BBC, RealPlayer and FreeBSD

[N.J. Mann]

Hi,


I decided yesterday that it was about time I entered the modern era and
tried listening to the BBC using my PC rather than using a wireless.
So, I installed the linux-realplayer
(linux-realplayer-10.0.8.805.20060718 - the latest) from ports and gave
it a try.  I'm using firefox 2.0 (firefox-2.0.0.3,1 - the latest) on
STABLE i386 from a couple of weeks ago.

Now PC sound is all new to me so I may have done something wrong or even
expected too much.  What I ended up with is that the live streams
"work", but listen again only "works" in the minority of cases.  (I can
hear you shouting "gives the details!", so I will ;-) ).

When I try to listen to a stream, say the live Radio3 stream (which is
what I did a few minutes ago), firefox brings up a dialog box which
says: "You either do not have Real Player or the Real Player plugin
installed.  Please click ok to see our Audio Help page...".  So, I click
OK and up pops their Audio Help page which I have found no help. :-(

But once I have clicked OK at that point, some streams including all the
live ones have I tried so far, then have a link appear in the BBC Radio
Player called "Listen using stand-alone Real Player" and if I click on
that I get another dialog box "What should Firefox do with this file?"
which (once I had selected realplayer) if I click OK starts Real Player
and I can listen to the stream.  This is the only way I can get anything
to play.  It also seems to work for some of the pod casts: I've only
tried the Mark Kermode film reviews so far, but they worked.

In the BBC Radio Player is has a "Click here to download plugin", which
I have tried only to be informed "No suitable plugins were found".  If I
follow through the BBC's help system from there I end up on www.real.com
from where I can download RealPlayer 10 for Linux.  But isn't that what
I already have?

So, have I done something wrong or am I expecting too much?  Any and all
help will be gratefully received.


Cheers,
       Nick.
-- 
Please do not CC me on replies, I read the list and don't need the dupes.