State of play

Firstly - Air Sharing is still free !

With each upgrade this app is getting better and better. I know a lot of you like having as many apps as possible on the iPhone, but for me finding the ones that will do as many functions as possible is the key.
So I'll continue to support this app for some time to come. Mainly due to its ability to view video and audio in the same package. Where MxTube (at the moment) is falling down is the screen estate given to video descriptions. This is OK for occasional youtube vids, but with multiple episodes of the same tv series, they are hard to differentiate (not to mention the xml cludgery to get the videos listed).
All in all, the ipl2iph script will only be updated for "air sharing" for now.

Secondly - The SUDO problem.

Was looking to make the scripts run as mobile and added some support for this. Unfortunately I couldnt get all the functionality I wanted as mobile without adding an entry to the SUDOERS file. This was too much of a risk (both for security and the filesystem) for the average / inexperienced user. Also the SUDO package was no longer installed by default by Cydia, so some new users experienced problems initially.
So the answer for now is that SUDO has been written out of the scripts, making the change of user to root, to run the scripts essential.

Thirdly - BBC Radio arrives on iPhone

Some of you may be aware that the iPlayer website now serves radio to the iPhone. In conjuntion with the Beebhack team I / we looked into the process and Paul Battley made a slight adjustment to his script (iplayer-dl) to faciltate the mp3 downloads.
So just visit the entry for the desired radio programme on the iPlayer site, hit refresh and run the script as per usual.
If you havent updated iplayer-dl in a while - using winscp / finder etc. go to /usr/bin/ and delete iplayer-dl. On next run of my script it will be automatically updated to the newest version.
Adjusting the script to make the mp3's go to a radio folder is next on my todo list.

Lastly - Accessing BBC iplayer from outside the UK.

I get a fair amount of questions regarding this issue. As a BBC licence payer I value the service the BBC provides but dont always agree with their distribution methods. But I have from time to time, been known to download BBC content from abroad.

Best Method - UK Based VPN, without a doubt the easiest and most reliable. Unless your employer provides such a service, you are going to have to part with cash for this. Personally I pay about $10 a month for a 3 way vpn access i.e UK , US & Canada.

UK Based Proxy - works ok, but if its a free proxy it will either be slow or unavailable a lot of the time. My script will work with a UK based proxy (but you will have to dig inside the script and comment/uncomment the correct lines).

The download speed through the proxy method can be increased though. After some intense experimentation whilst outside the UK, it has been proven that the BBC doesn't geo-check the download stage, only the authentication stage.

Looking for beta testers on this method - comment below to sign up - will review on a case by case basis. I've seen people charging for the information above, which I find abhorrent as they donate nothing back to the BBC.

Anyway newest version of ipl2iph - for "air sharing"

Cheers

Air Sharing update

Air Sharing got an update - and screwed the pooch for my scripts, they changed the name of the app to have no spaces in the title so the download folders got screwed .

Minor fix for podget and ipl2iph for updated air sharing only.

Air Sharing application from the App Store

For a period of 2 Weeks the application "Air Sharing" will be for free in iPhone app store.

Looks like a nice solution for viewing locally stored files. Can be mounted over network (wifi) for fetching / putting files on the iPhone.

So I'm going to alter my previous scripts to download to this applications storage directories. In practice this will mean not having multiple apps for viewing audio & video.

Altered scripts are here for podget and ipl2iph. (fixed the initial folders bug)

As usual copy to /usr/bin/ with permissions of 0777 and run as root.

Requirements are again handled by Cydia and Air Sharing app is manditory (grab it from iTunes while its free).

New script for BBC podcasts

The BBC have been kind enough to supply podcasts online for iphone users for some time.

Previously I have used the wonderful MobileCast for downloading podcasts on the fly i.e. without iTunes syncing. But again post 2.0 MobileCast is yet to resurface.

In the meantime I've put together another script for downloading BBC podcasts - this time using the new dTunes app to play the file (credits to Richard Shearman http://rsapps.wordpress.com/).

Procedure is as follows:

On the iPhone visit the BBC podcast site for iPhone

Look up your required podcast and allow it to play for a second or so...

Quit from Safari and launch Terminal...

run the new script (podget) as root...

Once the script completes you should find the new podcast available to play under dTunes.

download the script from here, as usual install to /usr/bin/ with permissions of 0777.
(Cydia is a pre-requisite for auto installation of required files, otherwise dTunes & wget must be installed for functionality)

enjoy ... I'll stick a video up when I'm not doing what I'm paid to do.

First Public Release (Beta)

After much tinkering and tweaking here is the first version of the ipl2iph script.

Should work on any jailbroken iphone, at a minimum Cydia & Terminal must be on the phone and your ip is UK based.

The script will check for the prerequisite apps and install them automatically (I hope!).

Download the script and copy to the /usr/bin/ directory with permissions of 0777

To prevent any screw ups with MxTube, download and save at least one video from youtube to create the initial library.

Instructions for use.

In Safari go to bbc.co.uk/iplayer (make sure there are no other iplayer pages loaded in other tabs).

Naviate to the desired program. (check for little blue arrow, it indicates that the video is available for the iphone)

To "lock in" the address hit refresh on the title bar. (this part frustrated me for hours).

Leave Safari - Go to Mobile Terminal - type su ,then enter the root password which is alpine

Type ipl2iph

Follow the scripts instructions for prerequisites. The script will ask whether to look up the last visited iplayer programme, answer with yes (answering anything else will prompt for the identifier which begins b00xxxxx

When script finishes, leave mobile terminal - go to MxTube and you should find the programme listed in the library.

Additional notes.

Downloads will resume if stopped, just look up last visited again. If the script freezes for any reason or you want to get out without rebooting, you need to enter the ctrl-Z command.
This is no easy feat in Mobile Terminal as there is no ctrl key on the iphone.
To achieve this press the ".?123" key, then "#+=" key, then the key that looks like a "fat full-stop" (this is the ctrl key !) then "ABC" key, shift key and finally "Z". 6 key-presses for a two key sequence !

I havent included proxy function on this release, but it is built into the script if you explore it and comment / uncomment the correct lines.

Check it out here

Again credits to Paul Battley for the iplayer-dl script
Beebhack
Jay Freeman (saurik)
Erica Sadun
MxWeas