Streaming Radio Etch/KDE
 

Way back, before my Age of Enlightenment when I was using XP-Home, I used to listen to BostonPete.com Classical via WMP. It had a menu of stations to pick from. I also had Winamp running and picked up some stations on it too.

Now I'm running Etch/KDE/Iceweasel | Konqueror Desktop and I'd like to find the nearest (or best) thing so's I can find some more good stations.

I checked the BostonPete.com site, but I can't figure out how to get it to play on my DT.

I'd prefer to avoid things like RealPlayer "with GooglePack" and stick to Debian as nearly as possible.

I'd appreciate some guidance.

So, I went on a wee adventure, and this is what I discovered:

Get the link you want to listen to (right-click, copy link, etc), feed it to mplayer - $ mplayer http://www.bostonpete.com/wma/station001.asx - mplayer errors out, looking for avisynth.dll.

Try again with vlc - $ vlc http://www.bostonpete.com/wma/station001.asx - vlc plays the 25 sec intro, then stops.

Google for avisynth.dll - a couple of tarballs downloaded, but compiling and installing will be a nightmare, plus, I just want the .dll, anyway.

More googling....voila!...buried somewhere is this:

use mplayer with the -playlist option; hence

and there you have it.

cheers,

I've found xine works best for streaming media. Mplayer and VLC also work but they have strange issues sometimes, where they stop playing without reason. Just my experiences. For example you can use 'xine-mozilla-plugin' if you wanted to play it embedded in the browser, or you can type in the url into xine.

mrclisdue;
H_TeXMeX_H;

Ah's a'feared o' thet. Ah's opened a 'can-a-worms' an' it's too cold to go fishin'.

I seem to have both noatun and juk installed in [.kde/share/apps/]. I did some googling and it doesn't appear that either of these answer.

apt-cache doesn't present either xine or Mplayer as 'ready-to wear' items.

What I did find, based on about 2 hours of searching, was that XMMS and amaroK seem to have the edge satisfaction-wise for some tyros using KDE.

I'm very appreciative of your concise, informed and 'to-the-point' replies, but do I need to uprgrade my wetware a mite a'fore I go any further; d'ya'think?

I use Amarok to listen to streaming stations. All I do is click the station and it opens and plays in Amarok.

Hi Craig; LTNS

Does this mean amarok is dependent on the xine "engine"? IOW, if I d/l amarok via apt-get, would xine be included, or would I have to get it separately?

apt-get install amarok will also install amarok-xine.

Note version numbers may be different in Etch, the above is for sid.

Craig;

Thanks.

I had a "I could'a had a V8" moment about 5 minutes after I posted my Q and headed out for the day. I could/should have queried [apt-cache showpkg].

I'll try it out later today and let you know how it turns out.

I use Amarok as well and I think it is a great media player. Amarok is also great for accessing large collections of mp3's or other music on your computer. There are some very cool features built into this package.

Thanks Craig & Oxy;

The Setup Wizard for amarok asks me to identify which folder(s) my music is stored and to pick from a list.

I haven't used Etch for any media stuff yet so there's nothing there to select. Should I just select my Home folder, or do I need to create a folder in my "Media" folder which, at present, just has a couple of gratuitous entries for CD's?

Slightly aside; I notice an ad by google at the bottom of this page that promotes:
www.monteverdi.tv What I find odd is that it only runs on Windows and Macs; not linux.

When you go through the setup wizard you can just point it to any directory for now. It asks where your music is stored so it knows where to look for music to build a catalog. You can change this option later once you start collecting some music. You can also just use the default database option for now.

Streamtuner
 

I use streamtuner for radio and streamripper to copy to my hard drive. It's in the repos get it via synaptic, it's a very nice program!

Oxyacetylene;

I see the amarok setup suggests installing a d/b server such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. These aren't installed on my ETCH distro. New territory for yours truly. I'll have a run at MySQL (per below tutorial) and see how it goes.

http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/mysql.htm

glidermike;

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep it in mind, but I can only do one at a time. I'm sure I can try out a couple and settle on one before I get too far committed to any one.

I think I spazzed installing mysql.

From:http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/mysql.htm
In root shell I got:
The nubie type problem(s) I have are:
1. I don't know how to access/find the mysql files in X-Term and therefore I can't make changes. I checked "/root" but nothing shows up.

2. Since I'm on a stand alone DT with direct connection via modem to HS Cable, I'd like to edit [/etc/init.d/mysqld] and change:

[/usr/bin/safe_mysqld > /www.null 2>&1 &]

to this:

[/usr/bin/safe_mysqld --skip-networking > /www.null 2>&1 &]

3. I don't know how to "ping" mysql to see if it is running> e.g.
I'd articulate my problems better if I knew how. This is the best I can do.

I think PostgreSQL gets installed as a dependency with Debian. I have made it work with MySQL but it requires more work. The easiest way may be to install PostgreSQL and then see if Amarok will configure the database on its own.

All I know at this point is that the pictures, videos and music that were in my home folders got transmogrified after installing MySQL and restarting.

Pictures are thumbnail quality; e.g., reduced from 68.5 KB (original per d/l file) to 5.1 KB (per "properties").

I'm trying to restore what I can from a backup disk.

Oxyacetylene
I mentioned that PostgrepSQL was not installed in post #14: I'm not sure what you want me to understand about it.

I can see my Initial Question has been answered and that I'm spinning off in an entirely different area; (i.e., MySql installation and administration) which might be better pursued in a different thread or a different forum and after I've done some reading to get my bearings.

Thank you very much for your help.

r.