Cannot hear BBC streaming radio - realplayer/mplayer problem

[Mr Skills]

I have been on the phone for hours trying to help my brother use his new Acer Aspire One to "listen live" to radio on the BBC iPlater website.

It is streaming audio in RealPlayer format, although the Acer is using MPlayer. The web page comes up perfectly, with all the right buttons, but when you press 'Play', nothing happens. No "buffering", no audio. He has right-clicked and checked that it is set to play real player files.

Does anyone know how to get it working?

Thanks!

[cpchan]

Both the wma + real streams on the main BBC site and the real stream on the iplayer site work fine here. However, my copy of mplayer is self compiled from svn (the developmental tree), YMMV. The problem could be that the stock Fedora 8 mplayer is too old or not compiled with the live555 library. You can try Helix player to see if it works better.

[Mr Skills]

Hmmm... I've never used Linux before - I'm just helping my brother over the phone.

I've been reading up, and I'm sure I can follow instructions from the web and install new software for him, but I have 2 questions about that:
1) For maximum simplicity (my brother is not good with computers and wants things to 'just work'), should I update M-Player, install Real Player or install this "Helix Player" that you mention?
2) Having done this, will it screw up the Acer automatic updates? (Remember, my brother just wants things to work with the simple menu system - he doesn't want to be doing Linux maintenance!).

Thanks!

[Rustybolts]

Click link below
http://www.real.com/realcom/R?href=http://forms.real.com/real/player/download.html?f=unix/RealPlayer11GOLD.rpm
window pops up click open with software installer.
bbc site should now work you may have to restart machine.

[cpchan]

Real Player or install this "Helix Player" that you mention?
2) Having done this, will it screw up the Acer automatic updates? (Remember, my brother just wants things to work with the simple menu system - he doesn't want to be doing Linux maintenance!).

Thanks!

Either follow Rustybolts suggestion and install Realplayer or install Helix Player from Pirut (the package manager, Helix is in the Fedora repository). Helix player is the Open Source version of Realplayer.

[Mr Skills]

Thanks guys! My brother has the basic Acer Inspire One Linux install - none of the advanced mode stuff has been activated. Will Rustybolts' link provide a relatively simple installer?

[cpchan]

Thanks guys! My brother has the basic Acer Inspire One Linux install - none of the advanced mode stuff has been activated. Will Rustybolts' link provide a relatively simple installer?

Yes.

[Mr Skills]

Sorry, just to check one last time before we go through with it...


If we install Real Player, which presumably will replace MPlayer, we're not going to get error messages from the Acer's automatic update system next time it tries to update MPlayer, are we? I just want to make sure we're not solving one problem and creating another down the road!

Thanks

[cpchan]

If we install Real Player, which presumably will replace MPlayer, we're not going to get error messages from the Acer's automatic update system next time it tries to update MPlayer, are we? I just want to make sure we're not solving one problem and creating another down the road!

No, installing the Realplayer rpm does not really get rid of the mplayer package. Even if you uninstall mplayer with:

Code: Select all

rpm -e mplayer

or through the package manager, it will not affect the update because the update function will only update the installed packages in the rpm database.

[Mr Skills]

Thanks! Just to ask one more stupid question: next time he goes to the BBC website and tries to 'listen live', how will it know to use Real Player rather than MPlayer? Is there an option in the Real Player settings to make it the default?