Direct URL for BBC Flash / MP3 steams?

[woodyuk]

Hi

This is not about recording, but I am trying to get the url for the direct flash steams so I can listen to BBC Radio on my Chumby (chumby.com)

My understanding so far is that the BBC streams Radio via WMA or RA (soon to be shutdown). Both of these methods mean licensing issues and so cannot be used. Now I have read the following:

BBC switches to Flash for live streaming
June 21st, 2009 - 12:52 UTC by Andy Sennitt.

The BBC iPlayer now uses Flash-based streams for live radio as well as on-demand radio on all its UK national radio stations. For live radio, the BBC iPlayer requires Flash Player v9.0.115 or above - which has been freely available since December 2007.

In the UK, the opportunity has been taken to greatly increase the audio quality: doubling the bitrates for most live streams, and using a significantly more efficient audio codec which increases the audio quality yet further. The results are excellent, says the BBC’s Executive Producer A/V Products, James Cridland in the BBC’s Internet blog.

For overseas listeners, the BBC is using 48kbps HE-AAC v2 format stereo streams (known by some as aacPlus) for all stations, excepting BBC Radio 5 Live which is a 32kbps HE-AAC v1 mono stream.

So BBC is now supporting Flash audio AAC (in UK) and AAC+ outside. Chumby supports AAC but not AAC+ from what I understand.

I also understand that the BBC is releasing some MP3 stream over HTTP for iphones but only read reports and no details. This would be the best solution finding a MP3 stream would be perfect! However think its not yet realised.

So I have spent the last hour trying to find the direct flash urls eg rtmp://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/live (thats not a correct URL but that is what I am looking for)

Thanks for any help and sorry its a little off topic, but from reading all your other threads you are clearly the experts! :-)

BBC uses dynamic URLs for flash streams, so I don't think you can use them the same way as Windows Media or Real Media streams.

If you still want to find RTMP URL of BBC radio station, you can use CooJah.

Windows Media streams are still available. I suggest you to use them. BBC will probably offer some alternative to RTMP streams in the nearest future, because many people won't be able to listen to RTMP streams.

Related:
Cannot detect url in BBC iPlayer