In article ,
art clemons wrote:
Dave Boland wrote:

Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.

The most likely reason flash is used for streaming is that it is OS and
browser independent.

So is MP3. Flash is overkill for audio streaming.


Patty

Patty Winter had written:
|
| In article ,
| art clemons wrote:
| Dave Boland wrote:
|
| Anyone KNOW why radio stations insist on using flash for audio instead
| of normal audio formats like Windows, MP3, etc? I see no advantage
| since it won't work on Apple products and HTML 5 has audio built in.
| Just makes the listener's job more difficult. Makes no sense.
|
| The most likely reason flash is used for streaming is that it is OS and
| browser independent.
|
| So is MP3. Flash is overkill for audio streaming.

Any codec is OS and browser-independent if there is a version of it
available for the desired platform. For some Linux distros (e.g.
Fedora), one has to go to additional effort to get mp3 support.

That said, the radio-station streaming practice that I abhor is the insistence
on special clients, often functional only on Windows systems, that are
there to try to push garish advertising at you. They are bloated and
pointless.

An excellent use of Flash is the online player for France-Info (the
national all-news network in France, www.france-info.com). It lets
you know the name of the current segment, along with the names of
those immediately preceding (so that you can go back and listen to
them) and those that are coming up. So if a station uses Flash for
something more than just being a player and pushing ads, then I
think it could be a good thing.


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If you quote, please quote only relevant passages and not the whole article.

Patty Winter wrote:

So is MP3. Flash is overkill for audio streaming.

MP3 however cannot for example also carry let's say a weather forecast or
allow a station to promote upcoming programming. I note that many public
radio stations with streaming via MP3 (m3u for example) don't always manage
to insert their reminder that streaming costs money and is paid for by the
contributors to the station without somehow not managing to provide the
content after the reminder. It can be really annoying if you have
contributed to that station but cannot get a reliable connection without
reconnecting several times.

Some commercial stations with flash also offer ads and if that helps offset
some of the cost of streaming, so be it. As much as I consider flash
players bloated and at times a security risk, flash has been reliable
delivering audio for me.