[RELEASE] iPlayer - BBC Video and Music Plugin (UK only!)

It's worth mentioning, I am not going to spend any time trying to help users work around the BBC's ip restrictions. unblock-us is a proxy system. xbmc will not use a proxy for the actual streams. you would need a vpn to stream via another address with xbmc.

if you manage to watch bbc tv outside of the uk, then well done. This is something you are going to have to work out yourself.

Plugin updated to v2.4.14

get the download here http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/downloads/list or wait for hitcher to add it to his repo.

changes include:
* bbc one / bbc two back on akamai id (rather than akamai_hd)
* search code changes
* don't force dvdplayer for live streams

Thanks, I'll sort it ASAP.

(2012-04-05 21:48)deniadaz Wrote:  I have 2 annoying problems on my apple tv 2 running the final release of xbmc Eden and BBC iplayer plugin-:
Firstly when I select a live channel nothing happens, it's only in the last few days this has stopped working.
Secondly only selected catch-up streams are working for example some programmes are and some are not and it seems random.

I'm not sure if this is connected to the errors but since I have been getting them I get the script failed "service.py" error message in the bottom right corner whenever I turn On XBMC.

Please can someone shed any light on this, and has BBC changed anything over the last days, and does anyone have a solution.....

i have had the exact same issue but haven't checked it out as i also use tvcatchup for live tv... according to my log: ERROR: RTMP_ReadPacket, failed to read RTMP packet header

so i updated rtmp using this post and live streams are back

This addon is ace.

Another vote here for a resume option so the stream can be started from where left off, eg if had to stop watching a programme halfway.

(2012-04-26 19:59)exobuzz Wrote:  Plugin updated to v2.4.14

get the download here http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/downloads/list or wait for hitcher to add it to his repo.

changes include:
* bbc one / bbc two back on akamai id (rather than akamai_hd)
* search code changes
* don't force dvdplayer for live streams

Thanks for this, Working great!

Hi there

I am using this new version and it seems to work perfectly for anything in the library.

The previous version didn't seem to work or played a few minutes and then cut out. I can't get the live streams to work at all.

This is a great plugin and I thank the developer for providing it and making our lives a little bit better for it.

Or put another way thank you for making it easy for the wife to watch EastEnders.

Thank you and any tips on the live streams woud be much appreciated.

Hi "expatuser"

I too am an ex-pat, and to make the live streams work, you will need a VPN, not a proxy.

Now, there is a new plugin for OpenVPN that allows you to control turning on and off an OpenVPN from within XBMC - I'm using it for French programmes and BBC live streams.

Documentation is poor, but OpenVPN is pretty self-explanatory anyway - https://github.com/brianhornsby/openvpn-xbmc

It certainly works for me.

D

Thanks dlake02

I feel a bit stupid now, I have been using overplay vpn and their smart DNS feature to access streams outside the UK, this works really well within the browser and I figured it would should work within XBMC and this plugin.

Well I was wrong, as soon as I loaded the overplay VPN program and it established a connection the live streams worked, I guess somehow the ip is different within the xbmc and this meant that the IP still looked like it was outside the UK, strange as the same computer it works fine within the browser, I wish I was smarter and able to work out what was going on

Actually, looking at what's going on with live streams vs stored content is very interesting.

In the case of stored content, that content is spread over the world, but access to it is only given from a UK IP address hitting the initial server. If you do a quick netstat -a during playback, you'll likely notice that the RTMP stream is being served by a CDN cache very local to you. That is just as well - trying to stream content over an HTTP proxy would result in terrible quality.....

But, when you access live TV via a proxy, you are handed back a valid RTMP stream, but it appears that there is some geo-based ACL at work on the servers.

Many VPNs are rate-limited by ISPs (my local ISP uses deep-packet inspection to rate limit VPNs so I can't even get away with using an alternate port) so I hope that this situation with geographically-dispersed stored content carries on for some time.

Alternatively, I'd like the BBC to wake-up to the commercial potential of hundreds of ex-pats that would like to watch decent telly instead to the utter cr*p that is 258 channels here in the US !!!!

We've taken to watching the news on either TF-1 or the BBC as the news programmes here are just to utterly dire....