RealPlayer streaming on 9300 HELP!

I would like to re-open this thread... I was one of those NOT having Realplayer streaming working on my Nokia 9300 (I live outside the UK and listen to the BBC a lot..). Now I DO have this working, at least, SOMETIMES. Here's what I did:

I changed the Realplayer connect settings in the Control Panel (under 'Connections'😉 as follows. Under 'Network' I set the Connection Rate to "Medium" and the Port Range to "2-32000". Then I downloaded a RealPlayer clip (a .rm file) to the Nokia and played it using the RealPlayer. Then I tried streaming a BBC radio station and it worked. I'm not exactly sure why, since for the last 6 months it NEVER worked, but I was very happy 😊

However, it doesn't always work. Sometimes when the streaming doesn't work I try playing a downloaded .rm file and then streaming again, and it does work. Other times that doesn't work and I just have to try later. So maybe the streaming problem NOW (not before) is just network congestion on the mobile phone network (perhaps they limit bandwidth for streaming?), or it is still something funny on my 9300, I just don't know. I have a feeling that the Port range DOES matter, and how easy it is for you to get streaming will depend on your mobile phone service provider, together with your port settings. I use T-Mobile in the USA. I haven't tried calling them, but I was going to give that a shot to see if they had anything intelligent to say about which ports to use.

A couple of hints for making streaming easier on your 9300 (or 9500, 9300i). (1) You CAN download ANY BBC programme to your computer (except live programmes) by using a program called 'HiDownload' (or a similar program), and then transfer that to the N9300 to listen to there while you're on the move. This is now called "podcasting", and the BBC supports it for a limited number of programs and using MP3 files, but using a program like HiDownload means you're not limited to the list the BBC has chosen (and you can download the .rm files directly). Once you've got HiDownload installed, you can just use the BBC Radio Player and then right-click on the program you want to download.

(2) It is possible to set up a folder containing .ram files that the RealPlayer will check each time you start it up. Then you can simply select which program you want to listen to, and away you go, without having to first open your web browser, navigate to the link (which can take a while on the BBC website), click on it and wait for the RealPlayer to open. There are two ways of doing this. If you have the streaming clip playing successfully on the Nokia RealPlayer, you can select "stop" (NOT "close"😉 and then hit the 'Menu' key, and select "File > Save link as...". You can use "Browse" to select your own folder and save the link there, under any name you like. Now whenever you start RealPlayer manually (I have it programmed to start when I hit "Ctrl-Messaging"😉 it will first scan this folder and show all the .ram (and .rm) files there. You can easily make your own .ram files, and add them to this folder - a .ram file is just a text file (with .ram extension) containing a link to a .rm file on the internet. (Of course, you can also put downloaded .rm files here, as well.) It can sometimes be hard to figure out what these links are for your favourite programmes. One way to do it is to play the clip on the stand-alone Realplayer on your PC, then get it to show the clip info ("File > Clip Properties"😉 and copy->paste that to a .ram file of your own making. Another way is to start downloading the program using HiDownload (it can also download live programmes, so no worries there) and then right-click on the downloading clip, and select "Copy URLs to clipboard". Then open a text file, paste the link there, give it a name with a .ram extension, and copy it to the folder where the other .ram files are on your 9300. Note that there can be a couple different links to choose from in HiDownload - you need the one that ends in ".rm". Either of these ways gives means you can build up a list of programmes you like listening to (both static and live programmes) that can be accessed simply by starting the 9300 RealPlayer. Easy!

If anyone else has more info about ports on the 9300, and if that is maybe the obstacle to getting audio streaming working on the 9300/9500, please post!

Thanks for popping back, this thread should be useful to others!

Steve