Friday, September 28, 2012

Download BBC iPlayer content on Linux

My wife informed me last night that I'd missed the start of a new series of a program I like on the BBC. I checked the BBC iPlayer site and found that the episodes I'd missed were still available. I didn't have time to view it right then, so I was intrigued to see a download link which offered an install option for the BBC iPlayer Desktop, which claims to let me download content and watch it later on, but upon clicking it nothing happened.

Apparently there is or was a Linux version of the BBC iPlayer. While Googling it I came across Get_iPlayer, a Linux command line program that downloads content from the BBC web site, but without the 30 viewability limit that iPlayer apparently imposes.

There's a useful tutorial at christopherdowning.co.uk.

The Get_iPlayer website says:
The BBC may at some point choose to effectively protect their streams with DRM or some ‘effective technological measure’ in which case get_iplayer will no longer be a useful tool for those streams.
So it may not work forever.

There are of course some legal and moral issues in downloading BBC content in a fashion that the corporation never intended which now follow:
ZZZZZZ
Too boring, read it on the web site.

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