to support different codecs so there is no standardization there, but hopefully as things move forward there will be a common codec better or equivalent to AAC and HE-AAC.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom