Restriction of BBC Radio HLS/DASH to authorised third parties

[simoncn]

Some streamers need to know details of the audio stream before they start to stream it. For example, if the stream is AAC 48 kHz, you can provide this information by changing the playlist entry to this:

#EXTINF:-1,[Some Radio Stream;aac,48000]
http://the/url/for/this/stream

You need to do a rescan after making this change and also reload the playlist into the Cadence control app.

[simoncn]

I found this post which seems to indicate that adding aac:48000 will not be enough to get your radio streams to play on the Cyrus. You might also need to do the following:

1) Download a static ffmpeg binary for Windows (any version) and install it in the MinimServer opt/bin folder on your Windows PC

2) Add aac:wav or aac:wav24 to the MinimStreamer stream.transcode property. As the CX2 supports 24-bit streams, using wav24 is recommended.

[AlanS]

Thanks for this further advice Simon.
I found that adding the information on the audio stream [aac,96000] was sufficient for the playlist to work.
I haven't installed the ffpeg file or the entry into the stream.transcode property. Would it provide any additional functionality if I did? e.g. enabling information display of what a channel is currently strreaming?

[simoncn]

The audio information should be [aac:48000] not [aac,96000]. The number is the sample frequency, not the bitrate.

As it is working without ffmpeg and transcoding, I suggest you leave things as they are. Transcoding doesn't add functionality but can give an improvement in sound quality in some cases. For an aac radio stream, the sound quality improvement would be marginal at best.

[AlanS]

thanks

[FakePlasticDunk]

(08-01-2026 17:03)AlanS Wrote:  I found that adding the information on the audio stream [aac,96000] was sufficient for the playlist to work.

Glad you've got it working - if you are in the UK, I'd recommend changing any mention of 96000 in the playlist to 320000 to get top quality. I'd also recommend making sure you are using the UK-specific URLs to avoid getting any intrusive looping rights-restriction messages - how you do that depends on which playlist you downloaded. In one it just means replacing hls-ww with hls-uk in each URL, in the other it means adding &uk=1 to the end of each URL. This isn't Minimserver or Minimstreamer stuff, it's specific to these particular URLs.

[simoncn]

This can be a bit confusing. The number in the #EXTM3U line is the sample frequency (not the bitrate) so it should be 48000 for all BBC streams (UK and non-UK). Most radio streams have a sample frequency of 44100 which is the MinimStreamer default if no sample frequency is specified.

The number (if any) in the URL is the bitrate (as explained in post #146) so it should be 320000 for BBC UK-only streams.

[FakePlasticDunk]

Quite so, sorry - I should have specified that the change to 320000 only applies to the URL lines of the playlist, not the #EXTM3U lines of the playlist.