[Fsuk-manchester] Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Fwd: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?]

[Dave Crossland]

On 08/03/2008, Tim Dobson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Can anyone verify this works?

The "this" tim refers to is:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: address@hidden <address@hidden>
Date: 8 Mar 2008 18:05
Subject: Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
To: address@hidden


> If I wasn't at Centerparcs right now you'd be looking at some kind of
 > download script to pull down video automatically. I reckon that pretty
 > much fills the protocol problem we were having with XBMC...


Very quick mod of my other script which worked out the RTMP URL. I've
 stripped out a lot of that and changed it so that it calls wget on the
 MP4 location instead, outputting to a sensible save file name:

  http://strawp.net/files/download/iplayer_dl.zip

 Bit busy this weekend, but that's my 30 minute hack. I've only tested
 it on one feed (Mad Men, ep1) and only under linux, but it seems quite
 happy. Requires PHP5 and wget. Should work under Windows with tweaks
 to a couple of lines.

 Cheers,

Iain
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Which is based on http://www.flickr.com/photos/twindx/2316284105/ that says:

 "The BBC have just launched a version of their iPlayer that works with
 the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Instead of streaming Flash, it streams an
 MP4... but they don't let non-iPhone users know it's an option. So, I
 used the User Agent Switcher to set Firefox to claim to be an iPhone,
 and in place of the normal Flash playback doofer, I got a Quicktime
 one instead... and nothing much happened. It turns out it's because it
 won't actually stream, it wants to download the whole thing. That's no
 problem though, I get 600kb/sec downloads at work =)

 So, I got out Firebug and found the stream; then copied and pasted it
 into the address bar, and it started downloading to play in Firefox
 again. Not what I wanted - so I went to Save Page As... and saved the
 MP4 file. And then realised that I was actually, at this point, trying
 to download it three times (the original iPlayer window, the new
 QuickTime-only tab and the download) so I closed everything else, and
 watched it download the mp4 at the aforementioned 600kb/sec.

 Once finished, I knew it had worked - hovering the pointer over the
 file in Windows Explorer showed its dimensions (480x272), and moments
 later an entirely randomly chosen programme was playing in VLC.

 So, who fancies cobbling together some code to automate this, to do
 what the BBC has failed to do all along - make a reasonable quality
 iPlayer download service for platforms other than Windows, which lacks
 DRM?"

-- 
Regards,
Dave