Shoutcast broadcasts!

[techy]

It's been over 4 years now that cyberJAMZ has gone on the air and we have been bending over backwards to accommodate as many formats as we can realistically accommodate. Fortunately, we CAN and HAVE been accommodating broadcasters that refuse to get a windows PC to do their broadcasts.

For the last year and a half I have been using my home PC to capture and then re-broadcast the shoutcast streams to the server so that ALL listeners would be able to have access to them.

The nearly 24/7 usage of my home PC took a toll and the power supply is toast now. I bought and new PC in the summer and I don't plan on having it on 24/7 when that's what we have the cyberJAMZ server for. Either the MAC broadcasters invest in a cheapy (can be gotten for as little as $400 now) WindowsXP PC, or higher, to do their show or continue doing the shows on the crappy shoutcast server. An even better and more cost effective solution would be to use "Boot Camp" to use the MAC's as PC's.

The issues with the shoutcast server are too numerous for this post but I'll list some:

1. The server's default port is 8000 so folks behind firewalls that block port 8000 will NOT be able to tune in.

2. For a decent sound, the broadcasters need to have a cable modem connection to sustain the 128kbps that the shoutcast server uses. MP3 was not created for streaming media, only for downloads and that was back in the early 90's!!!! LOL!

3. Audience members that have poor downstream tend to have continuous buffering issues in that the shoutcast server cannot "down-sample" the stream to fit their pipe! Meaning; if a listener is on a 100k - 200k dsl hook-up, and the shoutcast stream is 128k, guess what? The overhead is what's left for retransmission of errant packets and or other uses the user is currently engaged in. What does that mean? That means that the 128k shoutcast stream will not fit to the listener and therefore will give under-run errors and regular buffering of the stream. Chances are, these listeners will just tune out and go elsewhere.

These are just some of the main gripes with the shoutcast server but there are plenty more on our end (like no auto-archive feature).

Listeners, please contact the shows in question and request they upgrade to a Windows based PC in order to do their cyberJAMZ shows. @ 4 years it would have cost about $100 per year or about .27 cents a day

Solutions:

If you cannot hear the shoutcast stream, please try the following:

1. Try and see if your firewall/router is blocking port 8000. If you're at work, chances are it's blocked! We cannot work around this, you'll have to get in touch with your IT people and see if they'll unblock it for you. You may try to use the browser's Proxy server in your Windows Media Player to access http ports higher than 80. It may or may not work; it all depends on your firewall's configuration.

2. Try to listen in iTunes by opening this url: http://174.120.25.26:8000/listen.pls But if you couldn't hear it in the Windows Media Player, chances are it won't work on iTunes. But who knows? Maybe your Media Player is set to receive only http ports on 80 and not 8000 and iTunes might be.

That's it for my rant Thanks in advance for not blaming the shoutcast issue on the "server" or on Sammy. On the technical side, I pretty much have all my bases covered but will no longer give 100% to those who aren't willing to give the same in return.