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Monday, January 26, 2009

Using Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) to stream audio/video through HTTP Protocol

Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) files are based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) syntax, and are made up of various elements with their associated tags and attributes. This is designed to store a list of Windows Media files (.WMA, .ASF, .WMV) to play during a multimedia presentation. The ASX files can be effectively used to play songs over the Internet/Intranet through HTTP protocol.

I will not write here on how one should write ASX program, as it is fairly simple and any software developer can figure it out himself/herself. I would rather like to present few key points which need to be remembered while developing and configuring ASX based applications on IIS 6.0 or above.

The very first thing which comes in my mind is that the developers forget to add .ASX extension mapping to asp.dll (in case of ASX used with ASP, which can be found at C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\) or aspnet_isapi.dll (in case of ASX used with ASP.Net, which can be found at C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\<.Net Version>\). Open website properties in IIS and navigate to “Home Directory” >> “Configure” button. Under “Mapping” tab, add the file extension .ASX to be mapped with relevant DLL. Doing this will make the file extension .ASX executable for the programming language/framework.

The second thing with the ASX files is the load on IIS worker process. Lucky, IIS 6 and above allows to create separate Application Pool and has Web Garden option to enable/allocate multiple worker process (W3WP) to load balance the processes running. To know more on Web Gardens, click here.

References:

ASX Element Reference - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms910265.aspx

As I was doing my research on ASX and Internet Radio, I came across a list of Internet Radio channels.

Radio Stations:
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RadioOfIndia - Bollywood
http://www.radioofindia.com/asf/bollywood.asx

RadioOfIndia - Bhajans
http://www.radioofindia.com/asf/bhajans.asx

RadioOfIndia - Classical
http://66.238.65.109/classical

DeSi-RaDiO - Indian / Pakistani songs
http://www.desi-radio.com/

DesiSoundz - India
http://desisoundz.com:8000

BombayBeats FM
http://www.1.fm/player/energybbfm32k.asx
mms://bb.1.fm/bbfm32k?MSWMExt=.asf

Trishul 90.5 FM
http://www.vtuner.com/vtunerweb/mms/mms14734.asx

Radio Apni Awaz
mms://67.15.80.29/radioapniawaz

DDLive Video – India
http://164.100.51.209/ddlive?MSWMExt=.asf

Radio Mirchi
http://www.radiofiji.com.fj/asx/radiomirchi.asx

Radio Teentaal
http://www.radioteentaal.com/masala128.wax

ApnaRadio – USA
http://www.apnaradio.com/live/media24/ApnaRadio.asx
http://live.apnaradio.com:2424/

Radio XL – UK
http://www.vtuner.com/vTunerweb/mms/m3u13219.m3u

Sanskar Radio – UK
http://www.vtuner.com/vTunerweb/mms/m3u18290.m3u

City 101.6 FM – Dubai
http://asx.abacast.com/arabian_radio-city-24.asx