I've just been musing on just how core AlienBBC is to my enjoyment of the SlimDevices products. It has struck me that if I could not play BBC Radio on my SlimDevices then I'd probably only have bought the Transporter and would not have purchased my other three players. I'd certainly never have considered a bedside Boom or a sound system in my kitchen that did not include BBC radio.
I'm sure I cannot be the only one who thinks like this either. It worries me that AlienBBC is a plugin and maintained by a vounteer or two. What happens if they give up... or do not adapt the plugin for the New Streaming due in 7.3? I'd have three bricks on my hands! As I remember, the reason that BBC radio is not core code is due to licencing issues regarding the "might not be quite legal" mplayer, which decodes the Real Audio streams. This has to be used due to the BBCs strange decision to use Real Audio streams instead of the much more sensible MP3 (yes, the decision looked bizarre at the time it was taken too... it's not just a hindsight thing!). Now that the BBC is changing away from Real Audio is there any chance that BBC radio will become core code? A secondary question is why oh why don't the BBC provide a sensible channel indexing system for players like the SlimDevices, Roku, Sonos etc..? I am constantly annoyed with the way that the AlienBBC menus make no sense and then keep breaking (as they have now with the new iPlayer menus) every time the BBC makes a (far too frequent) change. It'd appear be a very simple thing for the BBC to provide a logically organised XML feed too (and I pay my taxes etc etc etc) I am in no way detracting from the guys who designed and maintain the AlienBBC plugin. They are all pretty god-like in my eyes. MC -- ModelCitizen On average people have fewer than two feet. http://www.last.fm/user/ModelCitizen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ModelCitizen's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=446 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51829 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
