Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Open Letter to the BBC - Podcasts, Compression Rates, Soft Power...

Update (2016/12/23)

Dear BCC - I just discovered today when I downloaded a Global News podcast that (suddenly) there's a choice of quality - between 64k and 128k.  Bravo!!!  This is great!  In an age of everything (seemingly) getting worse, nice to see something get better!

Thank you!

 - LHS

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Dear BBC,                                         (2015/12/02)

I love BBC podcasts and deeply appreciate the service - particularly news and documentary podcasts.

I have one concern however - the switch to a very low bitrate (low sampling rate) makes them uncomfortable to listen to.

Please restore the previous bitrate!  The current very poor sound quality is disturbing to listen to, and since I want to avoid the headaches the current poor sound quality generates, I have largely stopped listening.

Austerity rules?  It shouldn't.  Please understand that "soft power" (of which the BBC is a major component) is not something that even austerity fetishists really want to destroy.

Best regards,

Lyle H Saxon
Tokyo, Japan


PS - I attempted to e-mail this to you via your invitation to comment to globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk, but it bounced with this error message:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:
joanna.mills@bbc.co.uk
The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending this message later, or contact the recipient directly.

So I - in accordance with the: "... or contact the recipient directly" part of the message, tried sending it to: joanna.mills@bbc.co.uk

- which also bounced, with a long error message, full of this type of thing:

"...mailbox full..., ...Quota Exceeded..., ...Failed to process message due to a permanent exception with message Cannot open mailbox..."

Seeing no way of contacting you via e-mail, I have resorted to this open letter.

と言う事で、下らない行動をやめて、明るい将来へ進みましょう!

以上

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