I was wondering if any one knows any thing about a broadcasting software called pirate radio. It sounds like a good cheap way to send my signal to other transmitters I plain to put up but of course by the name Im wondering if its leagal?
thanks,
Brian B
I was wondering if any one knows any thing about a broadcasting software called pirate radio. It sounds like a good cheap way to send my signal to other transmitters I plain to put up but of course by the name Im wondering if its leagal?
thanks,
Brian B
I just took a look at their web site (www.pirateradio.com) and it's just some streamcasting software. It's perfectly legal, they just chose to call the software "Pirate Radio" and using their software to stream allows you to list your station on their "Pirate Radio Network". Other than the access to the "Pirate Radio Network," I don't see how this software is really any different from Winamp with Shoutcast. I haven't tried this program myself, though.
That's a great marketing job, eh? Pretty good URL buy, too! Another application I really like is Streamer, found at streamerp2p.com.
It's serverless, configurable and free, free, free; and would also let you send your signal over the web to your other XMTR 20s.
You could also offer serverless, unlimited-listener-capacity streaming to your listeners outside your broadcast range.
Yeah!
you won't have "UNLIMITED" listener capacity on the internet w/ or w/o a server. every listener consumes bandwidth. if you are running say 56k in stereo then each listener uses 112k of b/w + a little extra for overhead. most broadband connections are a max of 256k up. you'd do better logging on to a server hooked up to a T-3 even if they limit you to 20 or so listeners at a single time.
Thank You,
Rev. Robert P. Chrysafis
Universal Life Ministries
http://www.ulc.org
Moderator Hunterdonfree
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Unlimited is probably a a poor choice of terms on my part, as all real world systems do have limits 🙂 Peer to peer internet streaming (streamerp2p, etc.) doesn't have the connection limits of a central server, as each listener re-serves the stream to the next listener connected - tree and branch rather than hub and spoke. One very real limit there is the willingness of listeners to donate a chunk of their bandwidth to a broadcaster's stream. Streamer and other P2P streaming applications usually give listeners the ability to opt in, opt out or throttle shared bandwidth.
On the other hand, some streaming broadcasters do use significantly less that 56kbs for a stream. Spoken word/talk radio/news and weather content can be streamed in mono at rates as low as 8 kbps. With audio processing, OGG encoding and VBR music can be streamed at average rates as low as 16 kbps. Not CD quality, but neither is AM radio 😀
Central server solutions are getting less expensive all the time and the server managers often offer other services like rights clearance/DMCA fee management, down-time protection, tech support and storage space. In my experience central server streams start faster, buffer less and drop off less than P2P. Also, as much as most of us would love to have the problem of too many listeners, that hasn't really come up for me yet 🙁 I was serving SCWIS using a 166 PC as my central server with WinMedia encoder 7.0 @ 20kbps mono. I never had more than three simultaneous connections according to the server logs.
Peer to peer streaming is much less expensive financially, but much more difficult technically to set up and manage. ALL your listeners have to install your client (yeesh). The buffering can be awful as the listeners add and drop, the stream can stop suddenly for no reason. The author might release a new version that forces you and all your listeners to upgrade (yeesh & yeesh).
With all its warts, I still get a kick out of P2P streaming, it just seems more "independent," but that's me - I also play midi music on my radio station 😉
WOQ AM1690 uses the pirate radio software (as well as Shoutcast) for an alternate internet stream provider.
One advantage is that you can "broadcast" in stereo.
If anyone wants to try it out on their own servers (or even a home PC) send me an e mail ([email protected]) and I can send you the programme to try....
Ian
"Every day I look at the world through my window....." (Kinks - Waterloo Sunset)
As Ian says, I'm using the software with some success. It's easy to set up, easy to use. But for using it to feed other transmitters, I would go with SHOUTcast software. You can make your server private so only your transmitters have access to the streams. SHOUTcast is also free. The drawback is it's somewhat tricky to set up. Both will broadcast Stereo. With both systems, you will need to know your IP address, and you will need to access your DSL/Cable modem and configure the "Port Forwarding" to broadcast. Also, have power backup at the transmitter sites and access to the PC from home so you can reset the connection if need be, and set the computer to reboot after loss of power, and start programs/streaming software so you're not off the air for too long once power is restored.