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Author Topic: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure  (Read 4751 times)

Beamer

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BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« on: April 01, 2014, 11:31:27 am »

I have been trying unsuccessfully to configure JRiver to stream radio stations.  With the exception of the BBC stations everything works just dandy and I am mystified why the BBC streams are having an issue.

To complicate matters, I have two systems  dedicated to JRiver, one plays all stations just fine and the other does not despite a full de-install / re-install.  I have also tested on a third machine that is not dedicated and it also fails!  Sometimes when I leave it in its hung state, it will recover and suddenly start playing the station ?  

This is a link to BBC Radio 3 but all BBC stations have the same issue. http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3.asx

I have captured  a log for both good and bad systems and attached it.

Is this a bug? Is anyone else having problems?

FYI the BBC link plays perfectly on all machines using Firefox.
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marko

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2014, 11:37:45 am »

The link you provided works for too, but is not the link I typically use.

Does the following work any better for you...
mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio3/radio3_bb_live_eq1_sl1

Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2014, 11:44:47 am »

The link you provided works for too, but is not the link I typically use.

Does the following work any better for you...
mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio3/radio3_bb_live_eq1_sl1

Your link takes a short while to connect but does eventually start buffering data and providing audio.  The link I am trying to use is the one recommended (www.bbcstreams.com)
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2014, 12:21:28 pm »

Marko

Thanks for the link. May I ask where you found the link to the BBC radio station? 

Just installed three stations using the same format and they appear to be working!

How is it possible that one installation works with the recommended links and another does not ?
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marko

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #4 on: April 02, 2014, 12:37:14 am »

It was a looong time ago now. I thought it was BBC Streams, but it's also possible I ripped them out of the page source of their player web page.

Back in 2011, I posted about them: BBC Radio Streams - 1 - 7 all working

Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #5 on: April 02, 2014, 02:49:35 am »

I replied too soon, I am getting the same problem with your link after setting up a play list and testing.  I get the message buffering and then a pop up to say something went wrong.  I also note that even when it works, it takes forever to load versus all other stations that are near instant!

All other and that list is 25 stations, work just fine but the BBC is flaky.  I will post this issue on the broken thread
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #6 on: April 28, 2014, 02:12:30 am »

Here is how to reproduce the "Something went wrong" error.

Open this URL through the file menu of JRiver: http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r2.asx

Bingo in most cases it will play.  Now send the URL to a playlist and you will find that most of the time the playlist entry will return with "Something went wrong"

The URL is good and it works just fine in about every other player I have tried.
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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #7 on: April 28, 2014, 04:33:21 am »

These are the BBC Radio streams that I use and I have just checked and they are working fine:

BBC R1     mms://wmlive.bbc.net.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio1/radio1_bb_live_int_eq1_sl0
BBC R2     mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio2/radio2_bb_live_eq1_sl0
BBC R3     mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio3/radio3_bb_live_eq1_sl1
BBC R4     mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio4/radio4_bb_live_ep1_sl0
BBC R5 Live    mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio5/radio5_bb_live_ep1_sl0
BBC 6 Music    mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/6music/6music_bb_live_ep1_sl0


I hope this is of some help.
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gappie

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #8 on: April 28, 2014, 04:39:12 am »

Here is how to reproduce the "Something went wrong" error.

Open this URL through the file menu of JRiver: http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r2.asx

Bingo in most cases it will play.  Now send the URL to a playlist and you will find that most of the time the playlist entry will return with "Something went wrong"

The URL is good and it works just fine in about every other player I have tried.
I tried this, and it seems to be working here.. the first time though, I got a message about if I wanted to give some mc application (the worker I guess) access to the network.. could that be the problem?

 :)
gab
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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #9 on: April 28, 2014, 05:12:35 am »

I tried this, and it seems to be working here.. the first time though, I got a message about if I wanted to give some mc application (the worker I guess) access to the network.. could that be the problem?

 :)
gab

Same here. It seems to be working fine and I can't make it not work. As Gappie said though, the first time it did ask to allow access to the internet. It certainly sounds like an internet security issue/setting somewhere that could be causing your problem.
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #10 on: April 28, 2014, 11:49:39 am »

Same here. It seems to be working fine and I can't make it not work. As Gappie said though, the first time it did ask to allow access to the internet. It certainly sounds like an internet security issue/setting somewhere that could be causing your problem.

Thanks for the feedback guys

I am based in the UK so I do not think it is an internet security issue  ;)

The link I have listed is the official recommended link but other BBC links fail the same way :(

I have three computers that all suffer the same issue and I have been suffering this issue forever and am forced to use RadioSure for reliable BBC connections.

The link works fine in: Screamer, RadioSure, Online Radio Tuner, Winamp & Firefox.  It fails on JRiver very occasionally when entered by URL and fails most of the time when selected via a playlist entry generated as indicated earlier.  Did you guys generate a playlist entry per my example?

I hasten to add I do not have any issues with other radio stations, just BBC broadcasts.  Since the issue is 100% reproducible I would appreciate support looking at the log files attached.

If any additional info is required please feel free to let me know
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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #11 on: April 28, 2014, 01:25:27 pm »

Thanks for the feedback guys

I am based in the UK so I do not think it is an internet security issue  ;)

The link I have listed is the official recommended link but other BBC links fail the same way :(

I have three computers that all suffer the same issue and I have been suffering this issue forever and am forced to use RadioSure for reliable BBC connections.

The link works fine in: Screamer, RadioSure, Online Radio Tuner, Winamp & Firefox.  It fails on JRiver very occasionally when entered by URL and fails most of the time when selected via a playlist entry generated as indicated earlier.  Did you guys generate a playlist entry per my example?

I hasten to add I do not have any issues with other radio stations, just BBC broadcasts.  Since the issue is 100% reproducible I would appreciate support looking at the log files attached.

If any additional info is required please feel free to let me know

Yes, I imported it into a playlist and played it from there multiple times with no issues. Have you tried just disabling the windows firewall temporarily just to see if it will then play back ok. At the very least it could eliminate that from the list of possible suspects.
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #12 on: April 28, 2014, 03:31:11 pm »

Yes, I imported it into a playlist and played it from there multiple times with no issues. Have you tried just disabling the windows firewall temporarily just to see if it will then play back ok. At the very least it could eliminate that from the list of possible suspects.

A firewall restriction would also stop all the other players!
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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #13 on: April 28, 2014, 04:06:45 pm »

A firewall restriction would also stop all the other players!

Yeah, I realised that when I re-read your ealier post.

Sorry.
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JimH

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #14 on: April 28, 2014, 07:04:09 pm »

A firewall restriction would also stop all the other players!
Not necessarily.

The firewall can allow or deny each application access to any port.
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #15 on: April 29, 2014, 03:19:04 am »

I believe the reason why JRiver does not work reliably as an internet tuner for BBC programmes is that when a URL is entered through the file menu it is interpreted,  JRiver then chooses a connection from the list of 20 to 30 that are discovered. It then works through the connections until it find one that works and in most cases succeeds although it can take a while, perhaps longer than it should.

When the same URL is inserted into a playlist there is no interpretation process and therefore it cannot handle the BBC URL directly.  I have attached a playlist example, the first item will play as do most other stations.  The BBC stations do not play (at least for me) unless I use an interpreted channel and that is not reliable solution due to the BBC swapping them around every so often.

The last entry is an interpreted Radio 2 connection that will probably work but cannot be relied upon.

If my analyses is correct then IMHO in order for JRiver to compare favourably with the every other Internet Radio Tuner, it needs to be able to interpret station URL's from the playlist.
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Hendrik

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #16 on: April 29, 2014, 03:43:54 am »

You can't have a playlist inside another playlist, that is not something we support right now - playlists get imported and expanded, ie. when you use Open URL to open the radio link, you'll notice that the Playing Now contains all the individual station links afterwards, and not the master playlist.

Its not ideal for such radio stations, but that is how it works right now, and it doesn't make listening to such stations impossible at all.
We may be able to improve this in the future, but it won't be over night.

FWIW, this is how most other players also handle such playlists, with the exception of players which are explicitly designed for online playback.
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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #17 on: April 29, 2014, 03:46:58 am »

I believe the reason why JRiver does not work reliably as an internet tuner for BBC programmes is that when a URL is entered through the file menu it is interpreted,  JRiver then chooses a connection from the list of 20 to 30 that are discovered. It then works through the connections until it find one that works and in most cases succeeds although it can take a while, perhaps longer than it should.

I think you are being a little unfair there. I listen to the BBC streams all the time, from a playlist, on multiple machines and have never had a problem. I have even tried your example from a palylist and it works fine for me. So to say "JRiver does not work reliably as an internet tuner" is simply not true.

Obviously, I am not trying to detract from the fact that you are having some problems with it but if it was a common problem then the forum would be awash with similar issues.
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #18 on: April 29, 2014, 04:06:40 am »

I think you are being a little unfair there. I listen to the BBC streams all the time, from a playlist, on multiple machines and have never had a problem. I have even tried your example from a palylist and it works fine for me. So to say "JRiver does not work reliably as an internet tuner" is simply not true.

Obviously, I am not trying to detract from the fact that you are having some problems with it but if it was a common problem then the forum would be awash with similar issues.

Your response is in contention with Hendrik's acknowledgement!

Let's be absolutely clear. You have imported the paylist I attached and ALL entries work. Please confirm as according to my theory this would be unlikely, only entries 1 & 5 will work. I am NOT suggesting your findings are not valid but I really would like to get to the bottom of this issue.

As for the forum being awash, I'm guessing that most listeners are not tuning in to BBC radio stations and using the recommended BBC link within the playlist.
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #19 on: April 29, 2014, 04:11:58 am »

You can't have a playlist inside another playlist, that is not something we support right now - playlists get imported and expanded, ie. when you use Open URL to open the radio link, you'll notice that the Playing Now contains all the individual station links afterwards, and not the master playlist.

Its not ideal for such radio stations, but that is how it works right now, and it doesn't make listening to such stations impossible at all.
We may be able to improve this in the future, but it won't be over night.

FWIW, this is how most other players also handle such playlists, with the exception of players which are explicitly designed for online playback.

Thanks for the confirmation. So I guess for the time being I need to find the most reliable connection channel and use that within the playlist.

I would be really nice if JRiver would consider making Internet Radio more modular so as to include the lookup function. I appreciate that this might need to be JRiver 20 but at least it would be something to look forward too.
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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #20 on: April 29, 2014, 04:31:38 am »

Your response is in contention with Hendrik's acknowledgement!

Let's be absolutely clear. You have imported the paylist I attached and ALL entries work. Please confirm as according to my theory this would be unlikely, only entries 1 & 5 will work. I am NOT suggesting your findings are not valid but I really would like to get to the bottom of this issue.

As for the forum being awash, I'm guessing that most listeners are not tuning in to BBC radio stations and using the recommended BBC link within the playlist.

No , I haven't tried the playlist you attached as that post was afterwards. I tried the link you provided in reply #6 (http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r2.asx) and it was this that I was refering to that worked fine from a playlist.

I am just trying the playlist you provided but I can only find 3 entries in it and not the 5 you indicated. However, of the 3 that are there entries 1 & 3 work fine but, as you suggested, entry 2 does not and returns the 'Something went wrong with playback' message. That is very strange as that entry itself is exactly the same as the link you provided in reply #6 and worked fine for me yesterday.

I shall investigate more and get back to you.


P.S. I'm sorry if my earlier post caused offense, that really wasn't my intention.
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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #21 on: April 29, 2014, 04:41:20 am »

No , I haven't tried the playlist you attached as that post was afterwards. I tried the link you provided in reply #6 (http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r2.asx) and it was this that I was refering to that worked fine from a playlist.

I am just trying the playlist you provided but I can only find 3 entries in it and not the 5 you indicated. However, of the 3 that are there entries 1 & 3 work fine but, as you suggested, entry 2 does not and returns the 'Something went wrong with playback' message. That is very strange as that entry itself is exactly the same as the link you provided in reply #6 and worked fine for me yesterday.

I shall investigate more and get back to you.


P.S. I'm sorry if my earlier post caused offense, that really wasn't my intention.

No offence taken :)

I am grateful to you for taking the time to investigate the phenomenon.

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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #22 on: April 29, 2014, 05:07:23 am »

Well, I have found out why the Radio 2 stream you provided worked ok. When I open the url http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r2.asx MC is obviously finding it cannot play it and then automatically substituting my working Radio 2 stream without any indication that it was doing so. So as far as I was concerned I opened the url and it started playing. It wasn't until I checked the filename tab (which was narrowed right down) that it actually showed:

mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio2/radio2_bb_live_ep1_sl0?BBC-UID=7553922e09613bab33849ecad1a2faa23df110bcc09061a4d47f39774cd29a91&SSO2-UID=

....and not the url I entered. Of course I added this to a playlist as per your request but by that time it had already changed the url to a working one. This aligns with your assumptions in post #15

So, going back to your original question (seems like ages ago) no, your url does not seem to work.


I have attached a playlist of all my BBC Radio streams. These are the streams that I have been using for the last few years with no issues and they load reasonably quickly. Normally within 3 or 4 seconds they are playing.

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Beamer

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #23 on: April 29, 2014, 07:19:13 am »

Thanks for the playlist.

My results are reasonably good, I say reasonably because JR is taking sometimes 28-30 seconds to switch from Radio 1 to Radio 3.  I can't be sure but I believe that the BBC is trying to manage the number of users per connection available, hence sometimes the connection will be just a few seconds and other times much longer.

I am guessing that sometimes it will eventually time-out and post an error message which is pretty much square one where I started from but at least I now understand the reason for BBC URL's failing intermittently.

Thanks again for working the issue with me.
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RussellS

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Re: BBC Radio Station Streaming Failure
« Reply #24 on: April 29, 2014, 08:32:53 am »

I've never had it take that long to start a stream. Normally it is pretty much instantaneous and sometimes maybe 4 or 5 seconds and then once in a blue moon it maybe 10 seconds but never 30. So I don't know why that is.
Having said that I don't normally swap between stations that much. I must say though I have never had a stream time out and error except when I've had a network issue.

I've just switched between Radio 1 & Radio 3 (now there's two opposing ends of the musical spectrum) about a dozen times and the most it took was about 10 seconds on one occasion, each other occasion was almost instantaneous. I must admit that on that one occasion when it took 10 seconds MC appeared to freeze while it was switching but still playing the previous station so this maybe the same issue you are experiencing.

Thanks again for working the issue with me.
Your welcome, this is far more interesting than what I'm supposed to be doing  ;D
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