Realplayer not engaging for BBC w/ Mozilla

[Ryanne]

i am trying to play BBC audio from the "Listen to music by genre" area. First i was prompted to install Realplayer. I did so and it installed except for not placing an entry into the K system menu (that was easily remedied)

However, I'm still getting the "you must first install RealPlayer" message when i try to run BBC audio. I ran RealPlayer and clicked "check for update" and the Realplayer website says I have the current version installed.

I checked the /usr/lib/firefox/plugins directory and i have the following symlinks:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 37 2009-04-24 13:27 flashplugin-alternative.so -> /etc/alternatives/firefox-flashplugin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 39 2009-04-24 15:28 libjavaplugin.so -> /etc/alternatives/firefox-javaplugin.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 2009-04-28 07:19 nphelix.so -> /opt/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 2009-04-28 07:19 nphelix.xpt -> /opt/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.xpt

which, as far as i can see, are the correct links to use realplayer.


here's where it gets weird: if I reboot the system, I can play "Listen Live" through Flash. As soon as I try anything that requires RealPlayer, though, I am prompted to install real player AND flash will no longer play anything.


Help?

[Ryanne]

Re: Realplayer not engaging for BBC w/ Mozilla

update: i did some tweaking and got the website to recognize the plugin. here's the current problem: NO SOUND AT ALL. When the plugin comes up, it shows the message "connecting" and hangs. sometimes it will start to play (but not generate actual sound) cycling quickly through the messages "playing" and "cache fill 0.01%" and "stopped" I can't seem to help this.

I did get some sort of connection by clicking BBC's "launch in standalone player" hypertext and it linked the .rar file to RealPLayer AND it seemed to start playing but there was no sound and nothing i did could get audio.

i tested the audio with Kde and it worked good, played a CD and a DVD, disabled sound and tried again with RealPlayer - still no success. re-enabled ALSA and here I am, again at an impasse.

[dibl]

Re: Realplayer not engaging for BBC w/ Mozilla

If this is important to you, you might try something like this:

- make sure audio is working correctly on your Linux system (alsa would be desirable)
- install Wine
- install Firefox for Windows on Wine
- download and install the RealPlayer 11 from BBC
- listen to your BBC music with that Firefox instance

At times I've gotten BBC/RealPlayer to work on my 64-bit installation -- it's "iffy" -- you can install the gnash-plugin and maybe it will work, or maybe not.

[dibl]

Re: Realplayer not engaging for BBC w/ Mozilla

OK, I was a little challenged by this, as I have been in the past, so I attacked it.

First thing to know -- installing RealPlayer, as prompted by BBC, is not necessarily the path to success. Especially if you're running the 64-bit architecture, like I am -- the downloadable .deb file is only for 32-bit, so that was the end of that road.

Searching on Ubuntu forum turned up the fact that vlc will happily play the stream, if you can access the actual URL. This is not the one that you get via "copy the link", however. For example, on the Genres page there is "6 Music". If you right-click it and "copy the link" you get something like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/6music.shtml

which is just a link to the RealPlayer installer routine. But what you really want is this:

rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/6music/live/6music_dsat_g2.ra

which is the actual rtsp stream. So, if you (a) install vlc, then (b) copy this stream link into vlc at Media > Network in the "address" window, and push "Play", you will be happy to hear your stream playing. Here in the middle of America, it played for 5 minutes or so and then got lost or something, and I had to restart it. But it does play.

The link for "fivelive" is:

rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/radio5/live/r5_tl_int_g2.ra

and for Radio4 is:

rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/radio4/live/r4_dsat_g2.ra

If there are others you want, you can perhaps work them out by observing how these links are constructed.

Hope this helps!

[Ryanne]

Re: Realplayer not engaging for BBC w/ Mozilla

thanks a lot for working on this

I tried installing VLC player, which i have used to gr8 effect in the past. the problem is that i keep getting the following message when I try to open the URL:

Session failed:
The requested RTSP session could not be established.

just so you know, i entered the url as: rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/6music/live/6music_dsat_g2.ra

any ideas? could the port be blocked for some odd reason? i tried changing it to 8066 and got the same result.