Category: Geeks r Us
Hi all,
recently, I have been asked if i want to save this file when all I'm trying to do is listen to an internet broadcast station. I'm a bit confused, because it's not a program file
for instance, there is a new radio reading service here in the state, and i was anxious to try it out. instead of windows media player coming up to play it, I waasked if i wanted to save the file, like it would do if i were downloading a .exe file. I tried to find an open button, but there wasn't one. what do I do when this happens? how and why would you save an internet broadcast, and a live one at that, to your hard drive? the player is just suppose to open up and play it if it can, and the audio on the triangle reading service is in mp3 format. thanks very much,
wonderwoman
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Hi Wonderwoman.
This happens to me sometimes as well. This means that the file doesn't play with media player but with winnamp or real player.
What i do in situations like this one is to right click on the link and find the option copy shortcut.
This means that the url of the link will be copied in the clip board. Then i open winnamp or real player and i paste it in the url box. In real player you press control+O and paste it in the dialogue and in winnamp the shortcut for the simmilar box is control+L.
I hope it helps.
thanks Nikos,
windows media player automatically comes up when i enter on the listen link. I've never gotten around to installing winamp yet. I've put offinstalling winamp, because there seems to be so much more to version 5, and I'll have to listen to and record start buttons audio tutorial on doing a custom install. he's the audio techie one on vipconduit. Anyway when installing winamp and doing a custom install, there are things you need to install and things you shoulodn't, so it might take a while to get it setup. I'm getting other errors with windows media player too, like it will tell me it can't play the audio file, and it says something like there may be a problem with the audio or it may not be able to play due to the kodec used. blah blah, whatever. anyway this happens too.
wonderwoman
you don't have to do a custom install with winamp, i would install all of it. then you won't have any problems
I have to say I've never ever done a custom install with Winamp and have never experienced any problems with it. Whom ever it was that told you that there were bits you shouldn't install were, to put it politely, speaking from a part of the body usually reserved for things other than speaking?
Dan.
Well Wonderwoman, I just save the file anyway if I want to listen to it, or you could reinstall Real Player and set it as your default player, which will then play everything on your PC, with the acception of flash videos or Itunes music. However, not all radio stations use real player, so I'd install Media player 11 first, then Real player, where you can have it as the default player on your computer.
thanks dumbledore'sgirl, but I'm comfortable with media player 10, and I probably can't install windows media player 11, because I didn't install that horrible windows genuine advantage thing. You have to type in the 25 digit product key, and hp wasn't very good about making those things easy to find. so many numbers came with this computer, serial number, product number, proof of purchase number, model number, etc etc. But thanks for all the suggestions and responses though. Dan, noone told me I actually had to do a custom install, start button, part of the vipconduit tech team did a tutorial on winamp, and that's what he did when he was demonstrating installing it. One reason I was thinking about the custom install is because of the winamp agent. I think winamp agent sort of reaks a bit of havoc, and makes jaws behave funny in winamp, and he says you don't want winamp agent. When i had winamp on my old computer and upgraded to jaws 5 and ie 5 or 6 forget which, winamp agent kept giving illegal operation errors when ever I shut the computer down. I just don't want winamp agent gviving me trouble.
wonderwoman
i use winamp myself, and don't have a problem
Well, I can't think of any good reason why Winamp agent would have given you trouble but it has to be said, computers are fickle things. It is certainly true that you don't need Winamp agent installed though but honestly it shouldn't cause you any trouble if it is.
I don't actually even know what Winamp agent is to tell you the truth. I see it sitting there in my system tray from time to time but so far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to activally do anything. Perhaps some learnid soul could come along and tell us what it actually is?
Dan.
Well Windows Genuine Advantage isn't hard to install, but if you don't install it, you won't have all your up-to-date media programmes, virus scanners, spyware, music players Etc Etc. I installed Windows Genuine Advantage and XP service pack 2 on this machine earlier this year. You just have to click on the button when the automatic updates come up, then be guided through the various installations, then reboot the machine when it's all finished, there's nothing to it really. It's no different from installing something like Real Player.
I've been told that winamp agent is winamp's way of making sure it always has all the file associations it needs. I once turned it off with msconfig, and, though I've installed winamp many times, I've never seen the winamp agent again. Sure hope I don't need it. <grin>.
i never install the winamp agent. never had a problem
well the only way you get out of installing winamp agent is to do a custom install, so you get to choose what gets installed and what doesn't.
wonderwoman
alright alright. What was written in post number two is perhaps one of the most efficient methods you can probably play the radio stations. Alternatively, you can press control plus U on windows media player and paste that URL there if the player doesn't come up by default. If the file is a m4u, you could just open it up with winamp to stream the media content. NOw, regarding winamp agent... all it did (and as far as i know, there is a different way of doing this with the global hokeys) is it add an icon to the system tray, that when right clicked displays a menu of all the winamp available options... when you close the agent winamp is closed also. Not sure for what entirely though, but it is perhaps one of these sill projects a company started and forgot to take it out of every release err, installation package... I usually preffer to do a custom install myself, since there are some "advertising" ways on winamp's default. You get what I mean, AOL music, and the like; seems that it is not really worth installing all these anyway. Otherwise, if you want an old version of winamp, i believe oldversion.com has it. Good luck. Oh - try searching for hat same station to play in winamp at shoutcast.com or any other radio streaming website.