BBC and TuneIn
Discussion
eliot said:
Them wanting to know who’s listening to their content is fair enough - like any business you need the evidence that your product is being used in order to justify its creation. And I’m no bbc/licence fanboi by any stretch.
They have no idea who is listening on the radio...
The BBC are completely out of control now with this stuff, they need to be told they're a content provider, not a platform.
I'm not affected by this issue, presumably Google are passing them my data, but they've also just turned off the BBC iPlayer Radio App and forced me to use the abomination that is BBC Sounds.
As a normal person I want to be able to browse BBC shows, tell the app that which ones I want to listen to them and have the app curate a list of those programs that have new episodes so I can quickly select the show, see the new episodes and dive in.
iPlayer Radio does this quite well, though it has a few inexplicable foibles, such as them uploading recordings of the radio rather than the program master copy, so you get 30s to a few minutes at the start and end of lots of programs. Uploading individual episodes and omnibuses - why not just upload it as one long program, or at least pick one format? And why not let me filter out anything that doesn't have all the episodes available to watch? I'm not interested in shows that I've not listened to where the first episode has been dropped, so don't show me those. And why do I have subscriptions to some shows, bookmarks for others and shows you can follow? Why can't I set some shows to download automatically and delete episodes I've listened to, so I always have some thing to listen to?
But that's all minor really, compared to the utter mess that is BBC Sounds. That list that I actually want is completely hidden behind pages of music mixes from Radio One and doesn't have an episode list once you've found the show. It doesn't sync shows you follow in iPlayer Radio, but it does Bookmarks and Subscriptions. Whatever they are. Most of my shows are Followed. The search function in Android Auto doesn't work at all. They've changed the pictures for the shows, they now have two. I was listening to a 1950s detective Drama, that now has a second photo of someone vaguely detective looking wearing some 1990s shirt and tie. Bizarre. The text is all tiny and the pages full of info that is completely over the top, as if they've converted a webpage into an App.
Back sort of on-topic; why on earth did they develop a completely new app that is complete rubbish, when they had a pretty good one already? If they'd invested in iPlayer Radio, it would have been completely brilliant now, instead they've served up a complete dogs breakfast of s
te and taken away the app that was miles better.
I'm not affected by this issue, presumably Google are passing them my data, but they've also just turned off the BBC iPlayer Radio App and forced me to use the abomination that is BBC Sounds.
As a normal person I want to be able to browse BBC shows, tell the app that which ones I want to listen to them and have the app curate a list of those programs that have new episodes so I can quickly select the show, see the new episodes and dive in.
iPlayer Radio does this quite well, though it has a few inexplicable foibles, such as them uploading recordings of the radio rather than the program master copy, so you get 30s to a few minutes at the start and end of lots of programs. Uploading individual episodes and omnibuses - why not just upload it as one long program, or at least pick one format? And why not let me filter out anything that doesn't have all the episodes available to watch? I'm not interested in shows that I've not listened to where the first episode has been dropped, so don't show me those. And why do I have subscriptions to some shows, bookmarks for others and shows you can follow? Why can't I set some shows to download automatically and delete episodes I've listened to, so I always have some thing to listen to?
But that's all minor really, compared to the utter mess that is BBC Sounds. That list that I actually want is completely hidden behind pages of music mixes from Radio One and doesn't have an episode list once you've found the show. It doesn't sync shows you follow in iPlayer Radio, but it does Bookmarks and Subscriptions. Whatever they are. Most of my shows are Followed. The search function in Android Auto doesn't work at all. They've changed the pictures for the shows, they now have two. I was listening to a 1950s detective Drama, that now has a second photo of someone vaguely detective looking wearing some 1990s shirt and tie. Bizarre. The text is all tiny and the pages full of info that is completely over the top, as if they've converted a webpage into an App.
Back sort of on-topic; why on earth did they develop a completely new app that is complete rubbish, when they had a pretty good one already? If they'd invested in iPlayer Radio, it would have been completely brilliant now, instead they've served up a complete dogs breakfast of s
te and taken away the app that was miles better.paulrockliffe said:
they've also just turned off the BBC iPlayer Radio App and forced me to use the abomination that is BBC Sounds.
iPR is still working ok on my phone as of right now - it did stop working on my tablet a few days ago, but following a suggestion in the recent play store reviews I uninstalled and reinstalled it and it started working again there too... As a fellow Sounds-o-phobe, the day iPR is shuttered for good will be a very sad day in the history of BBC online services, and yet another example of someone in a position of power deciding against all logic and reason that a perfectly good product with a large and dedicated user base, needs to be thrown away and replaced with something completely new providing a shed load of new functionality the person in power and their minions have decreed we simply can't live without, whilst failing almost entirely to replicate any of the functionality from the old product that users actually wanted.
twister said:
paulrockliffe said:
they've also just turned off the BBC iPlayer Radio App and forced me to use the abomination that is BBC Sounds.
iPR is still working ok on my phone as of right now - it did stop working on my tablet a few days ago, but following a suggestion in the recent play store reviews I uninstalled and reinstalled it and it started working again there too... As a fellow Sounds-o-phobe, the day iPR is shuttered for good will be a very sad day in the history of BBC online services, and yet another example of someone in a position of power deciding against all logic and reason that a perfectly good product with a large and dedicated user base, needs to be thrown away and replaced with something completely new providing a shed load of new functionality the person in power and their minions have decreed we simply can't live without, whilst failing almost entirely to replicate any of the functionality from the old product that users actually wanted.
niva441 said:
Does anyone know if there is a less bloated version of the Sounds website?
My phone struggles to do anything with it.
It is rubbish, but one bonus is you can replay anything that has been broadcast over the last xx days (not sure how many). I'm sure the iPlayer app only selected a few - luckily Radcliffe and Maconie was always selected. My phone struggles to do anything with it.
I did fall asleep to Huey and woke up to some BBC Wales programme, in the native tongue. I thought someone had fed me LSD in my sleep!
niva441 said:
Does anyone know if there is a less bloated version of the Sounds website?
My phone struggles to do anything with it.
Ha ha, don't you want to go to the individual programme websites if you want to play an episode that is not the latest one? And are you sure you wouldn't rather watch this Radio 1 playlist instead?My phone struggles to do anything with it.
f
king idiots.
paulrockliffe said:
niva441 said:
Does anyone know if there is a less bloated version of the Sounds website?
My phone struggles to do anything with it.
Ha ha, don't you want to go to the individual programme websites if you want to play an episode that is not the latest one? And are you sure you wouldn't rather watch this Radio 1 playlist instead?My phone struggles to do anything with it.
f
king idiots.Given the minimum Android version required for the Sounds app is higher than that for the much missed iPlayer Radio app, that's not a statement they could ever have made without it being a bare faced lie.
As the tablet I use as my media player was one such casualty of the withdrawal of iPR, and as trying to do anything other than listening to live radio in the Radio Player app is an exercise in frustration, I find myself relying more and more on the get_iplayer download tool to rip stuff onto my PC from where I can stream it locally to the tablet. I've also found myself spending more time listening to stuff other than BBC stations, so yeah, great work there on helping to maintain and expand your listenership...
As the tablet I use as my media player was one such casualty of the withdrawal of iPR, and as trying to do anything other than listening to live radio in the Radio Player app is an exercise in frustration, I find myself relying more and more on the get_iplayer download tool to rip stuff onto my PC from where I can stream it locally to the tablet. I've also found myself spending more time listening to stuff other than BBC stations, so yeah, great work there on helping to maintain and expand your listenership...
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