The Mormon Channel

[samliddicott]

They say there will be an iPhone app soon. That would be nice. But if they supported standards-based streams, there would be no need - or at least people impatient for iPhone use could use one of the many existing players. I too am frustrated with the flash-based player being the only option. I guess I'll stick with BYU Radio for now.

I've done some wireshark traces, and googling, and it looks like RTMTP is the streaming protocol being used:

http://linux.goeszen.com/rtmp-protocol- ... ading.html

The telling comment "At the moment there are only shaky solutions available to download data that is served via rtmp://. This is why so many content owners and video portals handling “watch-only” video (like hulu.com, BBC iPlayer, Mogulus) are using it in the first place." could explain a lot.

Looks like I'll have to help the hulu hackers open up rtmp so that I can listen to mormon radio on my sreaming clock radio.

[samliddicott]

Non-techies can financially support the development of open-source rtmp decoding in gnash here: http://www.linuxfund.org/projects/gnash/

There is also rtmpdump at http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/download/
which I'm currently trying to coax to dump lds radio.

Once that works I can dump it into a stream into mplayer which can then output a wav which ffmpeg can encode into mp3 and send it to my shoutcast server.

THEN I can listen to lds radio on my clock.

[Must be careful not to skip home teaching while I do this]

[JamesAnderson]

I've sent them a couple of bug reports. Yes, they did have a problem on Monday night, by Tuesday it was apparent the techs would have to pull an all-nighter to fix that one, and they got it working right from the server end.

One bug I've sent is that it drops out after only five minutes when listening using the following system setup:

System: AMD 1.8 MHz x86 clone CPU (Pentium 4 type)
Win2k Pro SP4
Firefox 3.10 or MSIE 6 with all patches.
Flash 10 (even reloaded that).

It fails to connect sometimes, either browser, sometimes takes up to two minutes, etc. Usually I know it will fail because I hear a dropout. Refreshing fails most of the time, and eventually it crashes either browser.

Anyone got a fix or workaround?

[Mikerowaved]

Please do not post information on reverse engineering the audio stream found in the Mormon Channel. It is proprietary to Adobe.

Thanks for understanding,
Mike

[JamesAnderson]

Thanks on the issue of reverse engineering, that always is a problem anyway and is against almost all software licenses to do. I'm not looking for fixes or other things that would violate that.

What I'm looking for is legitimate fixes, that address the problems I was reporting, I have since found there might be some memory issues that might help the dropped connection issue with Flash-based players, there's a knowledgebase article on the Adobe site about that. It is entirely possible that some problems with the player used dropping connections may be due to those glitches that the Adobe document talks about.

[russellhltn]

What I'm looking for is legitimate fixes, that address the problems I was reporting,

Since it uses Flash, you might want to check what version(s) you have installed. It seems to get updated regularly and I don't think the update mechanism is all that great.

So here's what I'd suggest:
1) Download the Uninstaller here.
2) Run it. Click on the details button. If it indicates anything to be deleted on reboot, run it again. If it sill indicates things to be deleted on reboot, reboot immediately. Keep doing it until there's no more "delete on reboot".
3) Go to Adobe.com and get the flash player.

[shawnlg-p40]

OK, where's the IPhone app? They said it was submitted to Apple, but I don't see it in the app store. I'm getting anxious.

[aebrown]

OK, where's the IPhone app? They said it was submitted to Apple, but I don't see it in the app store. I'm getting anxious.

In your posts on this you have referred to "they". What is your source of information?

The project page on the wiki for Mormon Channel iPhone Application doesn't mention any release date (past or future). Perhaps someone closer to that project can comment.

[Mikerowaved]

From radio.lds.org we read...

We have also heard from many of you wondering about an iPhone application to listen to the channel. It should be available shortly! The iPhone application is making its way through the Apple approval process.

I'm not aware how long Apple's approval process can take, but I would bet when the app is ready, they will post a note about it on the above website. I would keep checking there.

[mkmurray]

I'm not aware how long Apple's approval process can take, but I would bet when the app is ready, they will post a note about it on the above website. I would keep checking there.

From what I gather from following another LDS Scriptures application, it takes like 7 days to get every new version of the same app approved for posting on the Apple store, even if it is a very small bug fix. But as far as I know for the Community-built application, it has not even really started development.