[MPlayer-users] problem accessing BBC news site with mplayer plugin for Firefox

[Kevin DeKorte]

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Bob Weeks wrote:
| Hello,
|
| I have been trying to resolve a problem with using mplayer plugin for
| Firefox to access the BBC News site http://news.bbc.co.uk/.
|
| I do not *know* that it is a bug with mplayer, but I have spent months
| on the Ubuntu forums trying to get it resolved.  There are also many
| reports of problems with mplayer not working with the BBC news site (as
| listed by Google), but this may reflect entirely on BBC's implementation
| of their video streaming.  I have repeatedly contacted BBC with a report
| of my problem, but it has never been acknowledged, much less resolved.
| (I eventually switched to using RealPlayer, and while there were several
| problems with getting it to work, BBC eventually resolved them, more or
| less.)  It may even be a problem with Firefox, but I'm at a loss.  A
| more experienced user on the Ubuntu forms suggested I report the problem
| to you.
|
| First I should mention that viewers in the UK are NOT experiencing this
| problem, which seems to involve the multiple playlists which the BBC is
| using to pre-pend advertising to their news video clips for users
| outside the UK.
|
| Below is the URL for the link from the above home page to the One-Minute
| News summary:
|
|
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_6900000/newsid_6903100?redirect=6903113.stm&news=1&bbram=1&nbwm=1&nbram=1&bbwm=1&asb=1
|
| Their media player checks to see what player you have selected in its
| "Preferences.'  For this test I select Windows Media Player.
|
| The first of two video clips is downloaded and plays successfully.  It's
| an advertisement for Alliance Insurance.
|
| I believe it's played by redirecting to the following URL:
|
|
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/summaries/world/bb/video/world_bb.asx?ad=1&ct=50
|
| If you put this in the Firefox address bar and link directly to it, the
| advertisement also plays successfully. The second (news) video clip
| downloads, but only the sound is played, not the video.
|
| If you remove the "ad-1&ct=50" from the above URL and enter it in the
| Firefox address bar, the news video (without the advertisement
| pre-pended) plays perfectly.
|
| I am not a sophisticated user, and have tried to provide the
| documentation you requested for bug reports. as described in "A.6. What
| to report Appendix A. How to report bugs."
| (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports_what.html) One item
| which I have not provided is the mplayer output (trace?) with verbosity
| set to 1.  I could not figure out how to do this with mplayer plugin.
|
| Thanks very much
|
| Bob Weeks (bw44)
| bweeks44 at sympatico.ca

Bob,

First of all mplayerplug-in is not part of the mplayer project it is a
separate application.

So asking on the mplayerplug-in list probably would have been more
helpful than the mplayer or the Ubuntu list.

That said the BBC sites have two sets of data. One set that is available
in the UK and one set the is available everywhere. So you need to make
sure you are using the international sites if you are outside the UK.

Also, mplayerplug-in is being decommissioned and being replaced with
gecko-mediaplayer/gnome-mplayer. Those apps will just about everything
at the BBC even in real player mode.

Kevin

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