I noticed there hasn’t been an entry in the Content category for a while now, and most of the ones that are here are old so I will add my two cents worth.
I would most like to have a weekly schedule of the audio content delivered as a text file. Regarding the content, ditch the music, it doesn’t come through well at all. As for the old radio programs they are okay, but not really my cup of tea. I would like to hear audio book content. There are a lot of public domain audio books available now. Many news and opinion articles are available in audio format now and if not, there is software that will translate text into audio format. This is where a schedule would be nice. For example, a whole audio book can’t be broadcast all at once, it would have to be broken up by time or chapter so it would be good to know when the next installment will be broadcast.
If possible, I would like to see more timely weather information. In particular, a radar image of precipitation, possible comprising an hourly screenshot which would then allow for tracking the progression of oncoming rain/snow.
I think that GOES satellite imagery would be a great addition to the content schedule, possibly with enhancements to show rain/precipitation etc. Maybe imagery from other geostationary weather satellites with similar positions as the ones broadcasting data so the imagery would be relavent to the areas receiving it. Examples would be Meteosat for Europe, GOES for the Americas, and Himawari-8 for Asia.
Public domain audio books are a great idea.
FYI, we discontinued the Old Time Radio. Right now it’s a 24/7 feed of VOA Global English news. We may bring Associated Press into the mix, but they have very little precorded audio, so we would stories to be read and recorded.
@Syed, @Abhishek I have a different issue here. In Skylark itself, how about a larger font on the news service’s channels, date, and article columns? The reading pane is really good, once you get an article open, however, I can’t speak for the Chinese, Arabic and other characters, but the English print is pretty small… even on my 22-inch monitor.
I own a Part 15 AM Radio station that has an online stream as well. It is a community based project with multiple transmitters. We are licensed for all the required royalty entities and 100% legit. When or if the opportunity arises, would love to add my station as a content resource for the Radio Station services if possible.
I’ll mention this here as I did in my message to you, Syed, because others might be interested.
A fine source of public-domain audiobooks is over at Librivox.org. They have lots of books, mostly from Project Gutenberg, already recorded and broken into chapters or reasonably sized chunks. It’s all public domain and free to use.
Good to be here…I just got my Dreamcatcher working this evening for the first time as a proof-of-concept. I hope to have a more permanent installation soon.
Librivox doesn’t stream them, it makes the files available. Someone would have to stream them. But they’re available as audio files. I don’t yet know how anything gets to this satellite we’re listening to in the first place, so I can’t know what is possible or not.
@EddieV The music is tough at the current bitrates. You’ve probably noticed that when the odd songs play over the current broadcast stream, it sounds horrible. The current signal is configured for voice/talk radio. Do you have any of that type of content that is license-free?
Yeah, makes sense… I use independent Audio Processors for Online and RF. Wondering if I could setup a dedicated processor to get it tailored for better sound quality through a lower bit rate stream. Will have to play around with that idea and get back to you.
I do not have any independent content that is license free at this time, unfortunately…
Let me get back to you after I can do some testing. Appreciate it!
speaking of Schedules (in downloads/Schedules ):
Shortwave Broadcasting Schedule - 30 OCT 2016–26 MAR 2017.txt
the source for this file http://www.eibi.de.vu/ does not appear to be operational.
maybe some data should be scraped from https://short-wave.info instead?
or something else?