Announce: BBCiPlayer Plugin (UK only)

[TheLastMan]

The change to the flac binary in LMS is to allow transcoding of very long streams. I think 4 hours or more from memory - so if you listen to radio streams for less time than this or don't transcode to flac then you should be ok..

Very useful information, thanks!

Well I do often use the BBC R3 iPlayer plugin live feed, particularly for my "hi-fi" setup in the living room where I don't have a DAB tuner. I doubt my attention span would last 4 hours, but I might have it on in the background and my NAS would need to transcode that - so I think I will update the flac binary "just in case".

Thanks for the heads up.

[TheLastMan]

Yes for Touch/Radio or if the NAS is using the Logitech shipped faad binary for aac decode for older players. However many NAS builds (Synology is the primary culprit) use their own faad build and it won't work..

Looking at the LMS "Bin" folder, it contains versions of the flac, faad, mac, sox and wvunpack binaries that are different from the Synology ones. So, just to be safe, I have replaced the Synology versions of all of these with the LMS ones. The LMS install also contains an "sls" binary that is not included at all in the Synology one. What is that used for? Should I add it?

Also the Synology version of the "Bin" folder also contains versions of alac and ffmpeg that are not provided with the LMS package. Could those be put there by plugins? It makes me slightly worried which other LMS files are non-standard in the Synology package. However, as long as it works OK I suppose it should not bother me.

[Triode]

Looking at the LMS "Bin" folder, it contains versions of the flac, faad, mac, sox and wvunpack binaries that are different from the Synology ones. So, just to be safe, I have replaced the Synology versions of all of these with the LMS ones. The LMS install also contains an "sls" binary that is not included at all in the Synology one. What is that used for? Should I add it?

Also the Synology version of the "Bin" folder also contains versions of alac and ffmpeg that are not provided with the LMS package. Could those be put there by plugins? It makes me slightly worried which other LMS files are non-standard in the Synology package. However, as long as it works OK I suppose it should not bother me.

I don't know - I think someone with a Synology should really push them to use the standard LMS versions for arm and also to make their perl architecture string standard so that plugins which ship binaries (such as spotify) work on synology without modifications.

[TheLastMan]

I don't know - I think someone with a Synology should really push them to use the standard LMS versions for arm and also to make their perl architecture string standard so that plugins which ship binaries (such as spotify) work on synology without modifications.

I am puzzled by Synology's attitude to LMS. They always produce their "package" late and non-standard for no particular reason I can fathom. Lots of people whinge endlessly on the Synology forums about their version of LMS. I think it really needs the intervention of a plugin developer with an intimate knowledge of what they are doing wrong (I've no idea what a "perl architecture string" is, for instance). However I am sure your time is better spent elsewhere!

It must be a real bind to make plugins and then find you ave to make modifications to cope with just one make of server. On my last NAS I was using SSODS (because my 107+ was no longer supported). It was much more complicated to install - but once up and running I never had an issue with it. I might revert to it if wrangling the Synology package continues to be such a pain.

[Triode]

New release available which makes BBC Scotland and BBC Wales work again with the BBC's changes.

Please report any issues here.

(BBC Radio applet for Touch/Radio will not work with live streams until I update it, but BBCiPlayer plugin should work with the BBC's latest changes)

I've updated the BBC Radio applet to match this change. Please could someone from outside the uk test to make sure it will receive all the streams.

This version has changed the preference option to add the option to prefer highest bitrate stream rather than just wma or aac/mp3. Note however that its too hard to make it do what BBCiPlayer does and try each stream in turn, so the option selects the rules for selecting which stream to try when you press play.

[Nick_G]

For some reason, the BBC World Service stream isn't working using Triode's plugin. It says 'Connecting...' but nothing else happens. Have the BBC been messing about again?

[Triode]

For some reason, the BBC World Service stream isn't working using Triode's plugin. It says 'Connecting...' but nothing else happens. Have the BBC been messing about again?

Its working here, but you need to have flashaac enabled as their feed is only including the 32bit flashaac stream for me at present.

[VirusKiller]

I'm in the process of migrating servers from Linux to Mac.

Old Linux server is running 7.6.1.
New Mac server is running 7.7.2.

With the old server, both R3 and R3 HD entries appear in the iPlayer Listen Live menu and both a 320kbps CBR. They do identify themselves differently though.
With the new server, the R3 HD entry is missing.

Stop press: Just updated the plugin on the old server and the HD listing is gone.

Why the differences? Is this correct?

[Triode]

I'm in the process of migrating servers from Linux to Mac.

Old Linux server is running 7.6.1.
New Mac server is running 7.7.2.

With the old server, both R3 and R3 HD entries appear in the iPlayer Listen Live menu and both a 320kbps CBR. They do identify themselves differently though.
With the new server, the R3 HD entry is missing.

Stop press: Just updated the plugin on the old server and the HD listing is gone.

Why the differences? Is this correct?

Yes - I removed the menu item as the 320k aac stream is now the same quality as the special "HD" stream. So as long as you have AAC and FlashAAC enabled in the options you will get the best quality for Radio 3 and Radio 3 listen again from the normal menu items.

[VirusKiller]

Excellent. Thanks for the quick reply!