(Ted Harding) wrote:
On 29-May-07 22:24:52, Jenny Hopkins wrote:
Hullo there,
Has anyone on list had any luck with getting the bbc website 'play it again' working?
Thanks, Jenny
Not sure what you mean by "get it working", Jen. What were you trying to do that didn;t work?
I've tracked down the "Play It Again" website to
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/playitagain
which, so far, is just a website and, as such, works fine for me. I can't see anything problematic on this home-page.
However, the bits I can see that might not work for everyone are the various "clips". E.g. if you click on the handsome phiz of Robert Winsten, you get a column of "Watch video clips". The first one is "Watch a sax tutorial", which is not specific to Robert W. Then there's a list
Watch highlights from Robert's lessons * Robert makes a noise! [00 min 31 sec] * Robert practices his scales [00 min 21 sec] * Robert meets John Dankworth [02 min 00 sec * Robert meets Courtney Pine [02 min 27 sec]
so you don't get much of the programme!
I tried the "sax tutorial" and the first Winsten clip, and both worked. Then I started composing this reply, and went back to it after entering the above list, only to get the "BBC Media Player" hanging, "waiting for bbc.co.uk...". The same with Jo Brand's clips.
Why this happened I have no idea. I've tried closing my Firefox browser and re-starting, to no effect. It may sinply be that the Beeb has gone into a sulk (it's getting late, after all). [But see below]
Anyway, be that as it may, one can have problems with the BBC Media Player which pops up for such things. You'll need to have RealPlayer installed at least as a plugin for your browser (since the alternative is Windows Media Player). This then runs encapsulated in the BBC Media Player (following an initial check of your cnnection speed and which choice of player you want). It's a good idea (see below) to have RealPlayer installed for standalone use.
In some cases when you're intending to use the encapsulated RealPlayer, it does nothing after intitally connecting. But then, you can usually locate an option in the window to "Listen to this in standalone player".
In that case, what I do is
a) right-click on the "Listen to this using standalone player" link, accept the option to "Copy Link Location", then
b) go to another Xterm window, type in
realplay
(followed by a space) and then
c) middle-click with the mouse to complete the command with the URL for RealPlayer to go to. Then
d) Press Return, and RealPlayer whould start up in its own window and play the clip.
[Stop Press in passing -- the BBC Player is now responding normally again. So she was just sulking.]
Anyway, for the first Winsten clip, doing the above gets you, at stage (c), the command
realplay http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/playitagain/video/bb/ pia_robertwinston1_16x9_bb.ram
[all one line but my mailer breaks it], and then (d) starts it running.
If you use the Media Connectivity add-on for Firefox I mentioned, you won't have to faff around doing all this. You can configure it to pass the direct URL to the media to the player of your choice...
--Simon
P.s. BBC online media sucks a fair bit, compared to what it could be like but I don't knock 'em for it. Channel4's totally DRM Windows-only "on demand" service really sucks...