The events of the past two weeks (here, here, here and here) have clarified the BBC’s stance on allowing interoperability with open-source iPlayer clients. I have therefore decided to withdraw get_iplayer with immediate effect.

Ian Hunter’s post (Managing Editor, BBC Online) provided very clear guidance on the way the BBC feels about open-source applications accessing iPlayer streams. I have no desire act against the BBC’s wishes in this respect.

The BBC iPlayer is built on many open-source products and yet, in this case, they have failed to let open-source clients access the very same service. The BBC have clearly not followed the spirit of open-source here.

From the outset, exactly 2 years ago when I developed get_iplayer, my intentions have been to never harm the BBC but to just provide a convenient way for me to watch iPlayer programmes on my TV with the hardware that I own. However, the BBC clearly considers such methods to be somehow detrimental to their service and therefore with great regret I have decided to cease development.

I sincerely hope that, in the future, the BBC will make steps to support open source given that they have gained so much from it.

At last, I’ve caved in to public demand and opened a proper forum for get_iplayer.

I’m going to close the old blog *PAGE* comments threads and retain the current contents. Blog posts will still allow commenting.

Although anonymous posting is allowed, If you don’t want to be always-moderated please register first.

If you wish to continue a current discussion from the blog threads please just open a new topic here and we’ll do our best to pick up where we left off.

Please read the ‘Forum Rules’ sticky post first.

Have Fun!

Update: A new get_iplayer automated installer has now been released. It has a new version of VLC and it now allows you to selectively update, install or remove the components. AtomicParsley is also in there for good measure. Let me know how it goes.

A new get_iplayer automated installer has been pre-released. Please can you test it and kindly report your experiences below.

The new installer will put the recorded audio/video files, by default, into ‘Desktop\iPlayer Recordings’ as opposed to the old location which caused problems on Vista and Win7. You are now also able to select the recordings folder during installation. The new pre-released installer can be downloaded from here.

Happy New Year!

I’ve just released a fixed get_iplayer v2.50 so that you can now get the iphone streams once again. This is because the BBC appear to have changed (simplified) the method for iphone http streaming as of a few days ago. The freeze still stands so hopefully this will be the only critical fix before next year.

A new major version of flvstreamer has been released. After some testing it would seem that it fixes quite a number of problems that get_iplayer users have been experiencing for the past few weeks since Akamai (one of the BBC’s content delivery network providers) started upgrading all their Flash Media Servers to v3.5.x. BBC Live TV now works better and many other bugs are reported to have been fixed. It also now auto-retries failed streams and fixes the bug where recording 1+ hour BBC radio flash streams always had to be resumed.

If you are using the Windows Installer for get_iplayer then just download it again and re-run it to get the new flvstreamer and ensure you choose the cygwin based flvstreamer.

A new windows Automated Installer v2.4+ has been released for get_iplayer. Most notably it installs a version of flvstreamer that uses cygwin libraries rather than the version compiled using mingw32. This reportedly helps resolve the notorious ‘10060′ flvstreamer error that many users were getting. The non-cygwin flvstreamer is still available as an install-time option.

Plenty of new features in get_iplayer and Web PVR Manager. It’s been a while; 18 versions of Web PVR Manager and 29 versions of get_iplayer have been released since I last wrote about them.

get_iplayer:

I recommend running get_iplayer --long-help to see full help on these new options.

• Recording History search/indexing support (--history)
• Ability to list programme Series names for improved readability (--series)
• Multiple thumbnail sizes support (--thumbsize, --thumbsizemeta)
• Improved meta-data display (--info)
• Audio Description support for BBC iPlayer (--versions=audiodescribed)
• Multi-mode support - i.e. ability to record more than one mode of the same programme (--multimode)
• Better support for recording BBC iPlayer embedded media URLs (--url)
• Support of BBC iPlayer short URLs (--url)
• Ability to specify how long to record a live stream (--stop)
• Ability to specify stop and start time offsets in BBC iPlayer TV and Radio programmes (--stop, --start)
• Support for ‘presets’ - predefined sets of options (--preset)

Web PVR Manager:

• One-click Series recording, playback and PVR queuing of available and recorded programmes
• Ability to search and play back the Recordings
• Improved programme info display with thumbnails and clickable URLs
• Full support for running under Apache as well as the built-in web server (see the README file)
• Improved navigation
• Support for streaming under Windows
• Software Update button
• Help page and tool-tip improvements
• Great new logo

I’ve just released a new v2.0+ windows automated installer for get_iplayer. It now contains the experimental web-based get_iplayer PVR Manager. The installer downloads everything you need to record, stream and manage get_iplayer and the get_iplayer PVR manager. This includes: mplayer, lame, ffmpeg, vlc and flvstreamer. Take a look at the get_iplayer PVR Manager page for instructions and an overview of the available features.

Let me know if you find any bugs and I’ll do my best to squash them. Just remember that the PVR Manager is ALPHA quality experimental software!

You’ve probably already noticed; get_iplayer has a new shamelessly original get_iplayer logo.

This is a follow-up to the post a few days ago. It is now much easier to get those AAC streams on your SqueezeBox.
It is now possible to navigate and play the High quality (up to 192kbps) AAC BBC iPlayer Radio and Live Radio streams on your Squeezebox by mean of an OPML playlist.

Just add the following URL to your favourites in SqueezeCenter and then navigate to the Favourites on the SqueezeBox remote an you will see a three-level menu of Channel -> Programme Name -> Programme for iPlayer Radio. You need to be running get_iplayer PVR Manager v0.24 or later. This has only been tested on Linux and may work on OSX and Windows.

http://[SERVER IP]:1935/opml?PROGTYPES=radio&MODES=flash,iphone&LIST=channel

To list all the Live iPlayer Radio channels add this to your SqueezeBox favourites:

http://[SERVER IP]:1935/opml?PROGTYPES=liveradio&OUTTYPE=wav

Finally, to only show those numbered BBC Radio stations:

http://[SERVER IP]:1935/opml?PROGTYPES=liveradio&MODES=flash&SEARCH=%20\d&OUTTYPE=wav

Update: Now works on windows except for realaudio mode. Ensure you use flvstreamer v1.8h or later.

With the latest experimental release of get_iplayer PVR Manager you can now use to browse and play almost any BBC iPlayer programme directly from VLC’s playlist. This functionality of get_iplayer PVR Manager should work on Linux/Unix, MacOSX and Windows.

Just download and run get_iplayer PVR manager as described in yesterdays post

Next, using VLC to open a URL such as:

http://127.0.0.1:1935/playlist?PROGTYPES=liveradio

You will get an automatically generated playlist for the programme type you selected.

Valid programme types are:

• tv
• radio
• livetv
• liveradio

Open the playlist in the vlc GUI and you will see all of the available programmes.

Just click on one and it will start playing after a few seconds.

There are many more examples and detailed usage in the comments at the top of the get_iplayer.cgi script if you are interested.

I haven’t tried opening the playlists in anything other than mplayer and vlc so far. When I get a chance I’ll try them out on the Squeezebox also.

Let me know if you get this working on any other players or if you find any other novel uses for it.

Update: Now works on windows except for realaudio channels. Ensure you use flvstreamer v1.8h or later.