Digest Number 557

[Martin Wheatley]

 >For even greater skullduggery...

 >It should also be pointed out that the very best
 >method for downloading these Real Audio files is with
 >a program called "StreamBoxVCR Suite"

Streambox was great for it's time but it suffers from being several years old
It's a bit geeky to use and it struggles withanything newer than the
basic RealAudio format

I note that the 1Xtra part of the BBC RealPlayer has a Windows Media
button as well so that may come to all of them in time

There are a couple of progs which will intercept anything sent to your
soundcard and so are format independent (at the moment anyway)

HardDiskOgg     at  http://www.fridgesoft.de/    is free and is best for radio
streams as you don't get too much control over recordings

TotalRecorder    at   http://www.HighCriteria.com   is  shareware
The free copy only plays for 40 seconds which is no good but it's
not expensive and theres a widely available registration number floating
about on the Internet  (not that I would suggest anyone use that - Oh No)
This does have the advantage of not requiring any starting synchronisation
- you just start it and it starts recording when it detects any sound going to
the card - great for individual files in other words)   This is also very 
useful for those
using dialup as it detects and ignores buffering gaps whilst recording if 
you set it up
that way

Both of these progs require that you use other progs to play the files - 
either direct from
the webpage or on your machine.    For the record I have Real One Player 6.0
and as long as you go through and turn off all the 'phone home' items in 
the Preferences
it seem to be well behaved.   More recent versions however are a different 
matter since they
well tell Auntie Real your inside leg measurement whether you like it or not

All of this is of course for use with non-copyright material as we are all 
law abiding
citizens here