> The web streams are something we are currently looking at, > there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes at the > moment. But you can expect some higher bitrates and new > formats in the coming months. As others have said, we are > funded differently to the rest of BBC Radio and have to offer > our service in a way that offers benefits to all our > audience, wherever they may be in the world. So the model of > using high bitrates restricted just to the UK (so mainly > peering traffic) is not something that is appropriate for us to do.
Thanks for your reply Gareth, always appreciate a response from someone involved with the subject of discussion. However, as the infrastructure is already there for UK streaming, with minimal extra expenditure required to provide this simulcast higher bitrate service, and with every UK taxpayer funding the WS in some small form, how come the Powers That Be have defined it as something not appropriate for the WS to rollout? The inappropriate argument may have held water four or five years ago, but is increasingly irrelevant these days. (imvho of course, there are doubtless other factors weighing in on the decision but that is how I perceive it as a UK citizen from a plain ole consumer standpoint). Just seems odd more than anything else that where easy to do, the WS already has decent quality broadcast, and there's these big holes on other platforms where listening is like jumping back to the 90s and trying to squeeze every last baud out of your Hayes v.90 to stream that 32kbps station! :) - 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/
