The ULTIMATE Guide to THN Radio.

[T-Bone]

Well tonight myself and thatbird slaved for hours making what we feel is the perfect guide onhow to broadcast on THN:Radio.

The new guide can be found here and the old guide can be found here.

I would like the opinions of everyone on the new guide especially Pestcontrol, Haven and Docbot. So I can make any additions/edits that are required.

Also, I need that code for joining ogg files together to complete the one unfinished section.

 

[Haven]

Cool nice work T-Bone. I'll have a proper look through it shortly - in the meantime is there any chance you can quickly pdf it or even better - convert to html (either way so I can read it embedded in a web browser). If you dont have the facility to create pdf's then just download openoffice and export as pdf. Its as easy as that.

 

[DeZmond]

A most excellent guide, infinitely preffered over the original. Some recommendations:

- In the "Hints and Tips" section, perhaps a tip could be added to show people how to stop their microphone output coming out of the speaker mix, and instead only going to the encoder (it's easily done, but since I don't have SAM on this machine I can't write you a step-by-step until later) - this way there is no need to mute your speakers - you can continue talking normally and all that will come out of your speakers is the music, which works well enough.

- A small section on the legality of THN radio would not go amiss. The main motivation for providing further information is so that we can establish the rules of ettiquete early on - we obviously don't publicise THN radio too much in certain places, etc. Again this information can be found in the archives in the original THN radio thread.

A good guide though, so well done. (Also, I can convert it to PDF for you tonight if you are unable to do that)

 

[Birdy]

ok well the top point you made is actually in there in how to broadcast as its very important.

we need to add the legality stuff when it has all been checked and what not. We were chatting about it last night but maybe a line saying we are pirates or such!

 

[DeZmond]

Ah, I see it now. (my fault for only skim reading that part )

But yes, we do need the legality part in, if only leading to ettiquete.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Nice guide, T-Bone. Thanks for putting this together.

I do have one concern, though. I feel we're breaking our own board policy by publicising (after all, this is currently a public document) a hack to SAM. Should we change that section to say something about contacting some people for "access to the software"?

 

[DeZmond]

We had the direct link in the old guide in the public archives of the mailing list. Security through obsucity applied then, but not now for obvious reasons.

 

[Ronin Storm]

We had the direct link in the old guide

Did we? Ooops. I'd have commented then if I'd seen it.

 

[DeZmond]

Did we? Ooops. I'd have commented then if I'd seen it.

In fact, I've just been a dolt. It turns out it wasn't in the old guide, it was just haven's mirroring of the old firebird version of the demo. So yes, we now have a situation where the mod is publically displayed... so it's back to what you were saying. Sorry for the confusion!

In any case, I'm not too worried, since the whole thing is pirate radio anyway, and we have our forums regularly trawled by search engines - so we have to be more careful than we are right now anyway - it's obvious as it is (for those in the new styles swivel your peepers to the right to see why).

 

[T-Bone]

OK, just had a quick look on SAM's website about legality and they led me here.

As far as I can tell this is the Government agency inchrage of licensing laws for various things. After some clicking I was led to the "What kind of licence is for me page?" and then after looking I think we are a "Radio production and broadcasting>Non-Commercial" So looking at this here is a short description of the licence fees and limits from that site.

Hospital Radio (PRS Agreement)

Induction Loop systems to the bedside are currently given a free licence.


Low Powered AM/FM Services:
(i) Without advertising/sponsorship ?149.64 p.a. (plus VAT)
(ii) With advertising/sponsorship ?470.44 p.a. or 3% of broadcasting revenue whichever is the greater (plus VAT)

Note:

These rates are adjusted annually by inflation.

These licences run for a calendar year and if your service commences part way through the year (say 16th June) then the following calculation of the charge for that year would need to be done.

199(no. of days) x ?0.41 (daily rate for ?149.64 p.a.)= ?81.59 x 17.5%= ?14.28 = ?95.87
199(no. of days) x ?1.29 (daily rate for ?470.44 p.a.)= ?256.71 x 17.5%= ?44.92 = ?301.63

How to apply

To apply for a licence please download the application form and send together with payment to the name and address at the end of the form.

To open the form you require Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have Acrobat the software can be obtained free from www.adobe.com

Now, I know it describes this as Hospital Radio but that is basicaly what it is anyway, DJ's playing songs with no Adverts. So as you can see, should we wish to become legal it will cost us ?149.64 p.a.. This is not entirely out of reach of us should we wish to become legal as this will essentialy be ~?12.50 a month. So should we wish to become legal we could be able to pay for it. Comments? Opinions? I've made errors? Tell me!

 

[Ronin Storm]

I don't think there's any way that the Radio could be considered a Hospital Radio given that the MCPS-PRS Alliance has specific licensing models to cover online play.

For example, the Limited Online Exploitation License (PDF) is much closer to Radio's model, but expressly prohibits the storage of any archives whatsoever.

And given that there's easily more than 10 hours of streamed material in any given quarter, that'll be a little over 2600 GBP per annum (VAT inclusive).

 

[DeZmond]

That is clearly quite ridiculous for THN to pay. While I'm not convinced we'd be able to get Hospital radio status, surely there must be another non-profit license which we could use?

 

[DocBot]

I think technically we need to look into german rules for this, since the "radio station" is situated there.

 

[Birdy]

i have a bad feeling the r a bit strong so it worries me!!

 

[Pestcontrol]

Hey, nice guide, a nice and proper expansion on the techical one i'd written. Good work.

Only a small note: OGG files can be played with WMP and all other directshow based players when you install illiminable's codec. The website for it is http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/ and i've mirrored the most recent file at oggcodecs_0.71.0946.exe
And the OGG Vorbis codec is also under constant improvement, latest version is:
libvorbis_p3_lancer20060331.zip
The default version that comes with SAM broadcaster is pretty old so it's very important that you upgrade it, keeping it up to date as newer versions come out is not so important.

 

[decky101]

i mite try my hand at sme stage

 

[T-Bone]

The Guide ahs been updated to contain the information Pestcontrol posted on how to play the radio streams in WMP. The link in the guide will not work straight away because Serenity is having a permissions issue. I will post up when the issue is sorted and the file is available at the location. Until then follow Pestcontrols link above.