Yes, it was the one minute clip.

You can get the address by selecting RealPlayer as your preferred player, then right-clicking on the "Standalone Player" link and selecting Properties from the Pop-up menu. Double-click on the address and paste it into RealPlayer (File > Open Location). Here is the address if you want to try it straightaway:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/s...ad=1&ct=50

No sound problems here but then I'm using Fedora 8, which has pulseaudio. No more oss or alsa for me. By the way, have you installed alsa-oss? I think that one was written precisely to resolve alsa vs oss conflicts.

Note: sorry about posting the hyperlink as a, well, a hyperlink. I tried pasting it as plain text but it keeps getting converted into a hyperlink... Here is another attempt, with a space inserted after http to throw off LQ:

http: //news.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/summaries/world/bb/video/world_bb.ram?ad=1&ct=50

YABBADABBADOO!!

Ubuntu 7.10 from bagside.com as vmware app has mplayer installed.

This works for windows media stream video and audio as embedded plugin for BBC News and Streamick.com. CNN Live fails with 'unsupported platform' error message.

The settings I had to change to (from defaults) in mplayer prefs were:

Video - x11

Audio - alsa

Connect to RTSP Media over TCP

At last! A solution (well almost) ... however, none of the above works in Opera (???!!!).

I will continue messing about. Pity it didn't work in Mandriva (sort of cleaner interface, but maybe a key factor is that Ubuntu is using Gnome while Mandriva had KDE .... I'm not up to speed to be able to answer that.

Thanks again for your help.

Thanks appreciated, Ted.

Castalla, Opera may introduce another level of complexity. It has its own way of dealing with plug-ins so what works for Firefox may not work for Opera. Considering that it is a proprietary browser, any issues should be taken up with them. Firefox would be the failsafe option, though (or any of its derivatives/ancestors: Netscape navigator, Swiftfox, Flock, Kazehakase, Seamonkey, ...).

On the subject of Ubuntu, I would say that there is a good chance that it will work just as well if you install it to bare metal rather than in a virtual machine. I would be surprised if someone had performed any magic on the VMware version.

you can install KDE in ubuntu by sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

hey castalla2007, you're on the right track. Good work!!!

BTW, the unsupported platform error can be fixed by changing the user agent in firefox to MS internet Explorer. This will trick the server that you are using MS IE and thus allow you to MS specific areas.

This does not fool all sites, but it's worth to try.

Do a goole search on changing the user agent in firefox.

This will not disrupt your bookmarks nor your plugins in case you're
wondering.

Thanks guys & dolls for all the suggestions - to be followed up! At the moment I am just basking in the glow of using linux ...

Changing agent doesn't enable CNN.com Live - the error message has disappeared but the stream doesn't load. Can live with that!

[BTW - may have an issue with battery indicator - but will eave that for another day!]

From small acorns ....


Have just installed KDE and BBC media, etc. plays without problem. CNN Live is still dead even when masquerading as IE7 in firefox.

Nevertheless looking good!

Should I uninstall Gnome, I wonder?

it doesn't matter, unless you are pressed for harddrive space

castalla2007, keep notes on how you fix problems. This comes in handy as a reference for future issues that arises.

- Good work

I've just tried Mepis 7 - has mplayer and realplayer built-in.

Mixed results yet again!

BBC news plays Windows stream in-page (!!) - Streamick.com ABC Live which uses embeddded Windows stream fails (!!).

So Mepis 7 is almost the mirror image of the other distros.

Continued confusion about what is going on!

Still, Mepis is okay - worth a spin ... I'm learning slowly!

The latest Zenwalk 5 fails to stream the BBC news BUT can stream ABC at streamick.com .

What gives? Same browser and plugins as mepis.

I guess it depends on the version of the plug-ins. Having something slightly newer can sometimes make a lot of difference . Not to mention that the plug-ins may have been compiled with different options.

As far as I can tell the mplayer plugins are all 3.45 (I think). I've used the same mplayer settings each time and only in the same version of firefox.

Why the same windows stream should work in one distro and not in another still remains a mystery to me - from memory I think the only 2 distros which have played the BBC windows stream embedded are ubuntu and mepis (ubuntu was more 'fluid' than mepis).

The search continues for the all-playing distro ....

... more later (depending on distro download speeds!)

@castalla2008:
You said something a few pages back that CNN doesn't load because the Linux "platform is not supported".

From what I know is that some websites use DRM through ActiveX (that crappy stuff Internet Explorer uses). Maybe you could try the Mozilla ActiveX plugin.

I don't think there is an ActiveX plugin to run natively on linux. This is an MS proprietary protocol. You need to use firefox or IE with wine or wine-doors
to use the activeX protocal. That is the info I read after googling about it in the past.