Rai TV Streaming

Recently italian nataional TV channel Rai tv changed its streaming website, adopting the SilverLight technology.

In particular when I pointed with Firefox to the live tv section, I was requested to install the Moonlight (SilverLight for Linux) plugin. Even if it worked correctly it seemed too slow in full screen mode. I decided then to take advantage of streaming by using VLC, a multimedia player for Linux. Thanks to this link I found the direct URL to play some channels directly; here’s the list:

• RaiUno: http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=983
• RaiDue: http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=984
• RaiTre: http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=986
• RaiNews24: http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=1
• RaiSport: http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=4145
• RaiStoria: http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=24269
• RaiEdu: http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=24268

A last tip : you need to “disguise” VLC as web browser. You need to set a particular property; go on “Tools” => “Preferences” then look below and set “Show settings” on “All”. Then choose on the left panel “Input/Decoders” => “Access modules” => “HTTP(S)”. You must set “User Agent HTTP”, to:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009020911 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.6

Enjoy