Thanks all for your suggestions. Actually no-one, not even the BBC itself could correctly answer the problem which turned out, in the end to be absolutely simply fixed. In fact the BBC was utterly misleading and clearly uninformed, as their response was:This is due to the fact that your system is a Mac and does not meet the minimum system requirements. The system requirements are as follows:
RealPlayer Minimum System Requirements- 350MHz Intel Pentium II processor or equivalent
- 64MB of RAM(128MB on Windows XP or later)
- 52MB available disk space
- 28.8Kbps modem (audio only)
- 16-bit sound card and speakers
- 65,000-color video display card set to display at 800x600 (video)
- Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0
with Service Pack 6 or later(playback only), Windows 2000 with Service Pack 2 or later, or Windows XP
- IE 5.0 or later
Of course, this was rubbish as I've been using the mac for more than 3 years to listen to the BBC before. Anyway, with a little diffing arouynd, here is the answer, for the other people who might be misled:
Solution: Manually configure RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X to use HTTP only.
On some networks it may be necessary to configure RealPlayer to use the HTTP Only option to connect to the Internet. This option allows a player operating behind strict firewalls to access programming. However, quality may not be as good as other connection options.
To configure RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X to receive content via HTTP only:
1. On the RealPlayer menu, click Preferences.
2. Click the Transport icon.
3. Select the Use manually configured RTSP and PNA transport Settings check box.
4. Click the Configure button.
5. Under RTSP, clear all boxes except HTTP.
6. Under PNA, clear all boxes except HTTP, then close the Transport Preferences window.
If the problem persists, we suggest you try and enable different transport protocols suitable for your network.
