Some net radio stations not working

[glassvial]

Some of the presets for net radio have stopped working. In some cases it was a simple case of replacing the .pls file with an updated one from the site, as some sites have changed their streaming. However, even after doing so some don't work. They play fine in winamp (and in fact come up very quickly) but just don't work in GB's net radio interface. Anyone else having problems?

[CodeMonkey]

GBPVR buffers a buttload of stream by default before it starts playing.  I suspect that's for modem users so they can listen without as many breakups.  But sub, in his infinite wisdom, made the buffer amount configurable.  It's in the 'Misc' tab as 'Net Radio pre-play buffer size' and defaults to 96KB.  Most shoutcast stations I've seen transmit at 56kbps which I believe works out to 7 KB/sec.  So best case you won't start hearing audio for almost 14 seconds at that buffer size.  I believe Winamp pre-buffers almost nothing (or at most a few seconds), that's why you hear audio quickly.  My shoutcast player app, NetRadio, only buffers a few seconds worth as well.

As to why Winamp gets channels while gbpvr won't, sub is the only one who can answer that. Could be as simple as not waiting long enough for a connection before timing out, or something worse.  But that's for him to figure out sometime

Most of the stations I listen to are down from time to time.  They are typically small operations, and it is a TCPIP connection after all

[glassvial]

Most start playing within 30 seconds (tops). The ones that don't work I've given 5 minutes and they just sit there at 'buffering'. Again, plays in winamp immediately no problem.

And yes I've seen the 96k configurable default, I tried play with that too (kicked it up to 128k, for example) doesn't make any difference.

I've had a problem a couple times (few and far between) where a station wouldn't work on both GB and Winamp, 404 comes up in Wiinamp which pretty much confirms it's a site problem but in this case that's not it, again, Winamp plays fine, GB just sits there.

[sub]

The radio station .pls files often list more than one server that can be used to listen to the radio statio. GB-PVR is currently only able to connect to the first server in the list, where as winamp can cycle through them all.

I'll try and make sure I can update the status information at the bottom of the screen with what is happening. Its probably received a 404 from the first server listed in the .pls file.

[glassvial]

Yup, that's it. One of the particular stations I'm having issues with has 3 servers listed. Can you manually edit pls files or would that mess them up?