BBC Radio
Friday 7th September, 2007 00:47 Comments: 3
For the last few days I've noticed that I've been unable to listen to BBC Radio 1 when I'm at home. But it works fine if I test it in the office (using my laptop in both locations, for consistency, to rule out any other issues). So I decided to investigate the issue earlier tonight and I've come to the conclusion that they've started blocking my IP address, presumably because they think I'm outside of the UK (even though the free "IP to location" services happily tell me that I'm based in the UK). I've used netcat and nslookup to confirm that I can talk to the web servers okay and correctly resolve the IP addresses of the servers involved. The biggest giveaway is that I can play the international version of the Five Live stream, but I can't play the UK version. I've contacted the BBC using their web form (with possibly the world's smallest comment box), hopefully they'll change the setting back so I can listen to the streams again.
I've finally been updating my UKRP gadget again, which is why I noticed that the BBC streams had stopped working at home. In version 1.3.5 I've now added a little homepage icon in the flyout that lights up if I've stored the URL of a stream's homepage, and clicking on it will load the site in your (default, I think) browser. The default theme should now be Common (Presets) and I must remember to add some warning text if they try to store a preset but haven't selected a theme that will display the preset buttons. I've updated a few of the station logos, and I've added two themes that were kindly provided by Abid (I must remember to credit him when I update my UKRP page). I've also started adding an array to keep track of the type of stream that's selected (currently they're all marked as WMP as they use the WMP ActiveX control, but I hope that the next version after 1.3.5 will support Real Audio streams, which would make a lot of people happy). I'm a bit annoyed with myself that I'll have gone nearly 3 months without any updates, but the current version seems to be working pretty well.
I've finally been updating my UKRP gadget again, which is why I noticed that the BBC streams had stopped working at home. In version 1.3.5 I've now added a little homepage icon in the flyout that lights up if I've stored the URL of a stream's homepage, and clicking on it will load the site in your (default, I think) browser. The default theme should now be Common (Presets) and I must remember to add some warning text if they try to store a preset but haven't selected a theme that will display the preset buttons. I've updated a few of the station logos, and I've added two themes that were kindly provided by Abid (I must remember to credit him when I update my UKRP page). I've also started adding an array to keep track of the type of stream that's selected (currently they're all marked as WMP as they use the WMP ActiveX control, but I hope that the next version after 1.3.5 will support Real Audio streams, which would make a lot of people happy). I'm a bit annoyed with myself that I'll have gone nearly 3 months without any updates, but the current version seems to be working pretty well.
Fab - Friday 7th September, 2007 08:45 I must remember to download this to my machine at somepoint. The anonnying part is that the Vista machine is not the fileserver/TV machine thus I am hardly likely to listen to the radio while playing games.
Still I feel I should at least download it for friendly testing purposes!
Still I feel I should at least download it for friendly testing purposes!
It'd definitely be appreciated! I originally tested it when I was using Vista x64, but I've only been testing on x86 for the last 6 months or so.