BBC iPlayer - really rather good!

Zero Tolerance wrote:
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:20:35 GMT, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
[email protected] wrote:

Zero Tolerance wrote:
ISTR that the streaming adjusts to the speed of your internet
connection... So if your kit is not up to 64kbps streaming then
it'll step down to 56, 52, 48, 44, 40, 36, 32, 24, etc...

I was on broadband at the time, so my connection could easily handle
the bit rates that the BBC provides for its Internet streams.

Are you sure your player was configured correctly? (You declare a
connection speed at setup, which is used as the basis for negotiation
of variable rate streams.)


What I used to do to see what bit rate level the streams were using was
start the stream playing, then leave it for 15 minutes or so - I don't need
to do this any more, because you can open the stream in Real Player and look
at the stream Properties (you may have been able to do that back then, but
if you could I hadn't found out you could). The reason I left it for 15
minutes was because when the stream starts the BBC Radio Player used to
report an artificially high bit rate, which was due to the buffer filling up
initially, but if you left it playing for 15 minutes the bit rate displayed
slowly reduced to the actual bit rate of the stream.

My broadband connection was about 3.2 Mbps at the time (it has a peak of
about 8 Mbps now, and the difference was due to me changing modem, but that
indicates that the line is very good).

I wrote in an article in September 2006 that Radios 1, 2 and 3 were using 32
kbps. I also remember that Radio 4 and maybe 6 Music were 48 kbps. The
reason I remember that is because it was evidence of BBC incompetence (it is
BBC Digital Radio, what else do you expect?), because Radios 1, 2 and 3
should not be using 32 kbps if Radio 4 is using 48 kbps, because speech is
easier to encode than music, so music should be encoded at the higher bit
rate if anything. But it also shows that I could receive stations at higher
bit rates than 32 kbps.

As my broadband connection was about 3.2 Mbps, which is 100 times higher
than the 32 kbps stream bit rate I was measuring, I don't see how it could
really fail to manage a bit rate level so low, especially as I could receive
Radio 4 at 48 kbps, and I can't remember there being any problems with the
stream buffering or anything like that.

Unless you have some evidence to the contrary, Radios 1, 2 and 3 were using
a bit rate of 32 kbps in September 2006. They had also been using 32 kbps
for years before that.

I would also assert that the reason why the bit rates / audio quality were
as low as they were was to deliberately deter people from listening to the
Internet radio streams so that they would buy DAB instead. The BBC is after
all unbelievably biased in favour of DAB at the expense of all other digital
platforms that carry radio - if you disbelieve me, read this classic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...l_radio_1.html

He says DAB's quality is "excellent", he says Wi-Fi Internet radio is
unreliable and the quality is poor based on his listening to a single 56
kbps MP3 Internet station from Monaco. Why didn't he used the BBC streams as
an example? Would it be because under his leadership the audio quailty of
the BBC's streams is utterly diabolical so using them as an example would be
criticising his own streams? I fink that might just be the case.

It's a pity he didn't try any of the thousands and thousands of streams that
provide far higher quality than the BBC provides on DAB though - let alone
the terrible quality the BBC provides on its Internet streams to
deliberately deter people from wantign to listen via teh net.

And why did he use the example of a single station in Monaco that he said
was suffering from buffering when to the BBC's credit the BBC's Internet
radio streams never in my experience suffer from buffering? And out of the
tens of thousands of Internet radio streams, why did he persevere with one
that was supposedly buffering so badly? I tried the stream in question, and
it didn't buffer once when I tried it in the 15 minutes I had it on.

This is all a bit convenient that he just happens to just lurve this
extraordinarily unreliable and low quality radio station based in sodding
Monaco of all places. Or is it that the BBC's Director of New Media can't
even identify a fault with his own Internet connection or Wi-Fi network or
Wi-Fi Internet radio? That would be the irony of the century, really.

Out of the Internet stations I listen to on my Wi-Fi radio they're rock
solid, and the quality just happens to murder the quality that the BBC
provides on its DAB stations. Of course that would be a tad inconvenient to
write about on the BBC Internet blog when he's trying so desperately to make
the case for DAB and support his mate Jenny Abramsky in her mission to lower
the quality of radio for all.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:38:43 GMT, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
[email protected] wrote:

The reason I left it for 15
minutes was because when the stream starts the BBC Radio Player used to
report an artificially high bit rate, which was due to the buffer filling up
initially, but if you left it playing for 15 minutes the bit rate displayed
slowly reduced to the actual bit rate of the stream.

Sounds like a plan. Most of my 'real' listening these days is via a
standalone internet radio box, which obligingly reports the bitrate at
all times. BBC stations seem to report 44k for me.

I wrote in an article in September 2006 that Radios 1, 2 and 3 were using 32
kbps. I also remember that Radio 4 and maybe 6 Music were 48 kbps. The
reason I remember that is because it was evidence of BBC incompetence (it is
BBC Digital Radio, what else do you expect?), because Radios 1, 2 and 3
should not be using 32 kbps if Radio 4 is using 48 kbps, because speech is
easier to encode than music, so music should be encoded at the higher bit
rate if anything. But it also shows that I could receive stations at higher
bit rates than 32 kbps.

I recall that there were requests for higher bitrate streams a while
ago, but at the time the BBC brushed them away with a sort of
non-reponse which implied that because the Listen Again streams aren't
protected against non-UK listeners, the amount of extra international
bandwidth that would be consumed would be very significant indeed.

Not sure if you've seen this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newm...treaming.shtml
and particularly this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newm...ng_table.shtml
which reveals the required narrowband/broadband target settings.

I suspect that the real issue is that the 'listen again' service has
always been a 'narrowband' service and hasn't yet made the leap into
the broadband world.

I would also assert that the reason why the bit rates / audio quality were
as low as they were was to deliberately deter people from listening to the
Internet radio streams so that they would buy DAB instead. The BBC is after
all unbelievably biased in favour of DAB at the expense of all other digital
platforms that carry radio - if you disbelieve me, read this classic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...l_radio_1.html

Oh, Highfield is an absolute tool, no question, but I don't think
that's evidence of some kind of sinister conspiracy, it's just
evidence of Highfield being a tool.

He says DAB's quality is "excellent", he says Wi-Fi Internet radio is
unreliable and the quality is poor based on his listening to a single 56
kbps MP3 Internet station from Monaco.

I refer the honourable gentleman to the point I made some moments ago
with regard to toolage. :-)

--

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:56:42 +0000, Edster wrote:

":Jerry:" wrote:



"Stevie-(no-degree)-boy" [email protected] wrote in message
...

snip

You're talking out of your arse again. The BBC should be providing
audio quality on its Internet radio streams that is fit-for-purpose
in the 21st century. It's using 550 kbps for its BBC iPlayer TV
streams, and yet it only sees fit to use 64 kbps using ATRAC3 which
shouldn't be used at such a low bit rate.

No, you are talking out of your arse, there is NO requirement for the
BBC to provide ANY internet radio (or TV) streams, be thankful for
what they do offer! As I said, internet streaming is not their core
business and if they did offer the sort of HQ streaming that you seem
to be asking for there would be complaints about unfair competition
from the commercial sector.


A lot of broadcasters see the internet as being the reason for their
falling viewers rather than all the extra junk they put on screen
during programmes. That's why they are all putting at least some of
their programmes on there. They think it will get them all their
viewers back.

Another reason is the drop in quality of programmes such as all these
singing/dancing/skating competition shows and "reality" TV.

M.

Zero Tolerance wrote:
On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:38:43 GMT, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
[email protected] wrote:

The reason I left it for 15
minutes was because when the stream starts the BBC Radio Player used
to report an artificially high bit rate, which was due to the buffer
filling up initially, but if you left it playing for 15 minutes the
bit rate displayed slowly reduced to the actual bit rate of the
stream.

Sounds like a plan. Most of my 'real' listening these days is via a
standalone internet radio box, which obligingly reports the bitrate at
all times. BBC stations seem to report 44k for me.


I've got a Wi-Fi radio as well - good aren't they. You can also see what bit
rate the streams are on your computer now, because the iPlayer for radio has
a "listen using stand-alone Real Player" link, so you can look at the stream
Properties in that.

I did a spreadsheet of all the bit rates the BBC uses for its streams a few
weeks ago, and they were as follows:

All Real live and on-demand streams were 64k apart from World Service whcih
was 20k
The WMA streams we
R1-4 = 64k stere
R5 = 32k mono (carrying silence)
R5 Sports Extra = 48k mono (carrying silence)
6 Music = 40k stereo
1Xtra, BBC7, Asian Network = each 40k stereo (showing as 20 kbps mono -
that's what I wrote, but I don't know what I meant by that to be honest)

They need to start using AAC+ for the Real streams, because they've been
taking the **** far too long with their Internet streams.


I wrote in an article in September 2006 that Radios 1, 2 and 3 were
using 32 kbps. I also remember that Radio 4 and maybe 6 Music were
48 kbps. The reason I remember that is because it was evidence of
BBC incompetence (it is BBC Digital Radio, what else do you
expect?), because Radios 1, 2 and 3 should not be using 32 kbps if
Radio 4 is using 48 kbps, because speech is easier to encode than
music, so music should be encoded at the higher bit rate if
anything. But it also shows that I could receive stations at higher
bit rates than 32 kbps.

I recall that there were requests for higher bitrate streams a while
ago, but at the time the BBC brushed them away with a sort of
non-reponse which implied that because the Listen Again streams aren't
protected against non-UK listeners, the amount of extra international
bandwidth that would be consumed would be very significant indeed.


I read those streaming guidelines you've linked to below, and they say that
they look at your IP address to see what country you're from and they only
serve narrowband streams to non-UK residents, so they can't use that excuse
now.

Anyway, whatever reason they may have said at the time, in reality it will
simply have been the BBC Controller in charge of digital radio at the time
(Simon Nelson) who'll just have made up some excuse because he was the
architect behind "BBC DAB" and he was extremely biased in favour of DAB.
There is a new Controller in charge of digital radio now, and he seems to be
more reasonable, because the bit rates of the Internet streams for R1-3 have
doubled since I measured them in September 2006 and the last few months
have seen the first adverts for BBC digital stations that actually mention
that they're on digital TV, whereas the last controller would never have
allowed that. But even though things seem to be slowly improving, the audio
quality of their streams needs to be improved urgently.


Not sure if you've seen this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newm...treaming.shtml
and particularly this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newm...ng_table.shtml
which reveals the required narrowband/broadband target settings.


I hadn't seen either of those, thanks.

BTW, I liked this (with the BBC's capitalisation):

"3.4.2.3. Music MUST be mono UNLESS you editorially need stereo (Stereo
information is mostly contained in the higher frequencies, which are harder
to encode, resulting in imperfect stereo)."

It's no wonder they're so incompetent when you read **** like that.


I suspect that the real issue is that the 'listen again' service has
always been a 'narrowband' service and hasn't yet made the leap into
the broadband world.


They serve 64 kbps Listen Again streams to people who have broadband, so
they'd probably argue that they're already providing a "broadband" service
because 64k is higher than dial-up modems can handle.

The "2nd phase" of the launch of the iPlayer should see radio programme
downloads being added, or at least that's what I was told, and radio
downloads were included in the trial for the iPlayer (they were encoded with
128 kbps WMA).


I would also assert that the reason why the bit rates / audio
quality were as low as they were was to deliberately deter people
from listening to the Internet radio streams so that they would buy
DAB instead. The BBC is after all unbelievably biased in favour of
DAB at the expense of all other digital platforms that carry radio -
if you disbelieve me, read this classic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...l_radio_1.html

Oh, Highfield is an absolute tool, no question, but I don't think
that's evidence of some kind of sinister conspiracy, it's just
evidence of Highfield being a tool.


Real added support for AAC+ to Real Player 10 / RealAudio 10 in January
2004. It's now 4 years later and they've still not used it despite the fact
that it's common knowledge that AAC+ is by far the best audio codec to use
at very low bit rate levels (it's official name is High-Efficiency AAC
(HE-AAC)), and as AAC+ support was added 4 years ago the vast majority of
people with Real installed on their computers must surely have updated it or
installed it fresh in the last 4 years, so why haven't they used it?

I looked at listening test results the other day that includes results for
the Real G2 and AAC+ codecs:

http://www.ebu.ch/CMSimages/en/tec_d...tcm6-10497.pdf

and 48 kbps AAC+ provides "good/excellent" quality (albeit it's a very lax
kind of listening test) compared to 64 kbps Real G2 that they're using now
providing "fair/good" quality, and until the end of last year they were
using a max bit rate of 48 kbps, which provides "poor" quality, and at the
beginning of 2007 they were using 32 kbps for R1-3, which provides
"bad/poor" quality.

It's basically down to the previous controller in charge of digital radio,
because he was extremely biased in favour of DAB. Things have improved since
someone else took over, but they're still massively biased in favour of DAB.



--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm

Zero Tolerance wrote:

Not sure if you've seen this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newm...treaming.shtml

No, I hadn't. Perhaps the most revealing part is that it hasn't been
updated since 29/09/2006.

Andy

wrote:

snip

Just opened the download version of the first episode of Life in Cold Blood,
and the first few minutes (which is all I watched) actually looked poor -
very fuzzy.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm

On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:10:49 GMT, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
[email protected] wrote:

I did a spreadsheet of all the bit rates the BBC uses for its streams a few
weeks ago, and they were as follows:

All Real live and on-demand streams were 64k apart from World Service whcih
was 20k

I noticed yesterday afternoon that a BBC station normally reported at
44k had fallen back to 20k. Again, hard to tell why that happens -
perhaps it's during periods of extreme load at the BBC's end, or maybe
there's some kind of bottleneck or interference (shaping) going on at
the ISP.

Anyway, whatever reason they may have said at the time, in reality it will
simply have been the BBC Controller in charge of digital radio at the time
(Simon Nelson) who'll just have made up some excuse because he was the
architect behind "BBC DAB" and he was extremely biased in favour of DAB.

The BBC's preference is always going to be towards promoting platforms
where they are 'anchor tenants' and where space is sufficiently
restricted for there to be little or no competition for
viewers/listeners. No surprise that they're in favour of DAB as
opposed to, for example, anything else.

BTW, I liked this (with the BBC's capitalisation):

"3.4.2.3. Music MUST be mono UNLESS you editorially need stereo (Stereo
information is mostly contained in the higher frequencies, which are harder
to encode, resulting in imperfect stereo)."

Classic. :-)

The "2nd phase" of the launch of the iPlayer should see radio programme
downloads being added, or at least that's what I was told, and radio
downloads were included in the trial for the iPlayer (they were encoded with
128 kbps WMA).

That sounds hopeful, then.

Real added support for AAC+ to Real Player 10 / RealAudio 10 in January
2004. It's now 4 years later and they've still not used it despite the fact
that it's common knowledge that AAC+ is by far the best audio codec to use
at very low bit rate levels (it's official name is High-Efficiency AAC
(HE-AAC)), and as AAC+ support was added 4 years ago the vast majority of
people with Real installed on their computers must surely have updated it or
installed it fresh in the last 4 years, so why haven't they used it?

The BBC may be concerned about listeners with older equipment, etc,
and don't want to go through the hassle of talking people through how
to upgrade their RealPlayer 3 to anything better... or there may be
upgrade costs involved in getting the BBC's fleet of RealServers to
use a more advanced codec. Not sure, though.

Are the common 'Real Capable' chipsets (as found in both your and my
wi-fi radios) also AAC+ capable? (I'd expect them to be.)


--

Zero Tolerance wrote:
On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:10:49 GMT, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
[email protected] wrote:

I did a spreadsheet of all the bit rates the BBC uses for its
streams a few weeks ago, and they were as follows:

All Real live and on-demand streams were 64k apart from World
Service whcih was 20k

I noticed yesterday afternoon that a BBC station normally reported at
44k had fallen back to 20k. Again, hard to tell why that happens -
perhaps it's during periods of extreme load at the BBC's end, or maybe
there's some kind of bottleneck or interference (shaping) going on at
the ISP.


Don't say that in a publicly available newsgroup, it gives them ideas!
That's only half a joke, BTW! :-)

I see streams reduce in bit rate when I turn my microwave oven on, which is
next to my Wi-Fi radio and microwaves are the same frequency band as Wi-Fi
uses.

What station uses 44 kbps? Is it a local station?


Anyway, whatever reason they may have said at the time, in reality
it will simply have been the BBC Controller in charge of digital
radio at the time (Simon Nelson) who'll just have made up some
excuse because he was the architect behind "BBC DAB" and he was
extremely biased in favour of DAB.

The BBC's preference is always going to be towards promoting platforms
where they are 'anchor tenants' and where space is sufficiently
restricted for there to be little or no competition for
viewers/listeners. No surprise that they're in favour of DAB as
opposed to, for example, anything else.


Yes, that's how things are, but it's not acceptable, because they've been
tasked with Building Digital Britain or some such ********, so they're in
large part responsible for the promotion of digital TV and digital radio.
They've already promoted Freeview from almost nothing to being the most-used
digital TV platform, and on digital radio they're in the process of
forcefully pushing everyone to DAB without informing them of the other
platforms - that has changed very, very slightly recently becasue there's
been an Asian Network ad campaign recently that says it's available via
digtial TV and there was one for 1Xtra a few months ago, but these were tiny
low impact stuff compared to the 20 high-impact campaigns for DAB so far.

The BBC claims to be platform neutral, but they couldn't be less platform
neutral if they tried.


The "2nd phase" of the launch of the iPlayer should see radio
programme downloads being added, or at least that's what I was told,
and radio downloads were included in the trial for the iPlayer (they
were encoded with 128 kbps WMA).

That sounds hopeful, then.


They're also saying that the quality of the streams and the Listen Again
streams will be improving "later this year":

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...io_online.html

But just like the person from the BBC Digital Radio department who I asked
about this, they didn't say how the quality would be improved, so it's
possible that all he's referring to is that the quality will be improved by
eliminating the current disgraceful practice of receiving the stations
off-air via digital satellite then transcoding to Real G2 at ****ty bit rate
levels.

If they said they will be improving the quality by changing the codec or/and
increase the bit rate levels then I'd be convinced that they'd be doing
something good, but just eliminating disgraceful engineering practice and
making out that they're doing something good would be typical BBC
****taking.

Also note that he says that they're "unable" to provide their streams at the
quality levels that they're providing via DAB! What utter crap. They're
using 64 kbps now, so changing to AAC+ would provide higher quality than
they're providing on DAB today, and they've had the option of using AAC+
since January 2004 - perhaps they're just a bit slow on the uptake?


Real added support for AAC+ to Real Player 10 / RealAudio 10 in
January 2004. It's now 4 years later and they've still not used it
despite the fact that it's common knowledge that AAC+ is by far the
best audio codec to use at very low bit rate levels (it's official
name is High-Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC)), and as AAC+ support was added
4 years ago the vast majority of people with Real installed on their
computers must surely have updated it or installed it fresh in the
last 4 years, so why haven't they used it?

The BBC may be concerned about listeners with older equipment, etc,


They could provide an additional link. They already provide (IIRC) Real
High, Real Low, WMA High, WMA Low, so I see no reason why they couldn't
provide AAC+ High as well.

In the above BBC Internet blog article, they are saying that they're going
to detect what software we are using, so presumably they'll use the
appropriate codec dependent on what software we've got.

The BBC has basically been dragging its feet for as long as possible before
people start asking questions, and I've started asking questinos and people
have been saying similar things in replies to the pro-DAB-biased BBC
Internet blog articles, so they think it's now time to do somethign about
it - GCap has been providing 128k WMA streams for a year now (which was
pretty amazing that they of all people did that), so the BBC is massively
lagging behind.


and don't want to go through the hassle of talking people through how
to upgrade their RealPlayer 3 to anything better...


I don't know this, but my impression is that people update their media
players quite regularly, and I'd estimate that the vast majority of people
will have upgraded their Real Player in the last 4 years, which was when
Real added support for AAC+.


or there may be
upgrade costs involved in getting the BBC's fleet of RealServers to
use a more advanced codec. Not sure, though.


AAC+ will be included in the software (is it called Helix or Real Producer
or something?) that's already used.


Are the common 'Real Capable' chipsets (as found in both your and my
wi-fi radios) also AAC+ capable? (I'd expect them to be.)


Wi-Fi Internet radios are purely software-based. Actually, someone emailed
me about Wi-Fi radios not properly supporting AAC+ -- what he said was that
they support AAC, but the SBR (which is the '+' bit) isn't decoded properly.
I've not tested this out yet, so I'm not sure. They definitely do play AAC+
though, and because their firmware can be upgraded over the Internet they
can add AAC+ support if they don't have it already.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:36:09 GMT, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
[email protected] wrote:

What station uses 44 kbps? Is it a local station?

BBC London.

--