rmp3 0.5.2 review
Downloadrmp3 is a receiver for the rmp3 broadcast protocol
|
|
rmp3 is a receiver for the rmp3 broadcast protocol. This protocol uses teletext data transmitted in the VBI (vertical blanking interval) of TV transmissions to broadcast mp3-files (e.g. RadioMP3 and MegaRadio). rmp3 currently is a command-line application. A GUI is forthcoming.
rmp3 is free software and released under the GNU General Public License. See the file COPYING for more information. See the file AUTHORS, too.
The rmp3 protocol is designed to be used by MEGARADIO http://www.megaradio.net/
to broadcast their program via NBC Europe TV.
NBC Europe TV can be received:
Via analog cable-TV in Germany. Some areas have only part-time reception.
Check http://www.kabelanschluss.com/ for details.
Via Eutelsat HOTBIRD (almost everywhere in Europe) with a *digital* (DVB) receiver. You either need a digital set-top box that re-inserts the teletext stream into the analog signal routed to your TV card. Or you need a DVB-s card and a direct connection to your satellite dish.
Note that NBC Europe cannot be received with an analog satellite receiver. And no, NBC Europe is not on Astra -- do not confuse it with CNBC.
Since rmp3 is a data service you need a pretty good reception of the TV signal. Even if you barely see any snow in the TV picture you may still get too many errors for it to be usable. Check the cable to your TV card (short cables are better) and the finetuning (xawtv: cursor left/right). Use rmp3 -v to check the signal quality indicator (Q=10 is perfect, lower numbers are worse).
Of course this means you either need an (analog) TV card or a (digital)
DVB-S card supported by Linux. It is probably a good idea to get the card
running with a program to watch TV *before* you try running rmp3. xawtv
and alevt are the most popular choices for watching TV and browsing teletext.
Please see the Linux FAQs for details.
The authors of rmp3 would like to point out that we wrote rmp3 but we
are NOT RESPONSIBLE for the RADIO PROGRAM that is broadcast by MEGARADIO!
Please DO NOT COMPLAIN TO US about the music they play or the quality
of the MP3s they send. We can't do anything about it!
In particular MEGARADIO at the time of this writing (August 2002) has the
following problems:
The stream is sent either at 96 kbit/s or 128 kbit/s depending on the time of the day. Although they claim that the former is required because an additional teletext magazine is sent, there is no technical reason for that. If the stream is sent with the correct speed (see below) there is enough room in the VBI to send the teletext magazine even at 128 kbit/s.
The stream is sent too fast (106% for 96 kbit/s and 114% for 128 kbit/s)! But without a correct stream timing listening to the stream is a pain. Since your soundcard can only play at a fixed rate some buffer will inevitably overflow after a short time. You will her a popping noise in the audio and a piece of the song is lost. Note that file saving is
not affected. If you both listen to the stream and save the stream, files will be saved ok even if the audio fails. The only workaround we can offer is to increase the queue length (e.g. rmp3 -Q 1000 will allocate around 900K). But this just delays the problem. You will soon see asynchronous output if you use multiple plugins.
The 128 kbit/s MP3 files are of low quality. Apparently they are not generated with the best encoding and not from an uncompressed source.
All MP3 file names are in UPPERCASE and are missing all special characters. The save script tries to compensate for that but this is of course not perfect.
The MP3 files have ID3 tags now, but they are in UPPERCASE and incomplete.
There are no covers or structured song names, yet.
The are a few violations of the rmp3 protocol which may lead to corrupted MP3 files if there are many errors or gaps in the stream (the stream ID is not changed and empty garbage files are sent).
Sometimes there are long pauses between songs or the rmp3 stream is stopped and then started again. Just have a bit of patience. Sigh.
All of this may be obsolete by the time you read this (we hope so).To find the latest unofficial rumors and gossip about MEGARADIO, please visit: http://www.rettet-radiomp3.de/forum/ (in German only)
What's New in This Release:
added Jens' V4L 0.9.x stuff
rmp3 0.5.2 keywords