Posts Tagged ‘real player’
Before you can listen to the radio you need to have a number of resources, and that’s what I intend to begin on today.
BBC radio like a number of other radio stations transmits in a format which is called Real Audio. Some people like this format, and some people don’t, but we need to understand it. And this means that first of all, you must have a media player that is capable of playing Real Audio files.
Real Audio files normally have extensions which end in .ra. or .ram.
The media player recommended by the BBC and the one that I’m going to concentrate on is known as Real Player.
Real Player is what is sometimes known as a freemium product. That is, it comes in two versions – a free version and a premium paid for version.
As free audio books are concerned, we’re only interested in the free version.
Many people don’t much like Real Player they have all sorts of problems with it. However, I think that the latest version, which is number 11 at this time has more or less got rid of the problems.
The only thing is that you need to be very careful when you download and install it.
First of all, make sure that you’re downloading the free version.
Real media is a commercial organisation, and they will invite to to take a trial of their premium version. My advice for listening to the radio is, don’t.
Secondly, when you install Real Player, don’t simply click the buttons automatically. Read all the information carefully. You may be invited to subscribe to newsletters from companies recommended by Real Player. I suggest that you don’t.
At some point you may be asked to give an e-mail. There’s nothing wrong with this and I have never had problems from any spam from Real Player, but nevertheless this is a very good example of where to use a free disposable e-mail address such that Gishpuppy or Kasmail. You can subscribe directly to Gishpuppy on this site.
The third thing to be clear about is that at some point you will be invited to make Real Player your universal media player.
This is a real problem. You may have no media player, at all, you may have several different media players on your computer, but my advice is to agree only to have Real Player as your media player for Real Audio files – that is files ending with .ra or .ram.
If you do this, I don’t think you’ll have any problems with Real Player.
If for one reason or other you are adventurous, or you don’t like Real Player, you may do what many other people do, which is to try the Real Player Alternative, which is a much smaller download, or you could even try the Videolan player, which is a universal player which will play almost anything.
However for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to concentrate on how to use Real Player, as the media player for real audio files.
Download details are on the resources page
Once you’ve downloaded and installed Real Player you can listen to the BBC online and many other radio station.
To make this easier and give you more control I’d suggest also download these two free programmes:
viddiradioplayer
and
Solway’s Task Scheduler
Details are available on the resources page
In many cases, though not all, this is likely to involve logging onto or listening to a programme from the BBC.
The BBC like many other radio organizations has got two kinds of broadcast. Though nowadays with podcasts you might say there are three.
The first kind is what is often called streaming radio.
This simply means just as in the old days, you turn the radio on and the programme comes according to the schedule of the station. If you want to listen to that live, you have to be there and available when the programme is played which is not always convenient.
The second kind of broadcast is known as radio on demand.
The BBC and other stations have sites where the programmes are stored for, perhaps, let’s say seven days. And then, you can listen to them whenever you wish to.
A new technology is podcasting, which is a slightly different sort of thing, and we’ll look at it later.
We’ll think about all these things but I’m going to begin by looking at a few of the sites where you can find free audio book material.
Just before continuing with that, it’s worth saying that sometimes the books are read simply as texts. Sometimes, quite often, they are dramatised, and quite often, of course, they are recordings of dramatic works.
For example, in the last few weeks, I’ve listened to a complete recording of “A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, by Tennessee Williams, I’ve listened to an adaptation of “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, This of course is all with radio recordings.
There are other companies and organizations which are in the business of providing free audio book recordings which you can download and I’ll be coming to them later.
Sometimes they are commercial organizations which like to give out some freebies. But more often they’re organizations which exist to publish various types of audio book material.
So that’s something to think about.
And for our next post we’ll have a look at what we need to listen to free books on the internet radio.
If you’re already set up for listening on line these are some of my favourite sites to check:
Drama on Three: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/dramaon3/
The Classic Serial: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/classic_serial.shtml
The Friday Play: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/friday_play.shtml
The Saturday Play: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/saturday_play.shtml
The Afternoon Play: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_play.shtml
Listen Again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/
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