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BBC iPlayer Radio?

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strayfish

Re: BBC iPlayer Radio?
« Reply #30 on: December 15, 2017, 05:49:04 pm »
Best to treat it as a cat. Sometimes it does what you want on request, sometimes it ignores you, occasionally it does something completely unexpected, and sometimes it walks off and leaves you twiddling the fishing rod toy on your own.

orange

Re: BBC iPlayer Radio?
« Reply #31 on: December 18, 2017, 11:30:44 am »
For me TuneIn was always a bit patchy - sometimes worked well for weeks on end and sometimes very glitchy.
 
My echos seemed to self-switch over the bbc player a week ago like everybody else but I'm finding that the stream isn't as reliable as TuneIn.  Often just goes away after about an hour or so. I've deleted the skill for now as I think Tunein was better.

Another odd glitch with the BBC skill I found is that you couldn't change the volume until the stream was playing properly.........ie occasionally I wake up in the morning and say "alexa play radio 4" and then alexa responds at high volume (which I'd left it set to the previous night) ....so I immediately say "alexa volume down" ...and this then stops the stream.  It's fine if you let it do the "chimes" and the "bbc announcement" then ask for the volume to be lowered.  I't's just that you have to let it deafen you for short time....not good at 6:00am

First world problems I know :)  but Tunein just seems more integrated.

Resonance

Re: BBC iPlayer Radio?
« Reply #32 on: December 18, 2017, 11:56:45 am »
For me TuneIn was always a bit patchy - sometimes worked well for weeks on end and sometimes very glitchy.
 
My echos seemed to self-switch over the bbc player a week ago like everybody else but I'm finding that the stream isn't as reliable as TuneIn.  Often just goes away after about an hour or so. I've deleted the skill for now as I think Tunein was better.

Another odd glitch with the BBC skill I found is that you couldn't change the volume until the stream was playing properly.........ie occasionally I wake up in the morning and say "alexa play radio 4" and then alexa responds at high volume (which I'd left it set to the previous night) ....so I immediately say "alexa volume down" ...and this then stops the stream.  It's fine if you let it do the "chimes" and the "bbc announcement" then ask for the volume to be lowered.  I't's just that you have to let it deafen you for short time....not good at 6:00am

First world problems I know :)  but Tunein just seems more integrated.

Yes, I noticed the volume change issue this morning funnily enough. Agreed on the stream reliability, it's been really bad for me. It sometimes works for an hour if I'm lucky, often a lot less though.

orange

Re: BBC iPlayer Radio?
« Reply #33 on: December 18, 2017, 12:33:11 pm »
Agreed on the stream reliability, it's been really bad for me. It sometimes works for an hour if I'm lucky, often a lot less though.

and tunein seems much better recently :)

Resonance

Re: BBC iPlayer Radio?
« Reply #34 on: December 18, 2017, 12:55:19 pm »
Agreed on the stream reliability, it's been really bad for me. It sometimes works for an hour if I'm lucky, often a lot less though.

and tunein seems much better recently :)

Tunein has always been very reliable for me. Saying that I only got my first Echo a few months ago, so maybe the problems were ironed out before then.

Chaos

Re: BBC iPlayer Radio?
« Reply #35 on: January 02, 2018, 06:53:57 am »
Not sure is this problem has been resolved without reading through all the posts on this thread. All I know is that BBC radio iplayer is available - please see http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/radio/amazon-alexa. All I had to do was say "Alexa, enable the BBC skill." Then instruct it for whatever you want.

orange

Re: BBC iPlayer Radio?
« Reply #36 on: January 02, 2018, 08:29:53 am »
Not sure is this problem has been resolved without reading through all the posts on this thread. All I know is that BBC radio iplayer is available - please see http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/radio/amazon-alexa. All I had to do was say "Alexa, enable the BBC skill." Then instruct it for whatever you want.

the BBC skill is not really iPlayer,  in the sense it have very few of the features that most implementations of Radio iPlayer have.  You can play real streams and listen to a podcast (if you know the name of it)  - the streaming works reasonably well (apart from the annoying 10 second chime and announcement that it's the BBC .... I know it's the BBC - it's what I requested !) but the podcast playback is very poor