Restriction of BBC Radio HLS/DASH to authorised third parties

[FakePlasticDunk]

I'm guessing it's to do with the stream aggregator or whatever their 'Radio Directory' is. That's then an authorised third party, whereas I suppose they might see Minimstreamer as individual use.

[simoncn]

Some device manufacturers have agreements with the BBC to allow their products to access the new authenticated streams. There have been posts on the Naim forums confirming that Naim is one of these manufacturers.

[MDF]

c) Directories and software solutions that enable individual users to directly access streams to add their connected devices will not be supported. This is for a range of reasons related to the BBC’s obligations under the BBC Distribution Policy, including ensuring our streams are not used in non-compliant ways.

Doesn't sound hopeful without some kind of BBC sounds plugin does it?

[Stream64]

MDFs post refers to this updated page of 'info for third party users':
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questi...party-info

Quote:c) Directories and software solutions that enable individual users to directly access streams to add their connected devices will not be supported. This is for a range of reasons related to the BBC’s obligations under the BBC Distribution Policy, including ensuring our streams are not used in non-compliant ways.

Clearly bad news for us, although Minimstreamer isn't precisely allowing users to 'directly access streams to add their connected devices' because it is converting those streams from chunked to constant stream first.

The BBC have cited a potential reason (addition of adverts) but has not cited examples where this has actually happened. Clearly this wouldn't apply to Minimserver users who have no reason to want to add adverts to the audio streams used by their local internet radio devices.

Quote:In these instances, alternate solutions for accessing BBC radio will remain available to audiences – the BBC Sounds application for mobile and web will remain unchanged, and for connected internet radio devices users will be able to tether BBC Sounds to their devices using Bluetooth, AirPlay or Chromecast. Alternatively BBC stations will remain available on FM and DAB and, where possible, through native internet radio solutions.

Minimstreamer was helping to maintain 'native internet radio solutions' which the BBC broke previously by moving to chunked DASH/HLS distribution. But the BBC just don't care.

[MDF]

Any news from the Beeb Simon?

[simoncn]

I am working on a possible solution. I will post an update here when I have something that is ready for testing.

[tommyrot]

I'm playing catch up here. On Friday 29th Sept I noticed all of my streams go dead.

The includes these:

**BBC Radio 3**
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...three.m3u8

**BBC Radio 4**
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...ourfm.m3u8

**Naim Classical**
http://mscp3.live-streams.nl:8250/class-flac.flac

**Naim Jazz**
http://mscp3.live-streams.nl:8340/jazz-flac.flac

All of the above streams stopped working on my Linn device(s). I then checked my Naim MuSo – it worked for these same stations. I concluded that Naim probably use different streams anyway.

Next, I plugged the above URL/Streams into VLC. Bizarrely, they all still work. At the risk of overshooting my technical knowhow, I'm wondering how it is that they still work in VLC (on my Mac) but not MinimStreamer on my NAS. I doubt VLC is returning any listener data, so is the BBC differentiating between streaming methods somehow? If so, it's strange that they've cut off the supply to home streamers, branding them unsupported, and left computer apps untouched (yet). Perhaps they'll wield their sickle soon.

I'm tempted, purely out of curiosity, to install MinimStreamer on macOS and see if it works, but I suspect I already know the answer.

**Update 1**: The below stream works fine on my Linn device via Minimstreamer:
Global Bach Community
http://38.96.148.28:8342/stream

Curse the BBC Sounds execs.

**Update 2**: I've been playing around with my .m3u files used by Minimstreamer. Oddly enough, my existing stream (m3u) file that no longer works contains this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1, [BBC R3] BBC Radio 3 320k
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...three.m3u8

That no longer works. So, I created a new .m3u file with the following:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,BBC - Radio 3 SD
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...three.m3u8

Using the exact same URL, this one works! I'm baffled.

**Update 3**: I've recreated the following entirely new m3u files (one per stream):

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1, Naim Jazz 44.1k
http://mscp3.live-streams.nl:8340/jazz-flac.flac

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1, Naim Classical 44.1k
http://mscp3.live-streams.nl:8250/class-flac.flac

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1, BBC Radio 4 320k
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...ourfm.m3u8

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1, BBC Radio 4Extra 320k
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...extra.m3u8

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,BBC Radio 3 320k
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...three.m3u8

Bizarrely, they all work. Even more head-scratching now.

[simoncn]

I tried this a few times this morning and it seems random whether the URLs work or not. I am hoping to release a test build later today that uses reliable working streams.

[MDF]

All the above BBC HLS streams still work with bubbleupnp and minimstreamer for me. I don't think these have been restricted yet.

[tommyrot]

(02-10-2023 17:21)MDF Wrote:  All the above BBC HLS streams still work with bubbleupnp and minimstreamer for me. I don't think these have been restricted yet.

That's what's so odd. Those URLs are the same URLs used in .m3u files on 29th September, when I noticed that they'd stopped working. All I did was create new .m3u files and use a slightly different second line. Below is the .m3u file content for BBC Radio 3:

Before
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1, [BBC R3] BBC Radio 3 320k
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...three.m3u8

After
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,BBC Radio 3 320k
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...three.m3u8

The only difference is on line 2 which omits the "[BBC R3] in square brackets.

And yet, these have been working since that day without interruption for me. My reading of the updated BBC policy is that these shouldn't work, so it's odd that they do.