Hi all,
I'm a newbie currently based near Hungerford, Berkshire in the UK but will be starting work near Neuchatel in September. This forum is an excellent resource for people like me and it's answered a lot of queries that I've had. I was wondering if you can get radio 4 Long wave in Switzerland as my wife and I are huge cricket fans and radio 4 fans? I will be bringing my SKY satellite with me on your good advice so I should be able to get radio 4 through that, but the convenience of picking it up on the radio would be excellent. Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Sam

You mean you read all the info first instead of just posting the same questions again? Come on, you take all the fun out of our job, now we can't jump on you and tell you to use the search function...

No seriously, Lob Rockster seems to be the resident sky and television expert - I'm sure he'll be along shortly with some explanation which will baffle me

My wife is a huge England Cricket supporter and if I can't get coverage of the Ashes this year without Henry Blofeld and Aggers commentating I'm sure she'll delay coming over - I needed to do a search

Have you tried www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 ?
I occasionally listen to it, but I don't know if they do the LW transmissions (and I can't find it on the web site).

However: http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/sport/cricket/

LW reception of Radio4 is unlikely to be very clear here - I'd say you might need good weather conditions to get good signal. Short Wave with BBC World Service might be an option for you?

I think the radio webcast is often only available to UK IP addresses; google public proxy list and choose a UK proxy and try streaming is a way around those limitations.

If you do bring your Sky box, I'd recommend leaving your dish and sourcing one locally of 80cm or more with a quad LNB. This means....you can get the absolute cheapest satbox you can find and use this with a hifi to get Radio 4 via satellite; possibly your best option. You should be able with practice to select radio stations "blind" and thus not need your TV to be on.

Thanks, that is a fantastic idea. We're coming over next week to try and find a place to rent - "Must face south.....must face south!!". I'm also toying with picking up one of those internet radio thingymebobs that can wirelessly pick up from a USB dongle from your computer - a LW radio would have been a lot easier. Cheers guys!!

I also tend to listen to the BBC on the internet.

It's a good service.

You can listen to it live or choose a certain show if you missed one.

Are you here now?

I used to get beautifully clear LW R4 reception in Paris, but have had no joy either in Munich or Switzerland.

I listen to the BBC over the internet. Most shows are available for the following 7 days. I simply plug the headphones socket on my Mac into my home office stereo, and off we go.

A note on the World Service - there are different flavours of the BBC World Service. I get it on cable, but used to get it on satellite too, and noticed that the programming schedules were subtly different!

I get great reception via sky, but also have a wifi radio which is good but the BBC signals are very poor I keep trying to set the URL via

www.reciva.com

but not much luck.

If you get bbc radio via the internet working post how to do it.

Hi.
I personally use a Noxon 2 internet radio to get all the radios across the globe.

I remember reading that the latest firmware of the radio supported all the BBC channels codecs, but didn't try it my self. I'll check BBC 4 later when I get home.

Cheers

Yes, I'm firmly entrenched in Neuchatel and loving life by the lake. I ended up buying a BT Voyager radio http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/voyager.html
which works really well in combination with the computer to stream any internet radio station. LW - no problem. The weird thing here is if you drive into the mountains (Jura) you do get a weak signal on LW 198 which is the regular radio4 LW wavelength - it's just not strong enough to get any volume. Everything is working here - I've also just upgraded to SKY HD from my regular SKY digital set up that I brought with us. The only problem is that I haven't been able to improve my French with the continual viewing/listening of UK stations - such is life.

We bought an internet radio - runs off wireless so you can put it wherever in the house - it doesn't need to have the computer on - it's really good as you can receive most UK radio stations (indeed most radio stations from anywhere in the world, >5000 from USA(!)).

What's really great about it is you can also get certain radio stations 'on demand' - ie you can listen to the Archers whenever you want (IF you really want to....)

Downside - you need quite a fast broadband and it's not cheap....

We have a Magic Box Imp (I think)...

Just tested with my Noxon internet radio and can confirm that BBC 4 doesn't seem to work.

The Radio directory shows (BBC Radio 4 UK Only), and the connection times out, so I'd assume that they filter IP's coming out of UK...

Cheers

I was hoping to post a link to the BBC site to tell you how, but the site is, ahem, in a state of flux at the moment.

So, here's my current advice:

1. Get RealPlayer

Go to http://www.real.com/, then click on "RealPlayer - Free" at the top right hand side. Follow the instructions to install it. Don't hand out your credit card number at any stage, as this should be free.

2. Launch RealPlayer and go to File | Open Location.

3. Paste this in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/realplayer/media/fmg2.ram

The above URL will give you R4 FM.

If this doesn't work for you, let me know what errors you see, and I will try to sort it out.

Yep, I thing the clue is in the "UK Only" bit. Can you see either "R4 FM" or "R4 LW"?

Both of those work here using RealPlayer.

Again - yep! That's how I access radio 4 FM and LW with my BT Voyager radio thru' http://radio.real.com

Another option is to use the live or listen again feature on the BBC website and record to your PC using Audacity software (free download).

The programmes can then be stored as MP3 files for your MP3 player, or mobile phone (we use 2Gb Sony memory sticks for Sony-Ericisson phone) - about 60Mb needed for an hour's recording - excellent quality.

I have just purchased a Internet radio via eBay - I most certainly moving to Basel in Nov/Dec, so I decided to get on, as I like a couple of Australian stations (3AW is fanstastic for Friday night footy - Rex Hunt gives Alan Green a run for his money in terms of commentators).

I am also looking at the use of Pr*xy servers to bypass the UK restrictions of teh BBC websites, and broadcasting.

It looks like that some Pr*xy methods will disguise the IP Address you are on, and masking it to a UK one - this will mean that you can get into the BBC site and stream without an issue -

Will be doing some experimentation over the next coming months, to see what produces the best results - my main hope is to get all the Podcasts, especially The Archers - would be criminal if I could not get those.....

You only need a proxy for BBC Radio 5. The Radio 4 stream works without, also all Radio4 podcasts work here as they do in the UK (well the 5 or 6 I download)

Also Radio 4 is on the Basel Cable network in FM, so "normal" FM radios can also receive Radio 4

Pat

Is that the iPlayer stream, or the .asx steam for Radio4 that does not have the proxy issues?? = Be interesting to know....

I hope that I will be able to get a good stream for BBC 5 Live - Season starts on August 15th!