Listen to live Radio with Linux
 

I would like to listen to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC)live broadcast.
I am running Firefox on Kubuntu and I have several multimedia applications (mplayer, Helix, Kaffeine, RealPlayer, and VCL), but none will play the live stream.

CBC gives the following information on their web site:

Live CBC Radio Streaming

In August 2004, CBC.ca moved to one standard media player for live streaming - Windows Media Player.

Windows Media player is currently the most commonly used format in the marketplace and using this format allows CBC.ca to deliver live radio streaming to the widest possible audience. Further, by supporting only one commonly used media player (Windows Media), we can direct more technical support and resources behind this standard format and use the efficiencies to offer more radio streams to more Canadians, both at home and abroad.

CBC.ca continues to offer on-demand audio and video clips using RealPlayer. We constantly evaluate new streaming formats and welcome audience feedback. Please contact CBC Audience Relations if you have suggestions or comments.

CBC.ca

How can I make any of my players work in this case?

you can install the Windows Media Player Plug-in
http://kdekorte.googlepages.com/gecko-mediaplayer

Here I can hear the streams, no problem
debian testing
firefox 3.1b3

Windows Media Player Plug-in

File name: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/gecko-mediaplayer-wmp.so
Gecko Media Player 0.9.4

Video Player Plug-in for QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player streams using MPlayer

Or...

There is a media connectivity plug in for Foxfire that works well for most all players. I use it with vlc and smplayer (mplayer with a front end), but have used it with realplayer as well.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/446

Listen to live Radio with Linux
 

Windows Media Player Plug-in is installed.
When trying to listen to Radio, it will try to connect and then displays: Stopped. When I press the play button, again it tries to connect and then it stops. Any ideas?

Amazingly, it was just yesterday that I went through all this, and today you find yourself in the same situation.

In my case, this is the best solution -

There are ogg streams for cbc radio here:

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/ogg.html

These streams play equally well with mplayerplug-in, mplayer, xine.

Other things I tried:

There are urls for all the streams here:

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/streams.html

However, I can't play them with anything but xine.

Using the mediaconnectivity plugin, I'm unable to actually play anything from the main cbc.ca radio site (the one where you're just supposed to click on a link, & listen), however, I'm able to get the link info which looks something like this:

and that link will play in mplayer & xine.

To recap, the ogg is the easiest, but you're limited to two possible streams, both eastern, but 32bit stereo.

The scenario where the urls listed in the second link won't play using mplayerplugin (and quite possibly with the gecko-plugin) *probably* comes down to an mplayer configuration issue - I remember in the past having issues, and solving them, but I can't recall what that solution was.

Anyway, hope this helps, ymmv.

cheers,

mrclistue
Thanks for your thoughts. I tried the ogg streams you indicated and they play, although so far only with xine.

I can play the ogg stream via mplayer.


Mplayer has some problems with the windows media streams. It looks like it is a problem with their asx redirect. They use a doubly wrapped playlist, ie a playlist pointing to another playlist. If I use wget to get the first one, then I can play the playlist wrapped inside: