Radio 3 live (HD)

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Mon Jan 16th 09:58:20 GMT 2012,  richard_get_iplayer wrote:

> On Thu Dec 22 10:12:55 Jon Davies wrote:
> ...
>> get_iplayer -g --type=liveradio "BBC Radio 3"
> ...
> It seems that the BBC have changed things as that command used to
> download at 192 kb/s and the longer Special Event command would download
> at 320 kb/s.

Hi, Richard :-)
 If you are listening live via the UKRadioPlayer console at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_radio_three

then indeed the live audio is streamed at 320kbpsVBR (AAC LC)
and the right click context menu correctly informs about that:

bbc_radio_three | 320kbps | aac | AK 3.5 (1) | 380x40

If, however, you are using the older but still available
iPlayer Radio Listen Live player at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/bbc_radio_three/listenlive

then the audio streamed from there is still at the previous bitrate
of  192kbpsVBR (AAC LC); incorrectly, the right click context menu
tells of a 128kbps bitrate:

bbc_radio_three | 128kbps | aac | AK 3.5 (1) | 512x288

All the above provided you come from a UK IP and using the
"Normal bandwidth" option.
I myself have checked the live streams by accesing them through a UK http 
proxy
and capturing them via an RTMP downloader ("Coojah 6", on WinVista x86).
MediaInfo was used on the downloaded FLV files...

If you type (from a UK IP):

get_iplayer -i --type=liveradio --fields=pid bbc_radio_three

then in the "modes" line you get:

modes:          default: flashaachigh1,flashaaclow1,flashaacstd1,wma1

where flashaachigh=320kbpsVBR (AAC LC),
flashaacstd=192kbpsVBR (AAC LC) &
flashaaclow=48kbpsVBR (HE-AACv2).
If you don't specify a mode, get_iplayer will try to fetch first the highest 
possible
quality, i.e.  flashaachigh.

Cheers, Vangelis.