Because the Listen Again link for a show may not be up until a day or so after the show airs, and because I want the recording done at night when I’m not using the computer.

Unlike a podcast, and unlike the program RMRecorder mentioned upthread, AH Pro doesn’t download an audio file. It “listens” to the audio output of an application and records it in real time. So, like our old friend the cassette recorder, it takes an hour to capture an hourlong show.

Are there similar programs to AHP and Radioshift for Windows machines?

(Since everyone’s talking about their favorite Beebs here, I’m most interested in grabbing BBC 6 shows, esp. Tom Robinson and the overnight shows. I listen live in the morning [NYC time], so I get the midday shows in the UK, which tend to be a little too heavy on the chitchat and contests and such. Just give me the tunes, thanks.)

Dunno how Kieran does it, but I do use Audio Hijack Pro to record from the BBC’s Listen Again links. Most BBC programs are available as streams for 7 days after they originally air. The links to these streams show up on the web site as either an icon of a speaker with sound waves coming out of it or as the words “Listen Again.” Clicking on that link will usually open a new browser window with info about the show and playback controls (some links, especially those from Radio 7, launch RealPlayer).

To get AH Pro to record a stream, I copy the URL from the Listen Again link and tell AH Pro to use Safari to open that URL and record from it, giving a day of the week and a range of time for the recording. There’s a helper application that will launch AH Pro at the right time, so you don’t have to have AH Pro running all the time. I also have the meta tags set and the recorded streams copied into iTunes automatically after the recording is done. It works quite well, and I’ve recorded several long series from Radio 4 this way.

Last night I downloaded the trial version of Radioshift and played with it for a while. The selling point is obviously that it will do in one click the several steps I described above. Unfortunately, Radioshift doesn’t have the shows I listen to in its database, so for me it wouldn’t be any easier to use than AH Pro.

Hmm, I’ll have to check into that more closely—right now I recored from the listen again links too, and Radioshift probably wouldn’t be worth it to me if it didn’t list those in its catalogue.

I’m not familiar with either of the programs you name, but from an old comment thread at Kevin Drum’s I found the program RMRecorder, which I use to download Realplayer streams at file transfer speeds, rather than in real time.

I agree that rights are an issue. Still, if something is available for listening, is it really different to record it to your disk than to tape it off the air, as long as you don’t claim any ownership or distribute it yourself?

http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

What I like about using AH Pro is that I can record from the BBC’s “Listen Again” links, which seem to be more reliable than the live streams. I suspect Radioshift will work from the live streams only.

Most of the ABC shows I’d want to tape are provided as Podcasts by the ABC itself. I don’t know how much of that the BBC does though, so that might be a reason to pay for recordings.