broadcast-examples

Broadcast

The web provides an alternative transmission medium for radio and TV stations, enabling these to reach a global audience. New Internet-only services have also appeared. A large number of services are now available and there are many web-based directories listing Internet radio and TV stations under various categories.

General information such as channel name, category (genre), and broadcaster are provided as well as technical information about the streams (URL, bit-rate, codec etc).

The Problem

Directories which list radio and TV stations have to be maintained by hand because the information cannot easily be collected automatically from web sites. The information these directories provide is not easily extracted by web browsers and devices such as Internet Radios.

Some, but not all of this information is common to audio-info and video-info-examples. However there is an inherent difference between an item of content (e.g. a song) and a real-time stream of content.

Some thought needs to be given to whether this problem can be addressed using the proposed hAudio and hVideo microformats, or by combining these with some new stream-info microformat (similar to the proposed file-format or downloads microformats).

A NOTE ABOUT CONTRIBUTING - USE TEMPLATES

A python script has been written to extract statistical information, but for it to work, we need to be careful about how we mark up information.

Please use the following template when adding information about an Internet radio or TV station:

* [ http://www.example.com Website Name]
** [ http://www.example.com/listing Listing Example]
*** Information displayed: name (i.e. station name), broadcaster, description, language, category (i.e. genre), location, 
                           image (i.e. logo), info_url (station web page), stream_url, player_url, bandwidth, codec, frequency, 
                           rating, now_playing (e.g. track details), schedule, email, stereo (i.e. stereo/mono flag)

If you need to add more information than is displayed, please use a common term to describe the information.

Contributors

Page layout copied from audio-info-examples

• Chris Newell, BBC Research

Real-World Examples

Radio

Individual Radio Stations

• BBC Radio Player
  • Example radio station
    • Information displayed: name, broadcaster, image, category, bitrate, codec, stream_url, player_url, now_playing, schedule, email

• Internet Radio List
  • Talk radio station example
    • Information displayed: name, broadcaster, description, language, category, location, image, info_url, player_url, bandwidth, codec, frequency

• Live365 Internet Radio
  • Example station
    • Information displayed: name, description, category, location, player_url, bandwidth, rating, now_playing, email

• Reciva Radio Portal
  • Radio station example
    • Information displayed: name, broadcaster, description, category, location, codec, player_url

Listings of Radio Stations

• Internet Radio List
  • Station list
    • Information displayed: name, description, location, bandwidth, codec

• Live365 Internet Radio
  • Pop station list
    • Information displayed: name, description, category, rating, player_url, bandwidth

• Radio Feeds
  • Station list
    • Information displayed: name, broadcaster, description, category, location, info_url, stream_url, bandwidth, codec, stereo

• Reciva Radio Portal
  • Station list
    • Information displayed: name, location, category, player_url

Television

Individual TV Stations

• Freee TV
  • Example TV station
    • Information displayed: name, location, description, language, category, location, image, info_url, bandwidth, codec, rating

• Freetube
  • Eurosports TV station
    • Information displayed: name, description, rating, player_url

• MusicPlus TV
  • Example staion
    • Information displayed: name, codec, player_url

• Streamick
  • Example TV station
    • Information displayed: name, description, image, info_url, stream_url

Listings of TV Stations

• Freee TV
  • Station list
    • Information displayed: name, location, description, language, category, location, image, info_url, bandwidth, codec, player, rating

• Internet TV Station list
  • Station list
    • Information displayed: name, broadcaster, description, image, info_url, player_url, rating, bandwidth

• Lunar Broadband
  • Station list
    • Information displayed: name, location, category, rating, bandwidth, codec

• wwwiTV
  • Station list
    • Information displayed: name, broadcaster, description, location, info_url, player_url, bandwidth

Other stream types

• Text?

Existing Practices

Listed below is an overview of the existing patterns and practices found in the wild for Radio and TV stations.

Other schema

The XML schema defined by TV-Anytime address a similar problem.

Summary of common patterns discovered

• There is no explicit information about whether the station is radio or TV.
• There are often several streams listed for the same station using different bit-rates or codecs.

Other attempts to solve The Problem

• media-info-examples - Attempted to find an uber-microformat for describing media. Turned out to be too large of a task, thus the problem was split into attempting to create microformats for audio, video and images.

Related Pages

• broadcast-brainstorming
• audio-info-examples
• video-info-examples
• media-info-examples