[dB Cooper]

I'm hoping to get some answers on a streaming problem: I like to listen to the BBC Radio Three radio stream which is 320 kb per second AAC; it sounds great (or used to until it stopped working on all my players a few days ago).

iTunes won't play the stream anymore nor will any other players on my Mac. Was hoping someone here might know something or have some troubleshooting ideas. Anybody else listen to this station?

Thoughts/suggestions welcomed.

[srb]

I can't seem to get any of the BBC stations to play on my media players (JRiver 18, Foobar 2000, iTunes 11, or Windows Media Player 12), but only seem to be able play them through their proprietary player through their website.  Maybe I am finding the wrong URLs to try, can you post the URL that you are trying to play?

Steve

[dB Cooper]

I can't even get it through the proprietary player. No sound. Here is the url that has worked just fine until now:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3_aaclca.pls

Googling, I found this link which works but cannot verify the bitrate. The website said it was a (marginally) acceptable 192 kb/s WMA but Snowtape seems to be reporting it as 56kbs AAC+.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3.asx

To repeat, the BBC 'in-house' flash player does not work in any of my browsers on either high or low bandwidth. No other streaming problems here including video.

[srb]

That is one of the URLs that I tried.

When I "Open Stream" http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3_aaclca.pls in iTunes, nothing plays.  An entry with the name "bbcmedia_intl_lc_radio3_q" is created in playlist "Internet Songs" and inspecting it with "Get Info" reveals the URL has been resolved to http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_intl_lc_radio3_p?s=1382438973&e=1382453373&h=cf97b09c98f2687da0a11ad2dae762e2.

Even if I edit the URL and replace with the original URL, still nothing plays.

When I "Open URL" in JRiver it opens a webpage to the same resolved URL and the page says "The file you requested could not be found".

The music that I am able to play is found by going to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_radio_three in a web browser which opens the Radioplayer app.  It takes 10 to 15 seconds while displaying "Loading...", and then plays.  I can also listen to "BBC Radio 3" through the TuneIn Radio app.

I suspect they either have changed URLs, or more likely disabled direct access to the streams.

Steve

[dB Cooper]

All that makes sense and I will try these options when I get back later. To further muddy the waters, BBC has both AAC and WMA streams at varying bit rates. And apparently in the past they have restricted access to the hi bandwidth stream to within the UK. Later it was apparently opened up but maybe they have reverted to that policy?

Update: The TuneIn link is audibly not the hi bandwidth stream. On Safari and Chrome, the BBC mini player opens, says 'loading' but never does, and has a volume slider that will not budge from minimum. Mysteriously, it works in Firefox. Glad about that but bothered by not knowing why, and annoyed by having to keep a browser window open just to listen to a stream.

Thanks for helping me out with this srb. Gonna email iTunes tech support and prod them to get it working in there.

[srb]

On Safari and Chrome, the BBC mini player opens, says 'loading' but never does, and has a volume slider that will not budge from minimum. Mysteriously, it works in Firefox.

Not sure why only Firefox works for you.  On a Windows 7 platform Radioplayer works for me in Firefox 24.0, Internet Explorer 9, Chrome 30.0, Safari 5.1.7 and Opera 17.0.

Steve

[dB Cooper]

Gotta be a setting somewhere, or an add-on interfering, but damned if I know what it is. As long as I got that nice smooth 320K stream rolling, I guess it's OK, but it would be nice if I knew why.

[dB Cooper]

UPDATE- Safari and Chrome still won't play it, although Firefox still does,

BUT...
Checked again in iTunes and it played! Even better, when I took down the url, it played again in the lightweight little FStream player so I don't need to keep a browser window or a resource hog like itunes open just to listen.

Not sure WTF happened; NOTHING played it for nearly a week. Looks like the same ol' URL to me... Something to do with the US govt shutdown? 
Anyway, all's  well that ends well; the best sounding stream out there* is making sound again

*(That I have heard, there is supposedly some Eastern Euro classical station streaming in FLAC...)

[srb]

BUT...
Checked again in iTunes and it played! Even better, when I took down the url, it played again in the lightweight little FStream player so I don't need to keep a browser window or a resource hog like itunes open just to listen.

Not sure WTF happened; NOTHING played it for nearly a week. Looks like the same ol' URL to me... Something to do with the US govt shutdown? 

Yep, the stream now plays for me in iTunes and JRiver.  They done fixed it.

Steve