BBC Radio Stopping Working? Any ideas why?

ianpaulstone · March 4, 2021, 8:12am

Just wondering why BBC Radio is going to stop working on Volumio soon?

Any ideas? And what fixes are there going to be?

dheijl · March 4, 2021, 6:33pm

Because it thinks that Flash is being used to play, probably a browser version string problem, and Flash will be (finally) dead soon.

Josh2000 · March 4, 2021, 11:35pm

Hi,

I am considering to move to UK to solve this issue

Have a look at available streaming URL

Kind regards
God save the queen
Josef

Josh2000 · March 5, 2021, 12:01am

Hi,

Not that i want to be unpolite. I hope that this is understood as a kind of british humor, please…

Surely i will try to help.

If BBC radio is not unwilling to get heard by the Volumio community there will be a way to get it tuned in.

There are several web services providing the streaming url‘s of thousands of web radio stations all over the world that are required to configure them in Volumio in an easy way, even for british stations.

I like to help in case of need.

Really best regards to my british friends and certainly also to the queen.

Josef

chsims1 · March 5, 2021, 10:40am

The BBC is making changes that will result in a lot/all of their current stream url endpoints disappearing … see here. They do not appear keen to allow users (other than those using equipment from supported device manufacturers/web aggregators) an easy way to access them. Now I’m sure it will be possible to circumnavigate this, or at least get hold of the methods that supported manufacturers will have access to, but for the time being …

What really irritates me about this situation is that it is my taxes paying for this “service.” It stops at the end of March I believe.

AndyL · March 5, 2021, 11:30am

There’s no cause for alarm! They’re not taking away mp3 streams, they’re just moving the hosting from llnwd.net to open.live.bbc.co.uk. All the new links are here:
UK Radio Station live streams in mp3/mp3PRO (SHOUTcast/Icecast) format

AndyL · March 5, 2021, 12:07pm

I also just discovered from that site that BBC Radio also has 320kbps, 48kHz stereo AAC streams!
http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/other.asp

Apparently, only available in the UK, but hey, we’re the ones paying for it!

Volumio will play them, but without any station text information, and a lot of drop-outs, even when using the 128k AAC stream. Maybe there are issues with HLS support.

Jazzfan · March 5, 2021, 12:30pm

I have been getting a “this service will be discontinued on this device message from the BBC Radio channels”
I have updated the links in My Web Radios from this site:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/bpsib/67089b959e4fa898af69fea59ad74bc3

BBC-Radio.m3u

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,BBC - Radio 1
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/version/2.0/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/bbc_radio_one/format/pls.pls
#EXTINF:-1,BBC - Radio 2
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/version/2.0/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/bbc_radio_two/format/pls.pls
#EXTINF:-1,BBC - Radio 3
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/version/2.0/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/bbc_radio_three/format/pls.pls
#EXTINF:-1,BBC - Radio 4
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/version/2.0/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/bbc_radio_fourfm/format/pls.pls
#EXTINF:-1,BBC - Radio 5 live

This file has been truncated. show original

Normal service appears to have been restored - fingers crossed!

volumio · March 5, 2021, 2:25pm

Does this links work outside UK?

Jazzfan · March 5, 2021, 3:10pm

I am in the UK so it works OK here.
Out of interest, I connected via a VPN through the Netherlands to see how it would work with a non UK IP - worked fine first time.
So I guess it should work outside the UK.

chsims1 · March 5, 2021, 7:18pm

@AndyL there are problems using those links such as not being able to stop the stream directly from Volumio (at least for Radio 4 at 320 kbps).

Edit: …and drop outs

tophee · March 6, 2021, 1:04pm

I saw this in the beta too.

AndyL · March 10, 2021, 2:56pm

Radio 3 also has a 320kbps AAC stream on normal HTTP:
http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/bbcradio3aac.pls
…which appears not to have any of those problems, so it seems Volumio can handle the AAC encoding and the bit rate. They must all stem from the handling of the HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) transport.
Anyone know if there are any improvements to HLS support in Volumio 3?

nickc · March 10, 2021, 3:34pm

I was worried by that announcement too, in my case coming through the internet radio facility on my Arcam SR250, which has recently degraded so much (the BBC stream, that is) that it’s no longer listenable. While exploring other options on the Arcam, I’ve gone back temporarily to a previous setup, using Volumio on an RPi connected to another amp, with Volumio accessing the .m3u files on my NAS running MinimServer/Streamer. (I can’t recommend this stunning software highly enough.) These are the MPEG-DASH files which, according to Simon Nash (who knows about these things), are likely to have a long life. See the 4th post here: Changes to BBC radio transmission If you follow his link at the end of that post you should be able to find your way to the latest version of those files. I’m in France, so use the international versions, one of which is playing as I write. I noticed yesterday after installing the latest version of Volumio that it’s also possible to direct it to render from a specific URL, so that would be a solution if you don’t use a NAS.

aggggers · March 23, 2021, 10:39am

I had a shock yesterday when all I could hear on the BBC 6 feed was a BBC announcer on my RPi system- a bit boring! However I’ve found a Hifi Wigwam post of HQ streams. (excellent UK audio forum BTW, so do join) It’s an old post but still works; I’ve got Radio 4 and 6 to work with no problem- simply copy and paste the URL into My Web Radios/ add webradio- 3 dots on the right side. Here’s the link to the post:

These streams are 48 khz and are 320kbps, I measured the stream on VLC Player to check, so much better than 128 kbps. I’m not sure if FLAC will be used by the BBC in the future- perhaps other guys know?

I hope this is useful.

chsims1 · March 23, 2021, 6:57pm

For now … let’s see what happens at the end of the month. You might also want to look here.

Edit: what we really need is some bright spark to provide a BBC Sounds plugin … any volunteers?

timothyjward · April 1, 2021, 8:48am

This would be great.

chsims1 · April 1, 2021, 10:23am

The Github Gist links seem to be working as of now.

chsims1 · July 22, 2021, 1:10pm

Hi nick,

are you still using minimserver with Volumio for mpeg-dash BBC streams? I tried yesterday with Volumio 2.907 and it wouldn’t play the streams (vlc in contrast plays them fine). I can see the upnp links to the streams fine in the Volumio GUI.

So for the mpd file ‘BBC Radio 4 FM.m3u’ served by minimserver

#EXTM3U #EXTINF:-1,BBC Radio 4 FM http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/dash/uk/dash_full/ak/bbc_radio_fourfm.mpd

Volumio tries to play the upnp stream with the failed result logged as:

Jul 22 13:08:28 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: Adding Item to queue: upnp/folder/http://192.168.2.210:9791/e25712fd-9902-4606-917e-d590fb6e4778/upnp.org-ContentDirectory-1/control@0$playlists$*p5 Jul 22 13:08:28 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: Exploding uri upnp/folder/http://192.168.2.210:9791/e25712fd-9902-4606-917e-d590fb6e4778/upnp.org-ContentDirectory-1/control@0$playlists$*p5 in service upnp_browser Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CorePlayQueue::saveQueue Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreCommandRouter::volumioPushQueue Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreStateMachine::updateTrackBlock Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CorePlayQueue::getTrackBlock Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreCommandRouter::volumioPlay Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: UNSET VOLATILE Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreStateMachine::play index 0 Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreStateMachine::setConsumeUpdateService undefined Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreStateMachine::stop Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreStateMachine::setConsumeUpdateService undefined Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: UNSET VOLATILE Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreStateMachine::play index undefined Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CoreStateMachine::setConsumeUpdateService undefined Jul 22 13:08:30 volumiostudy volumio[4797]: info: CorePlayQueue::getTrack 0