I am a big VLC fan.  I use it on Windows and linux.  It seems to play everything, audio and video.  For that reason, I generally spend a lot of time informing the system that it needs to use VLC for its multimedia needs.

A recent article pointed out a unique and groundbreaking plugin for Totem, Gnome’s media player.  This is the first open source plugin for playing the BBC feed.  It took a bit of reading to figure out that this was available only in Ubuntu 8.10 but as I was going there anyway, I figured why not.

Sure enough, after upgrading a laptop, there was the BBC plugin, right in Totem, where they said it would be.  After spending over twenty years around computers, I tend to get very excited when something pops up exactly where it’s supposed to be, when it’s supposed to be, and best of all, it works.

You can’t get everything from the BBC due to legal restrictions but there is a wide selection of streams to enjoy.  Unfortunately the one I was most interested in was not available outside of the UK.  I suppose that makes me geographically-impaired.  It’s ok, I’ll add it to the ever-expanding list of impairments from which I suffer.

The actualy legal restriction is due to the Limeys having to pay for their radio and tv.  It’s called a license, unless you’re Over There, in which case it’s a licence.  They have a very colourful way of spelling, those Teabags do.  They wind up paying over $100 American per year for radio and tv fees.  I suppose they don’t want us getting their content for free or something.   It would be most unfortunate to have large groups of angry British copyright cops banging down your door twelve hours ahead of your local time.

But let’s not quibble.  The BBC feed is a great source of news, human interest, entertainment, and some incredibly silly accents.  The most foreign of them all involves a language with a lot of words spelled thusly:  Twyfddle.  I listened for about two minutes and couldn’t make out a single familiar syllable.  [Gaelic?]

[Blogger’s Note: this is being typed at 10:34am on 11/9.  You might not see it for a day or twelve due to something called Database Error that has been plaguing me for 12 hours or more]