Question:
Is there any way at all to programme my computer to connect to the internet and record episodes of TA for me - or is that simply wishful thinking?!


Total Recorder from www.highcriteria.com/ will record streaming RealAudio and can be set to start recording at a given time. Doug Faunt is the expert umrat for this. What Total Recorder cannot do, as I understand it, is connect to the internet and launch RealPlayer. If you have cable or ADSL access this need not be a showstopper. If you are relying on dial-up modem and have free 'phone calls and unlimited access (pretty standard for the US) then you might be best off setting it up to record the omni, so that it only hogs your 'phone line from Saturday bedtime.

Or you could do like me and get up at 0500 on Sunday mornings (0415 this weekend) to listen to the omni as it streams. You could also mail Keri Davies and ask him to put the omni onto the Radio 4 website to download on demand, like the Toady programme.

This seems to work for me (tried it just now):

1) Create a .BAT file containing commands to launch Total Recorder and Real Player:

"C:\Program Files\HighCriteria\TotalRecorder\TotalRecorder.exe" archers.wav /record /time:01:10:00

"C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\realplay.exe" http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/realplayer/media/fmv5.ram

[should be two long lines]

2) Use the Windows Task Scheduler to run your .BAT file at (say) 04:55 EST every Sunday.

Not sure if this would work properly with dial-up networking.

Last updated February 16th 2004
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