Is iPlayer dead?

General discussion relating to the O2 Joggler, from the default O2 setup, to alternative operating systems and applications.
castalla
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Is iPlayer dead?

Post by castalla »

Looks like the end of the line for iPlayer on xbmc, etc.

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/tv/feeds
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dwl99
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by dwl99 »

I'm sure it'll not be long until someone @ XBMC has an add-on for the new api :-)
castalla
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by castalla »

Not so sure .... somebody at xbmc forum posted this: Also, reading the dev notes it looks like they will be applying rate-limiting per key which probably means that you can't embed a single key in an app like this one and get away with ,000s of users using it.
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BuZz
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by BuZz »

ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

BuZz, a massive thank you for keeping the iplayer addon going for as long as you did. It was the BEST!

Spoyser, same to you for the app for the joggler.

#gutted
castalla
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by castalla »

Yep. Big thanks from me. A super functional plugin superseded by a bunch of useless flaky workarounds.

i'm just waiting for the official iplayer apps to start falling over as 'Kevin's' new super-dooper api screws up.
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roobarb!
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by roobarb! »

It is indeed a bit of a bummer.

The previous fella in charge of iPlayer was totally in the mindset of having public feeds, APIs and all of the lovely things that we should be given access to from our public broadcaster. However, after he left, even projects that he championed as the next step have fallen by the wayside. Exactly the same thing happened with the radio feeds system; it was supposed to be replaced by 'Radio DNS' - but they closed the original (perfectly working) feeds that gave you the 'now playing' information and the rest before the new system was ready. To this day, we still have no live information for any station other than Radio 1 in triode's radio iPlayer plugin, because the new system has never been properly finished.

However, clever people are already working on ways of prodding the website for the information required. get_iplayer only needs the programme ID to work, the website provides a very open search function, so I've already seen code popping up to deal with it.

The major annoyance is that it's all hacky-hacky. There should be a proper, open feed.

Actually, one thing that came to mind was building a server that used the Beeb's new Nitro system (urgh, crappy name too) and just reconstituted it all into the original format. A universal middleman, if you will, that everyone could point their software at. That way, only one system would need to be maintained for any curve-balls Aunty would like to throw our way.
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BuZz
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by BuZz »

good idea having a service that sits between - however it may be only a matter of time before they would revoke a key if discovered. The current plugin could be fixed by scraping the www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ site, but as far as I'm concerned - I've had enough of playing cat and mouse with the bbc - over the years they have made considerable efforts to stop 3rd party software using the streams. They have made it clear the nitro API is not for us :
"The iPlayer RSS feeds were never designed or intended to support them," Billings added. "Nitro will almost certainly not support their ways of working. We realise this comes as unwelcome news to users of these clients. The iPlayer team continues to work hard to maximise access to the iPlayer across a wide range of platforms and devices."
I shall leave it to others to continue the battle.... I'm out!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/03 ... _watching/
ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

Live feeds on PNPIII still work. Is that expected to disappear too?
BuZz wrote:good idea having a service that sits between - however it may be only a matter of time before they would revoke a key if discovered. The current plugin could be fixed by scraping the http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ site, but as far as I'm concerned - I've had enough of playing cat and mouse with the bbc - over the years they have made considerable efforts to stop 3rd party software using the streams. They have made it clear the nitro API is not for us :

I shall leave it to others to continue the battle.... I'm out!
I have no idea if you have had help maintaing this over the years but I don't see anyone else jumping in to take over and continue your work on 'this' addon. Don't know if this is due to lack of skill or lack of interest although a quick look at the number of pages on the kodi forum suggests it's the former?

Fortunately the iplayer is still readily and freely available on other platforms/devices, although I wonder if the beeb have a plan for this too.
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BuZz
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by BuZz »

I certainly had some help - There have been a few others with contributions - some of them have direct repository access so you could say they were managing it along with me. Not heard anything from them recently though.

Here is an new alternative plugin though (that scrapes the programmes area of the bbc site for programme ids - this is a mirror link - the plugin is devved on xunitytalk (which you can google for). The script was mirrored due to the nature of other plugins on their site - http://pythonxbmcking.googlecode.com/sv ... bciplayer/
ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

Yes, I saw there was a new plugin - thank you for the link. :)
ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

Wondering if the on demand feeds on PNPIII can be fixed by telling it to get the programming details from the bbc website - like the new addon does. There are codes for this - posted on kodi forum. I've had a look at the cgi file to see if there's anywhere to replace the existing but can't see anything glaringly obvious.

Otherwise i know that someone is trying to get the original iplayer plugin back up. [EDIT: BuZz, i'm delighted that you had a change of heart. Thank you]. If i knew what changes were made i might be able to see if they could be 'copied' - at least to some degree - as changes to that plugin have been successfully applied to this app before.
Last edited by ilovemyjoggler on Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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BuZz
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by BuZz »

Iplayer is back from the dead. mostly

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_knGi ... sp=sharing

2.6.1
* shows beginning with a number were not displayed

2.6.0
* bump version number so people with the "broken" 2.5.91 get updated
* changed category parsing to hopefully work with python older than 2.7
* fixed up search parameters - was using the wrong API function

2.5.10
* Switch from RSS feeds to ion api. Thanks to dlake02 for the initial work/hints.
* Disable Live for now.

more info:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid ... pid1830854
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hawsey
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by hawsey »

You are a star BuZz :-) thanks
Happy Joggling
ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

ilovemyjoggler wrote:Wondering if the on demand feeds on PNPIII can be fixed by telling it to get the programming details from the bbc website - like the new addon does...

Otherwise i know that someone is trying to get the original iplayer plugin back up. [EDIT: BuZz, i'm delighted that you had a change of heart. Thank you]...i might be able to see if [the changes] could be 'copied'...
Well I have now had a look and I think I'll be able to fix this... when hell freezes over!
ramtec
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ramtec »

Can someone advise how I can get this up and running I have downloaded the files Buzz linked to (thanks Buzz) but no idea where to go from there.
ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

ramtec wrote:Can someone advise how I can get this up and running I have downloaded the files Buzz linked to (thanks Buzz) but no idea where to go from there.
http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Install_an ... a_zip_file
ramtec
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ramtec »

I guess that means it's only for XBMC and won't run on the native OS with PNPIII?

Cheers
ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

There is an iplayer app for the native os on pnpIII but it stopped working due to the changes introduced by the beeb. Live feeds worked for a while but they've stopped too (on my jogglers anyway).
ramtec
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Re: Is iPlayer dead?

Post by ramtec »

ilovemyjoggler wrote:There is an iplayer app for the native os on pnpIII but it stopped working due to the changes introduced by the beeb. Live feeds worked for a while but they've stopped too (on my jogglers anyway).

Thanks for the info, I have tried to load xbmc and add on from zip but getting the error iplayer dependancies not met
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