core: BBC Radio Two on BBC Sounds Cast No Longer Working

The problem

Using cast and BBC Sounds works fine for most radio stations include Radio 1 and Radio 4, but the radio 2 stream fails to play.

For example, the below code does not play any audio stream: service: media_player.play_media data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name": "bbcsounds", "media_id": "bbc_radio_two", "is_live": true }' target: device_id: a052b41711e2f011c18ba32c7f9f107b

Whereas this works fine: service: media_player.play_media data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name": "bbcsounds", "media_id": "bbc_radio_one", "is_live": true }' target: device_id: a052b41711e2f011c18ba32c7f9f107b

It is mentioned in some other posts in tangential matters that the BBC is standing down the mp3 streams this year. I don’t know if this might be related?

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

2023.9.3

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

cast

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/cast/

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: open
  • Created 9 months ago
  • Comments: 26 (2 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Good spot @Hobbit44

The workaround now is:

service: media_player.play_media data: media_content_type: audio media_content_id: >- http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/ak/[BBC STATION NAME].m3u8 target: device_id: [YOUR DEVICE]

BBC STATION NAME should be of the format: bbc_radio_one bbc_radio_fourfm bbc_radio_norfolk etc.

Seems like the workaround URLs have been changed or removed as of this morning (at least for R2 and R1).

@jbeardon yes, it looks like the following PR needs to be accepted for this to work reliably going forwards: home-assistant-libs/pychromecast#753

Thanks - I’ve bumped the PR as well.

The new stream links for the various radio stations are available in this post. (see later post for clarity)

I’ve had a look at the code but I can’t see how it currently handles BBC Sounds streams to update the links. Hopefully someone will!

In the meantime, here is the workaround: service: media_player.play_media data: media_content_type: audio media_content_id: >- [m3u8 LINK FOR THE RELEVANT STREAM FROM ABOVE POST] target: device_id: [YOUR DEVICE]

Here is a workaround: service: media_player.play_media data: media_content_type: audio media_content_id: >- http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/ak/bbc_radio_two.m3u8 target: device_id: b0527cab28db6d3a4e041787031a3a89