"... connection response 403 Forbidden"

[nickc]

This is from my MinimServer log which I put to Debug level to try to find out why I can't play BBC Radio 3 at the best quality. I live in France, so naturally I don't expect the UK streams to play; however, I can't resist playing around and have experimented with various VPNs etc to see if I can get round the geoblocking. I've succeeded in the past but the connection wasn't stable. With my current setup I can play BBC TV programmes flawlessly, so I'm puzzled as to why the radio streams don't work. Both are coming through the same QNAP HS-251+ with VPN connection active, TV stream via iPlayer on Chrome and R3 attempted via MinimServer & MinimStreamer. If I go to the BBC Sounds site in Chrome I can play anything (though have no way of being sure what bitrate is being received). I suspect the problem may be that when I play TV streams they are using the VPN to connect to the BBC servers and then at my end the signal goes direct via HDMI from the NAS to my AV reveiver (Arcam SR-250). Perhaps when I try to get the Arcam to play the radio streams from MinimServer on the NAS, the fact that the Arcam is not routed through a VPN could muddy the waters? Does the data go from the NAS to the Arcam not via HDMI but via the LAN, and is that creating the blockage? That's my theory and I'd be grateful for any observations and possible workarounds.

I tried to post a section from the log, but got 403 refusals when I previewed, so have abandoned trying. In essence though, whenever the log referred to a BBC URL, it was followed by a "403 Forbidden"

eg "17:45:36.791 Thread-357: Streamer: request path is a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/dash/uk/dash_full/ak/bbc_radio_three.mpd/$!transcode.wav
17:45:36.791 Thread-357: Streamer: transcodeType is wav
17:45:37.018 Thread-356: getResponseData getInputStream: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: http://as-dash-uk-live.akamaized.net/poo...20000.dash
17:45:37.018 Thread-356: readSegment: connection response 403 Forbidden"