5 Several months ago I started using the RealPlayer stream from Livestation to view Al Jazeera English. As American broadcast news has become increasingly insular, parochial and sensationalist, I really appreciate this service. Yesterday I downloaded and installed the Livestation viewer. I have mixed feeling about using this viewer. Some of these issues have been addressed elsewhere in the forums, but I thought I would put my objections together in one post. As I have a recent Mac running Leopard with lots of RAM and two cores and have a good broadband connection, the player installed and functions well with no problem. I appreciate that the install is a simple drag and drop, not a pkg bundle to run, and that the dmg contains both an alias to the Applications folder and a ReadMe. These are good OS X conventions to follow. I'm using a 13 inch MacBook Pro so space on the menubar is at a premium. The player really needs a preference option for turning off the menubar icon. I understand there are issues with pausing a live TV stream. However, the RealPlayer stream handles that just fine. If I run into something else I want to view, such as an interesting YouTube video, I can pause the RealPlayer stream and then just start it back up when I'm done. With the Livestation player, I have to close the window, then re-open it and wait for it to reconnect. Very clumsy. On top of that there is no keyboard shortcut for re-opening the player window, forcing me to pull down a menu. The convention on OS X is that an application with only one primary window uses 'Command-1' as a keyboard shortcut to open the window. Sleep. Many times in the course of a day I will close my laptop and let it sleep, coming back to my work later. If I'm streaming something through iTunes, I have to start the stream again manually (simply hitting the space bar once does it). If I'm streaming Al Jazeera through the Livestation web-based RealPlayer stream, the stream just starts back up by itself (a behavior I actually prefer to the iTunes behavior). On the other hand, the Livestation player plays out for a few seconds (I assume it is emptying its buffer) and then stops. This is the worst of both worlds: make noise but don't actually start playing again. I find it highly unacceptable when an OS X application doesn't handle sleep gracefully. The is no menu option to check for player updates manually and no option in the preferences to check for updates automatically For the time being, I think I will be going back and forth between the web-based RealPlayer stream and the Livestation player, depending on my workflow. Good luck with version 3! 2009-10-24T17:51:06Z 0 4 0 5490 97.123.209.7 0 false 27 8 5490 0 false 2009-11-07T21:30:26Z 1123088 259 5 They made me download this version or else. LS would have shutdown. Well it is practically the same. As soon as it opens hangs up. I tried re installing but is useless. The point of realeasing a new version Is to have it working better I assume. Well this one is definitely not fully tested nor partially cause it quits before that. One thing it sure did... left me out of the loop. planetdiego@gmail.com Macbook Pro, Tiger, MEX CITY 2009-05-09T16:01:28Z 0 2009-05-09T16:02:06Z 4 0 4624 189.135.94.131 0 false 5 8 4624 0 false 2009-11-07T11:25:56Z 249923 898 5 When LiveStation is running, I cannot find any way to remove the menu bar icon (Command drag doesn't work), and it doesn't have an option in the preferences to disable it. I would like my hijacked menu bar back, thank you very much. Add a general preferences option for "keep icon in menu bar" 2009-04-04T06:26:20Z 0 4 0 4364 74.193.142.223 0 false 5 16 4364 0 false 2009-11-07T20:58:33Z 772048 1449 5 I keep clicking it accidentally instead of clicking on play. At least pop up a confirmation box. 2009-03-03T04:35:03Z 0 4 0 4059 122.38.170.35 0 false 5 4 4059 0 false 2009-11-06T22:02:10Z 515088 743 16159 Hi, First I would like to say thank you for this amazing live stream player. It is the best I ever seen on Linux. Could you please considering including a FreeDesktop-compatible configuration file in the package? This will be more helpful for end-user, because with that configuration file, they could easily launch livestation through GNOME or KDE categorized application menu (or any other desktop environments compatible with FreeDesktop). Cheers. 2009-02-12T03:14:15Z 0 4 0 3911 61.185.221.170 0 false 16159 20 3911 0 false 2009-11-07T18:06:36Z 669255 1114 Web and program: Separate TV from Radio browsing... Web: View station lists in browse mode in either TV or Radio mode. It would be helpful if there were icons explicitly sating what viewing mode one was in. For the web UI, I don't see need for a lot of change. Program: In Circular Panorama or List Mode, you need to have a TV and Radio button. Allowing for TV and Radio lists to be viewed simultaneously IF AND ONLY IF BOTH ICONS ARE ACTIVATED. You may want to have 2 or 3 different icons for Radio and TV, to cope with different cultural views on what these devices are. 2009-01-28T03:15:49Z 0 4 0 3765 71.231.67.62 0 false 70 4 3765 0 false 2009-11-07T19:27:04Z 523176 940 16159 My machine doesn't have speakers, and the mainboard's sound device is unused. I use Pulseaudio to channel sound to the USB headphones. Running Ubuntu Intrepid 64 bit, almost everything works with this configuration. Livesation installed flawlessly, and it shows video, but I don't get sound. I created the .openalrc file, and put (define devices '(esd)) into that file, and saved it. Restarted Livestation, with no difference. I'm quite sure that the problem is with USB. Under options, audio, the only device listed is "default". I think that to get things working, I need a choice for either USB, or Pulse. If the solution is obvious, please forgive me - I'm not a Linux guru, and sound is just kicking my butt. Thanks!! 2009-01-20T19:12:10Z 0 4 0 3610 69.57.121.226 0 false 16159 4 3610 0 false 2009-11-07T19:28:30Z 608499 714 5 I will try to explain the issue here. When opening Livestation, I'm in skin mode, with nothing else but the broadcast being shown. Now I want to follow the chat, so i open the window to display it. At first the chat screen is small, so i expand window so i can see much more of the chat, and keep the same (small) broadcast window size. I've then had enough of the chat, and decide to minimize the chat bit and I proceed to expand the broadcast window so it's bigger. Now i want to follow the chat again, and this results in the chat window being mostly off my screen, because it has the same size i left it with. Summary: Chat window height is remembered, and upon expanding the main broadcast window while the chat is hidden, can result in the Livestation window going far out of the screen and using a lot of time getting it smaller. Livestation should check it's position on the screen, and relative to that, only open the chat window so it all fits the screen. 2009-01-20T13:55:28Z 0 4 0 3604 90.184.240.251 0 false 5 16 3604 0 false 2009-11-06T23:07:17Z 738 966 Any suggestions as to how to find and forward interesting programs from Al Jazeera? Today it had an excellent story on the poor being displaced in Cambodia. I would like to find it and forward it to a researcher on this subject. 2009-01-14T17:31:23Z 0 4 0 3460 118.71.159.137 0 false 70 4 3460 0 false 2009-11-06T21:57:17Z 551265 695 10 The URL link is difficult to see when it is blue against a dark grey background. Can you consider a different color that is easier to see thanks. 2009-01-10T09:44:03Z 0 4 0 3311 202.169.219.180 0 false 10 4 3311 0 false 2009-11-07T21:39:35Z 550224 755