[Nottingham] BBC iPlayer

[Richard Ward]

Simon Sleaford wrote:
> Hello all
> 
> I'm trying to use BBC iPlayer on my lowly netbook. What's confusing me 
> is that streaming the programmes works without a hitch, fluid fullscreen 
> playback. If I download the files for offline watching then it really 
> struggles, with lots of dropped frames. I've tried disabling compiz and 
> it makes no difference at all. This is frustraing for me because I have 
> a slow connection at home but a very fast one at work so I'd rather 
> download  a few files to watch in the evenings when streaming isn't 
> possible.
> 
> Other than buying a beefier machine (not possible currently) can anybody 
> give me any suggestions of things to try to get this working a little 
> better?
> 
> For the record, I'm running Ubuntu 9.04, restricted codecs installed, 
> flash player 10 installed. Netbook is a EEE1000h with 2gb of RAM.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Simon
> 
> 
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I assume you are using the new Adobe Air thing that the bbc have? I 
haven't tried to download any programs since they introduced that. Its 
possible that the linux version of Air is slow as its less mature than 
flash, I don't know.

What I use is get_iplayer (http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/). I 
actually heard about it from this mailing list, and have been using it 
since. It allows download of streams in various formats/qualities for 
use in whatever media player you like. Its a command line app, but quite 
easy to use. There are GUIs available for it 
(http://www.google.co.uk/#q=get_iplayer+gui) though I have not tried 
them. You'll also need to grab flvstreamer (see the FAQ on the 
get_iplayer site or the docs). If you have any trouble getting it up and 
running then shout up.

I believe the software is legal in this country (I believe that parts of 
it are not in the US for example) and I believe that it does not break 
the terms and conditions of the iPlayer if you don't keep your 
downloaded files for more than 30 days, but to cover my back I suggest 
that you determine this for yourself :).

Hope that helps.
Richard