h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What method do you use for listening to radio broadcasts?
I still tend to listen to FM live, but have started downloading Radio4 onto an MP3 player, then plugging that into whatever device I fancy listening to it with. Unfortunately, there are very few MP3's available.

Does anyone here stream the listen-again function? Since I don't enjoy listening at my PC, I rarely do this. In theory, a wi-fi connection and an additional computer elsewhere, possibly even a hand-held one, would enable this, I think.

Is there a way to save listen-again as MP3?

At home on my DAB radio alarm, and usually five live on my car radio. Sometimes I'll listen to web radio stations if I'm in the mood.

It's possible to save the listen again feeds, but legally it's all a bit up in the air. You need something called an audio stream ripper to play the streamed Real Audio or Windows Media Audio feeds into so they can be converted to a non-streamed format for offline playback.

Other alternatives for wireless online playback from places other than your computer are wireless media centre solutions that either form part of a Hi-Fi System (such as the Philips Streamium series), or are a set top box that sits under your TV (such as the Netgear EVA series or the AppleTV). The latter usually allow you to stream video off your computer onto your television.

Bog standard FM radio usually. Radio 4 listener as well.

I also 'listen again' to streams or podcasts'

Do not own MP3 player.

There is a very good free audio recorder called 'mp3mymp3' that can be downloaded. It is very memory hungry and you will not be able to do much when its recording but it is great for recording to listen again at a later time especially with the 'listen again's that change daily.

As to the legality: I pay my TV licence...the BBC is a public company owned by us therefore we own the material... I pay for these programs. I don't sell the recordings on. So, I will darn well record whatever I want to.

I do listen again to Radio7 stuff as it has a 7day rolling archive.

I used to listen to Jeremy Vine on Listen Again when I was at work, as I could pause it if I had to do something else. Other than that I only listen to radio in the car, because I don't have a radio indoors any more. I don't use the pc to listen, because I'd rather listen to my own music if I'm doing something on here, and I don't like having so many electrical bits working just for some music. For the same reason I don't listen over freeview - two different appliances on.

I like the concept of listening to streaming radio, especially for listening to non-local stations, but in practice, the very limited audio quality and as mentioned above, having to listen via the PC, and hi-fi, puts me off.

Now if my hi-fi tuner could stream off the internet with decent audio quality, that would get my vote Even if the higher bit-rate required lots of buffering, i wouldn't mind. Who cares if live radio is 20 seconds in the past...

I'm subscribed to stacks of podcasts, mainly from the BBC. I can listen to them if I'm doing work at the computer which does not require much thought, like scanning in old photographs or drawing maps in AutoCAD (just drawing over an image downloaded from mapquest.com, and then deleting the underlying image).

I listen to very little music.

TRiG.

I usually listen to the radio via BBC radio player on the PC, mainly because I never remember to listen to things when they're on, and sometimes a bit of XFM on the mobile phone on the bus.

Come to think of it, I don't even own a radio anymore!

"I'm subscribed to stacks of podcasts, mainly from the BBC."

But aren't there only a few available from the BBC?
Forgive me , I'm new to all this.

Is there a place to find (free) non-music podcasts/downloads?

The Guardian seems a tad obsessed with pod-casts at the moment. The sciance & media ones are usually worth a listen, and they did a bunch with Ricky Gervais last year which might still be available.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/podcasts

And just for the fun of it:

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2036934,00.html

Why do you think I get a blank page when I go to the Guardian website? I've registered, and I can shorten the URL to get to the podcasting page, yet never can I get anything else.

Dunno. Are you in the UK? Not that it should make a difference, but it might.