Listening to the radio using mac osx

Question

I am a real computer phobe and don't understand why I can't listen to 'normal' radio stations using MAC OS X. The error message i am getting says that MAC OS X doesn't recognize internet addresses starting with "mms:". Why is this the case? I can play it via windows. Also, I don't understand how to add new radio stations to iTunes. I have searched all through the documentation and cannot find comprehensive instructions i.e. instructions for dummies. Many Thanks, Lost in Kent

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple's user-to-user discussion forums.
MMS = Microsoft Media Stream. Try copying and pasting the address into Windows Media Player to see if it will play there. It has been a long time since I looked at mms addresses, could paste a link in a reply to look at?
iTunes will recognize any stream in standard MPEG streaming format, such as those on Live365. Many Internet stations provide a choice of streaming format, one of which may be an MPEG audio stream and may have an iTunes icon. To play one of these streams in iTunes, you need to click on the Listen button on the stations web site. Depending on which browser you are using, the stream may start up immediately in iTunes or a small file with either an m4u or a pls extension will be downloaded to your default download location. Double-clicking on the file will start the stream.
Once the stream has played once in iTunes, you can restart it later from iTunes by clicking on its entry in the Library. I made a smart playlist with the condition "Kind is MPEG audio stream" with Live Updating to gather my streams together.
There is no way to add stations to the built-in radio playlist as that is really a page of links to a remote server.
Proprietary Windows Media and Real formatted streams need to be played in Windows Media Player and Real Player, respectively, although Microsoft is now recommending Flip4Mac (same link as WMP) to redirect Windows Media streams to quicktime, but I have had mixed results with streams using Flip4Mac.