The BBC On Demand listings within the Reciva service have been a very important part of the service and is often the reason why many users (UK and abroad) bought a Reciva-based Internet radio.
Some of the comments within this section could be applied to content from other broadcasters - for example the content provided by NPR in USA - but it is the BBC On Demand content that generates the most Reciva forum comments.
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- WMA v RealAudio
When the On Demand content was first made available from BBC (as Listen Again) it was presented in RealAudio format.
Reciva was one of the first internet radio providers to include RealAudio support and, possibly, the first to provide access to the Listen Again content.
BBC ![[WWW]](http://wikispot.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
announced in October 2009 their intention to switch off RealAudio and to make Microsoft WMA the official route to both live streaming and Listen Again content.
Switching the Reciva On Demand listings to use the WMA content rather than RealAudio was straight-forward - since links to both were included within the official BBC AudioOnDemand XML listings.
However, BBC chose to make two versions of the content available - one for listeners in UK and another (at a lower audio quality) for listeners outside UK. Supporting this dual access required some extra work - and was implemented at the Reciva servers in April 2010.
However, this has highlighted an issue with BBC back-end, since it seems that part of the BBC back-end incorrectly determines that some UK broadband subscribers are outside UK (appears to happen to some users of Virgin and O2/BE) and subsequently blocks their access to the UK versions of the content.
Incidentally, a different mechanism is used by the BBC iPlayer - it is using Flash as a front-end to protected AAC content. Therefore it is quite possible, if there are problems at the BBC transcoding back-end, for the On Demand content to be different between Reciva and BBC.
* Pause / Resume, Skip (Transport Controls)
The RealAudio server that BBC was using had a mechanism allowing content to be seeked to by including a time offset within the URL - this is how the old BBC Listen Again web player allowed the user to skip through the content. This simple mechanism is what was used by the Reciva firmware to present the time controls at the radio.
The server providing the Listen Again WMA content does not support seeking to a particular point by specifying a time offset in the URL. However, the BBC Listen Again WMA content is configured to support a Microsoft mechanism within the communications protocol to allow this (it is "WMA Seekable").
Since the Reciva radios (like most other internet radio devices) did not support seeking within WMA content, support for this required a firmware update.
- Firmware updates
The first firmware version to support transport controls within seekable WMA content was v257-a-865-a-464 which was made available to official beta testers on 19th April 2010.
At the time of writing this (mid-May 2010) it was not clear if or when this functionality would be included as standard for new radios and also made more generally available to radios with older firmware.
* Programme Listings
- BBC AOD XML
* Finding the content
- Radio
- Portal
- Reciva iRadio application (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)
- BBC official source
- iPlayerConverter
An alternate way to get to the BBC content is via iPlayerConverter. http://www.iplayerconverter.co.uk/reciva_instructions.aspx
You can add this to "My Podcasts". A happy side-effect is that this delivers the international version of the BBC content so it gets around the problem for some UK broadband users who are (in mid-2010) suffering problems with BBC incorrectly blocking their access to the UK-only content.
* Updated programme list
- Periodic collection from BBC
The Reciva back-end connects periodically, throughout the day, to the BBC to collect the listings of available On Demand content. This is parsed and then used to update the content list that is accessed by the Reciva radios and the Reciva portal. There can be a time delay before the updated content list becomes available to the radios - particularly radios with old firmware.
- Access by radios (old v new firmware or brands)
Precise details are not available - but it looks like some radios (either by brand or by age of firmware) access back-end Reciva servers that are not updated as quickly as others.
The "legacy" server also seem prone to having no updates at all - with the content list being stuck for a few days.
End-users should report when this happens via the Reciva forum - including details of the radio (brand, hardware id, service pack version).