who-wants-to-listen-to-radio-ads-anyways dept. (Score 1)

I am afraid that Cliff is misleading all of you. The FAQ that he partially quoted is: "7. Why don't you support Linux/Unix/Solaris? (Unix) Supporting Unix is more complex than simply offering a Windows Media Player for Unix. There was a ruling in favor of AFTRA, the actor's union, which states that commercials made for radio cannot be re-broadcast onto the Internet without payment of huge royalties. Therefore, if you want to stream your radio station on the Internet you need to remove the commercials. Our software enables us to automate the process of removing radio commercials and replacing them with Internet safe ads on Windows platforms. This technology has proven difficult to implement on the Unix platform. At this point we have no plans for supporting the Unix platform. " For those of you that don't know how streaming works and why radio stations are streaming online, bear with me and I will try to explain. When a radio station provides a stream to Internet listeners they have to pay a fee per listener, per byte to their streaming provider. The "On-Air" commercials must be striped out, therefore losing any added value to the advertisers. AFTRA will NOT allow the regular "On-Air" ads to play through without paying huge royalties. http://www.aftra.org/resources/negotiations/2000Ra dioComm.html (Section 10) One way that they recoup that cost is to sell ads on the Internet streams. This is where Hiwire, Inc. comes in. Our technology strips out the "On-Air" commercial and inserts an Internet Safe ad that was made in compliance with AFTRA. Our technology works both on the encoding side at the radio station, and on the client side. The client side for Linux/Solaris/Unix/Macintosh is where the problem is. Internet Explorer/Netscape and Windows Media Player are required programs for this to work. Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player for the Macintosh (as an example) do not have the same functionality as it does on the Windows platforms. That is why it is not as simple as offering a Windows Media Player stream to the other platforms. If a listener was to attach to the streaming URL without a Hiwire tuner, they would not hear any ads, the radio station could not off set the cost of the stream, Hiwire would not make money and go out of business. We are a start-up with limited recourses (money and staff). When developing any type of product you must look at your return on investment and weigh the pros and cons. The greatest return on investment is supporting the Microsoft platforms (excluding NT 3.5 and 4). This is not to say that Linux/Solaris/Unix/Macintosh will not be supported in the future. Hiwire did not go into business to upset the non-Microsoft users. Please be patient and remember that the Technical Support representative does not have the ability to make decisions for the company and is only the messenger.