Pretty sure the bombers use AM radio to check for the ongoing existence of Broadcasting House, and Sceptre isn't a bomber (they're all V class boats).
Re the WS bitrate, these are worth revisiting, but it's possible that the budget and hence the bitrate for WS is entirely seperately worked out, being as the audience and funding is seperate. Arguably a high bit rate would be counter productive for WS- the aim of the game is to reach a lot of people at the end of thin wires (or over wireless). A parallel hi bit rate service might well be a useful way to get the quality out there, but then that's a stack more cash to pay, and not really in line with the WS objectives. Personally, I feel the biggest problem for WS is figuring out which audiences to focus on- getting it wrong can be painful- the Thai service shut down three years ago, sonce when we've seen two military coups and border war flare up. Can't help wondering if anyone at Bush House is regreting handing out those redundancies. a On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 3:29 AM, Christopher Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This one's a late night, in-the-kitchen thought. I turned the radio on while > I was making a cup of tea and of course, after R4 closedown the WS is > simulcast. On FM, you get a wonderful, crisp stereo feed. On DAB, the WS > feed is fine when listening to the Radio 4 simulcast, 128kbps stereo, but > its own dedicated slot is naff: a 64kbps mono stream. On the web, it's even > worse - only streamed at 32kbps WMA/RA. AsianNetwork is 64kbps mono on DAB - > even 5Live has a better bitrate (80kbps mono). > > While I'm not a big Asian Network listener, I do live in Brum so take a bit > of an interest in Asian community goings on. However, I'd quite like to > listen to the WS during the daytime, either via the web or via DAB - how > come the bitrates haven't been upped for these stations on the web streams? > They're dragging behind the other BBC radio stations' online streams. Are > there any plans to ever up the bandwidth of these neglected stations, either > on DAB, on the web or both? I'm under the impression that the maximum > bitrate for the multiplex is 1184kbps useable. According to DigitalRadioTech > [1], the pre2002 bitrates were significantly higher (which I remember), and > I can understand the reasons for lowering the bitrates to fit in the newer > channels. The web's a different matter entirely though. What's stopping the > Beeb from upping the bitrates for all the online streams to the same > bitrate? > > (and will the bitrates ever go above 128kbps? I'd love a 192kbps or 256kbps > stream, particularly for... Well, all of the radio stations!) > > > And also, as a final question - how come the iPlayer pages for *all* of the > radio stations are currently reporting each one as being currently off-air? > Have the boxes doing the encoding and streaming been taken offline for work > overnight or something? If someone aboard the HMS Sceptre is browsing the > Radio 4 iPlayer site and sees that it's currently offair, they might think > Britain is under attack and launch some Tridents at the Soviets. Wouldn't > *that* be an interesting one for Gordon Brown to try and explain! > > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial list archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ > -- Ant Miller tel: 07709 265961 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
