iPlayer annoyance (me being a tard?)

[OCdude]

Maybe I'm somehow misunderstanding how the iPlayer desktop software and/or licensing works, but does anyone have an explanation for this problem I'm having?

As you can see, i've downloaded the "Great British Food Revival series", all of which are available until at least the 8th of April:

Checking the BBC site - only 1 episode is available there:

When I try and play any of the "available until 8th/18th April" episodes, i get:

...and then it's removed from the list.

So I think to myself "ohh i've got weeks to catch up on series ABC" then when it comes to watching them, it pretty much goes "oh LOL, you thought you could watch this? Naw, i'll just delete it for you instead".

Now I don't know if this is "normal behaviour" or if this is some kind of broken DRM crud? I've been through the rigmarole of having to reinstall Adobe AIR and reinstalling the iPlayer desktop software previously, so i'm assuming it's not...

I've emailed the support team - they just responded with a generic "this is how to fix download issues" page... so I guess they didn't even bother to read my actual question!

Does anyone else get this? Am I missing something?

 

[Tute]

I don't know about iPlayer Desktop but if you want to get something off there to watch later, get hold of get_iplayer and use that - it'll download the programme to a DRM-free file that you can play in WMP.

 

[twist3d0n3]

sorry for the slight hijack, but will that work outside of the uk without having to faff around with proxies tute?

 

[Pho]

Fairly sure you have to be within the UK to use it still.

There's tonnes of unlimited usage VPN services out there which will let you appear as if you're in the UK (or US, or wherever) for ~£5/month though. Less faff than proxies, just connect and boom .

 

[Azuse05]

Error occurring has been a pain since adobe released the air update that nuked the iplayer. Neither the bbc or adobe have managed to fix it entirely. It's worse on windows 8.

Close the iplayer, go to C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Roaming and delete the BBCiPlayerDesktop folder there along with the BBCiPlayerDesktop folder in the *Adobe\AIR\ELS\ then restart the iplayer desktop.

Won't recover deleted programs but it will force it to re-acquire all licences and make any programs that suddenly vanish reappear.

Really is worth spending an hour getting to know get_iplayer.

 

[Tute]

sorry for the slight hijack, but will that work outside of the uk without having to faff around with proxies tute?

Afaik it basically connects to iPlayer to download the show so I expect it still goes through the same region checks. Best to go for some kind of proxy tool.

 

[Sin_Chase]

I don't know about iPlayer Desktop but if you want to get something off there to watch later, get hold of get_iplayer and use that - it'll download the programme to a DRM-free file that you can play in WMP.

Don't forget the –vmode=flashhd switch for programs that are available in HD!

 

[Tute]

--modes flashhd1

 

[ste_bla]

Don't forget the –vmode=flashhd switch for programs that are available in HD!

Where would I put this?

Im using the windows version which opens a webpage to get bits?

 

[Sin_Chase]

On the command line

get_iplayer --get ### --vmode=flashhd

### being the program Id you can find by searching with get_iplayer "Name of programme"