Game Over

2 and a half years wasn't a bad run for this script, but from now it's dead for a number of reasons.

1. BBC's iPlayer now serves iPhone streams over https with certificate checking, and as such 'iplayer-dl' by Paul Battley is now in limbo. I don't think it would be too hard to re-factor his script and mine to fetch the streams, but it would also be trivial for the BBC to block on a certificate basis if they were so inclined.

2. I no longer possess an iPhone - I bought mine from the US (1st generation) 6 weeks after launch (jailbroken and unlocked through ALL firmwares) and never had to pay a penny on it since. It was and is a cool phone but the same feature-set can now be had on less restrictive and frankly cheaper phones.

3. I only used this to archive for viewing on the iPhone, once iPlayer served HD streams I've used Phil Lewis's 'get_iplayer' for archival purposes.

So with some regret and a small relief I'm 'laying in the oars' on ipl2iph.

Cheers

fl3tch

Oh they love to make changes !

Ok thanks to user feedback and the fact im back in the UK, I realised things were broken again.

But I've sorted that again ... download here.

Until the next breakage

Cheers

Showtime !

Fixed again - The Beeb changed the url schema for programme identifiers. Thanks for your feedbacks ! Have been out of the country or I would have got to this sooner. But seeing as my 1st gen iphone is slowly dying (battery life down to 80% of original and now a dead strip thanks to the humidty in Texas) I havent been using the script myself as much as I used to.

If any of my scripts users have an old 1st gen, surplus to requirements that they would be willing to donate it would be much appreciated :D

Anyhoo - as per usual download from here the new version, copy to /usr/bin/ and set permissions of 0777, also delete iplayer_dl from /usr/bin/ to install the latest version.

Until the next breakage ... enjoy

Iphone OS 3.0 Update

Ok I bit the bullet and upgraded to 3.0 the other day, quite painless really, inclusive of redsn0w 0.8 - all is looking good.

Apart from the re-install of ipl2iph....

So while this is fresh in my head, I'll detail the install instructions for 3.0.

1. You should already have Cydia installed, I haven't used Icy yet so I'm unsure its default packages.

2. First off - Cydia doesnt include apt-get by default anymore - so an "apt" package has to be installed. I think it was the apt 6.0 I installed.

3. Install Mobile Terminal from Cydia.

4. Install "Air Sharing" from either iTunes or the App Store, then run it at least once.

5. Get the latest copy of ipl2iph

6. Transfer to /usr/bin/ on the iPhone and set permissions of 777

7. Look up a programme on the iplayer site on iPhone and HIT REFRESH.

8. Open Mobile Terminal and type su

9 enter the root password (usually alpine).

10 type ipl2iph

11 answer y to all prerequisite installs.

12 wait .. time passes .. done.

Some technical changes have occurred since the last OS. My script works by looking up the SuspendState.plist on the iPhone to determine the last visisted iplayer "page" and then pass that info onto Paul Battley's iplayer downloading script. This plist used to be quite sparse but now contains your back/forward history of Safari tabs as well as the tab content, for when you re-open Safari. Which means it was quite a struggle to extract the correct ID for the intended programme. So as long as the refresh button is punched and the script is run subsequently, you should end up with the correct download.

Also the plutil command has been updated with better xml handling, but gave me a headache with not finishing its job fast enough.

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).