BBC Sounds player launch

Sarah

Over 80,000 hours of music, radio and podcast content are now available to watch through BBC Sounds on YouView. Users will be able to listen to live and on-demand radio from 18 national and 40 local stations, music mixes and award-winning podcasts. 

If you already have a BBC iPlayer account, this can be used to sign into the BBC Sounds account. 

For more information about BBC Sounds and what's available, check the BBC website here.

Thanks,
Sarah 

scott

@Sarah - Is that EVERY YouView make and model box.

Lukе

scott said:

Is that EVERY YouView make and model box.

Clicking on the link supplied by Sarah, and then the Youview link on that page it lists all but three.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/youview

Not the retail Huawei, nor the earliest two Humax.

scott

Thanks Luke. So I presume this is a flick the switch and everyone has it rather than a staged roll out.

EDIT - Just tried an update on my T4000 and nothing showed up

Bruce Clarke

I can't imagine I would ever use the TV to listen to BBC Sounds, but nice to have the option for those that would. The BBC Sounds Android app is pretty useless compared to the iPlayer Radio app. I still don't understand why they killed the latter.

kodikid

Video killed the radio star

gsvalentine

Got to say, I am loving this app! Way better than the one on my phone! I can use myself using it all the time, since my YouView box is connected to my stereo amplifier.

Roy

@Sarah quoted:

“Users will be able to listen to live and on-demand radio from 18 national and 40 local stations, music mixes and award-winning podcasts”. 

So where are the other 39 local stations this seems to promise me?

Darren

I still don't seem to have the BBC Sounds app on both my BT Youview box and the BT retail Youview box.
Hope everyone is keeping safe and well.

Darren

Visionman

Roy said:

@Sarah quoted:

“Users will be able to listen to live and on-demand radio from 18 national and 40 local stations, music mixes and award-winning podcasts”. 

So where are the other 39 local stations this seems to promise me?

Hi Roy,

Sarah's quote comes in part from the BBCs webpage but has not been quoted in full, as it allows access to a users local radio station only. 

The new TV app is being rolled out on YouView and Virgin Media devices from today - and will launch on other TV platforms in the future.

During these very challenging times, the app will provide listeners with another way to access live and on demand radio from the BBC’s 18 national and 40 local stations, music mixes curated by experts, artists and special guests, and a wide range of award-winning podcasts.

With the new TV app, users can choose to listen live to any of the BBC's national radio stations and their local radio station, or pick up where they left off with the Peter Crouch podcast.

Hope that clears it up in whatever part of the world your stuck in. Or are you thankfully home now?

westone

So there is more choice of local BBC stations on Freeview rather than the YouView app.

Ken Hill1

so we get this app and not disney+ app

Visionman

Ken Hill1 said:

so we get this app and not disney+ app

There are 4 Disney+ threads concurrently running on this forum ken. No need to post on this one.

Roy

westone said:

So there is more choice of local BBC stations on Freeview rather than the YouView app.

@westone

But less choice of stations overall - 20 on BBC Sounds, even without the other 39 local stations, versus 16 on Freeview, including the 4 next most local BBC stations (I think that’s the criterion anyway) in a separate channel range from our most local BBC station.

So 8 channels on BBC Sounds that aren’t on Freeview, and all very useful (as long as you are multi-lingual!)

Andy Hall2

Tried listening to Friday Night Comedy podcast from Radio 4 via app last night on T4000 over 150mbps FTTP with BT. Playback stopped every 3-5 minutes and then when you hit play again it is back at the start. Very annoying. So currently unusable for radio catch-up. Pity. 

Roy

Visionman said:

Roy said:

@Sarah quoted:

“Users will be able to listen to live and on-demand radio from 18 national and 40 local stations, music mixes and award-winning podcasts”. 

So where are the other 39 local stations this seems to promise me?

Hi Roy,

Sarah's quote comes in part from the BBCs webpage but has not been quoted in full, as it allows access to a users local radio station only. 

The new TV app is being rolled out on YouView and Virgin Media devices from today - and will launch on other TV platforms in the future.

During these very challenging times, the app will provide listeners with another way to access live and on demand radio from the BBC’s 18 national and 40 local stations, music mixes curated by experts, artists and special guests, and a wide range of award-winning podcasts.

With the new TV app, users can choose to listen live to any of the BBC's national radio stations and their local radio station, or pick up where they left off with the Peter Crouch podcast.

Hope that clears it up in whatever part of the world your stuck in. Or are you thankfully home now?

@Visionman

I remain mystified that while the BBC Sounds website, and the BBC Sounds iOS and Android apps, do indeed provide all forty local radio stations, the YouView app doesn’t.

A bit second-class now, and perhaps an indicator of what the BBC think of YouView these days?

And yes we are home now, having been booted off the still Covid-19 free Queen Mary 2 in Fremantle, Australia, last Monday week, and endured a 32 hour journey home In close contact with two lots of about 400 strangers in a couple of Airbus 380s, those well-known disease-recirculating mechanisms.

So we are now on day 9 of our 14-day self-isolation subsequent to this. After which, if we stay well, we switch from being potentially dangerous to other people to the normal state where other people are potentially dangerous to us.

I say self-isolation; we have unavoidably had to go out for food and other supplies twice (got some bog roll, woo-hoo, as we ran them down before we went away, and could only bring one from the ship) as nobody has any delivery slots for three weeks, and the scheme for local helpers with this hasn’t kicked in yet. Masked, to protect other people from us, and not the other way round.

And I say ‘normal’, for these abnormal times; so I’m not sure about ‘thankfully’ 

I think we envy those people, certified medically unfit to fly, who are still on the QM2, sailing back to the UK as a merchant ship, stopping at no ports and with no-one getting off or on, but which should keep them free of Covid-19 until they dock on April 17th, on current estimates.

jimb

Andy Hall2 said:

Tried listening to Friday Night Comedy podcast from Radio 4 via app last night on T4000 over 150mbps FTTP with BT. Playback stopped every 3-5 minutes and then when you hit play again it is back at the start. Very annoying. So currently unusable for radio catch-up. Pity. 

I've used the app quite a lot and not experienced any problems with playback.
This is with a T2000 and a T2100 - perhaps there's a problem with the T4000?

If you're keen to use the app I suggest that you try the maintenance modes:
 https://support.youview.com/youview-box/box-and-remote/using-maintenance-mode/

zulu17

Trying The Friday Night Comedy - The Now Show 20th March on a T4000 just now does exhibit issues with the playback stopping and only being restartable  from the beginning. This occured on the 3 occasions i tried it.  First occasion the problem did not occur for over 12 minutes and coincided with me pressing the i(nfo) button (note I had pressed the info button a couple of times earlier in the 12 minutes). Other two occasions occured  when i skipped forward using the 20s skip to a point where i wanted to restart and allowed it to then play normally which it did for a few minutes before stopping. 

Sarah

Hi @Andy Hall2 & @zulu17
I'll get this checked with our Content team and try testing it as well.
Thanks,
Sarah

Visionman

@Sarah - Why is there no search option with the YouView version?

jimb

Visionman said:

@Sarah - Why is there no search option with the YouView version?

At last!
Someone has noticed.
I'm guessing no one else has tried to actually use it rather than just having a casual browse around.
Without search it is virtually useless. 

Visionman

Search is a powerful engine and feature where YouView is concerned. Quite a feat, actually. Yet this new app contains none?

westone

jimb said:

Visionman said:

@Sarah - Why is there no search option with the YouView version?

At last!
Someone has noticed.
I'm guessing no one else has tried to actually use it rather than just having a casual browse around.
Without search it is virtually useless. 

Just gave up on it when I found it was a paired down version of the android app.

Visionman

I've been thinking more about this app. Why isn't there a separate sports section as some of BBC Sports podcasts are amongst the best out there?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/category/sport?sort=popular

Stuart Smith

Sarah said:

Over 80,000 hours of music, radio and podcast content are now available to watch through BBC Sounds on YouView. Users will be able to listen to live and on-demand radio from 18 national and 40 local stations, music mixes and award-winning podcasts. 

If you already have a BBC iPlayer account, this can be used to sign into the BBC Sounds account. 

For more information about BBC Sounds and what's available, check the BBC website here.

Thanks,
Sarah 

Good morning.

According to reports, the app features a screen-saver to protect TV screens. It doesn't seem to kick in and I can't find any options in settings to control behaviour, customisation etc.

The app itself looks excellent so hoping to use it regularly.

Thanks
Stuart

jimb

Stuart Smith said:

Good morning.

According to reports, the app features a screen-saver to protect TV screens. It doesn't seem to kick in and I can't find any options in settings to control behaviour, customisation etc.

The app itself looks excellent so hoping to use it regularly.

Thanks
Stuart

There is a scrensaver but it's not immediately obvious.
It kicks in after 10 minutes.
I think it only works on the main playback screen - so if you've gone back to see more details of the programme it won't work.

If you've got time on your hands you can read my post about this here:
https://community.youview.com/youview/discussion/comment/19004538/#Comment_19004538
  

Visionman

AHA! I've found a way to use Search on BBC Sounds. Its a bit of a faff but it works.

Open the BBC Sounds webpage on your device of choice and then in the top right corner type in the programme name of interest into the searchbar. Just play the first 30 seconds of it and then press stop. The content will then appear on the YouView version under 'Continue Listening'. But we all know it should really have its own search feature.

PhilG

The site is very good for listening to live radio (but are there problems with the sound quality?) but we can already do that anyway.

I was disappointed there were no schedules that we could use to search for recent programmes we had missed. Also there was nowhere to find talk and current affairs programmes like In Our Time or Thinking Allowed. Will these be added soon?

The arrangement of topics seems chaotic - they are all jumbled up and clustered under eccentric headings. Would it not be sensible to offer podcasts within each station grouping. Surely radio listeners are most familiar with which stations broadcast which programmes, and should not have to guess eg which programmes are favourites, or which music genre their favourite programme fits into.

I can see there is a point in jumbling everything up for casual browsers, but I cannot see why the site fails to cater for the 'listen again' audience. I hope this is a very rough first draft and that some logic will be designed in in revised versions.