In September 2006, we embarked on a grand experiment: to allow fans of the show to listen to us live as we record the show.

It’s a fun treat for some to hear us as we step all over each other, and make other humorous on-air mistakes that are later edited out, and it’s fun for us to get live commentary and feedback from the chatroom as they listen in. It has also been very helpful, because even though Tim and Summer are B5 fans of the highest order, not even they can remember every tiny detail all the time.

Here are all the instructions on how to listen to the live feed, and join the chatroom:

Listening to the Live Feed

First, you need an application that can connect to a streaming feed. WinAmp seems to be the app of choice for Windows, and iTunes or Quicktime seems to work best on the Mac. One app of choice for Linux users is Amarok (with the xine engine).

If anyone else has a favorite app they prefer to use, or have had success using, let us know and we’ll add them to the list.

To connect to the live feed, you can point your favorite audio stream catcher at one of the following server feeds:

http://stream.farpointmedia.net:8000/listen.m3u (USA)
http://w2k.myftp.org:8000/FPM.m3u (Europe)

This will let you listen in as we record, catching the show at least a week before the edited version goes out on the podcast.

The servers are up and running on Wednesday evenings for Babylon Podcast recording, on Thursday evenings for Slice of SciFi recording, and for other FarPoint Media shows other days of the week. Some applications should start playing the stream as soon as content is being sent out, even if you connect before the content is available. I’m told that WinAmp and sometimes iTunes will do this, but be aware that if you connect too early, you might have to quit the application and reconnect after content is being streamed out.

Live feed content for The Babylon Podcast should begin streaming at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern, so join in on the fun!