get_iplayer

get_iplayer is a Perl script that allows users to search, index, download or stream the following services:

BC iPlayer TV - H.264 / Quicktime / mov and Flash / AVI
BBC iPlayer Radio (Local and National) - 128+ kbps MP3 / AAC and Realaudio
BBC Podcasts - 128 kb/s MP3 / AAC
BBC iPlayer TV subtitles - SubRip / srt
ITV player Catch-up or classic TV - WMV / ASF
Hulu.com* TV - MP4
Hulu.com* Closed-captions / subtitles - SubRip / srt

get_iplayer has PVR-like capabilities (like Sky+ / TiVo / Series-Link); You can save lists of programme searches which are automatically downloaded when they become available.

The H.264 feeds from the BBC are higher quality than in the Flash iPlayer (normal quality) or the Wii. See the beebhack wiki for a comparison. They are intended for the Apple iPhone and are consequently made difficult to download for any other OS. The same goes for the iPhone MP3 radio streams. Although there is now a new feature which allows downloading fo the flash based content using rtmpdump.

Myself and a few others worked out how to work around these problems and now have tools which essentially simulate an iPhone as far as the BBC web servers are concerned.

get_iplayer, does the downloading, indexing and searching of the iPlayer TV/Radio/ITVplayer programmes and podcasts available. It can even stream the iPlayer TV programmes while downloading them to mplayer or xine, etc. It does not circumvent any digital rights management security (see the BBC’s website on how to do that with the Windows-only DRM content they provide). The BBC iPlayer only works in the UK and Hulu.com* in the USA.

Uses

The script is intended for use for playing back iPlayer/ITVplayer/Hulu* content on devices that cannot support adobe Flash/Air/Silverlight, systems which run entirely on open-source software (i.e. no Adobe flash/air or Silverlight), downloading content for mobile devices that have no access to broadband/wi-fi or running on devices that have such limited memory that running a browser with a flash player or AIR is not possible (or not permitted). For me this would be an Xbox running Xebian Linux with Freevo or XBMC. The Xbox only has 64Mb of memory and struggles enormously with Adobe flash (Adobe doesn’t permit you run flash player or AIR on a games console either). Of course, to respect the BBC’s and ITV content providers’ wishes and fair-use legislation, you should keep the downloaded content for no longer than it would be available on the BBC iPlayer / ITV web site, not attempt to obtain it from outside of the UK and not redistribute it. If you want to get higher quality TV programmes then this is not the tool for you. You would be better off getting a DVB-T tuner card or a DTV PVR. get_iplayer is not intended for use in making illegal copies of copyrighted content. Please respect the rights of the content owners when recording.

Features:

• Downloading video, audio and podcasts from BBC, ITV and Hulu* sites
• PVR functionality allows predefined searches to be downloaded from a scheduler such as cron or Windows scheduler
• Rewrites the movie file on-the-fly, if required, so that it can be streamed before being fully downloaded
• Resume downloads of partially downloaded content
• Stream iPlayer or podcast content via mplayer or xine while downloading it
• Allow multiple programmes to be downloaded in one command
• Indexing of all available programmes
• Script update capability
• Caching of Programme Indices
• Creation of basic html and xml index files
• HTTP Proxy support
• Advanced Searching on programme name, episode, description, channel or category, etc
• Limit search by programmes made available after a specific number of hours
• Automatic prompting to remove content downloaded more than 30 days ago
• Meta-tagging of downloaded iPlayer iPhone/H.264 and mp3 files for importing into iTunes

What is new in this release:

• Don't attempt to update plugins if packagemanager is set
• Makefile now updates version number in web page
• Fixed creation of symlink to latest version
• Improve documentation of PVR options
• Removed ID3 tagging for AAC audio files
• Automatically update date in manpage when it changes
• Update authors section in manual pages
• Record contributors when releasing a new version
• Add MP3 VBR option for AAC transcoding
• Handle embedded param name in Akamai auth token
• Ensure that for loops always receive array even if only one episode
• Revamped --showoptions and search options initialisation
• Option to mux video as MKV instead of MP4
• new tagging implementation
• Use File::Spec functions for programme/thumbnail file paths
• Fix broken flashhd downloads.
• Typo fixes
• Ensure output file extension changes with download mode
• Ensure safe 32-bit date if timegm() fails
• Use File::Spec->rel2abs to sanitise output directory
• Add --aactomp3 option to force transcoding AAC to MP3
• Output AAC as M4A for iTunes with metadata tags
• Add Radio 4 Extra
• fixed regression as this broke the path used by get_iplayer for update
• Update version number in web page. Must fix release script

What is new in version 2.36:

• The experimental localfiles MP3 plugin was added, which requires MP3::Info.
• The --page, --pagesize, --sort=, and --sortreverse options were added to control output of displayed matches.
• Metadata extraction was improved for URL-based recordings.
• The itv plugin was removed because it no longer works.
• Absolute paths are saved in history.
• Thumbsize support was made more intuitive.
• Detection for BBC streaming URLs with mediaselector params in them was added.
• The 'Quick URL' box was added to Web PVR Manager to allow a user to record or play any supported BBC video/audio page.
• The 'Delete' button was added.
• The 'Hide deleted recordings' option was added.
• A preferences tab was added.

What is new in version 2.32:

• History entries can now be listed and searched by adding --history.
• The --info, thumbonly/metadataonly/subsonly options can now be used with --history to get metadata after recording.
• The --thumbonly option was added to download the thumbnail without recording the programme.
• A bug where iplayer name and episode was parsed incorrectly if there was no ':' in the title was fixed.
• Incorrectly interpreted error return codes from open3 external commands were fixed.
• Increasingly destructive signals are sent to spawned commands if a SIGTERM/PIPE/INT is received.
• A SIGTERM handler for the external program calls was added.

What is new in version 2.27:

• The new --series option was added, which lists only series names with a number of episodes and categories.
• Thumbnail size support was added.
• Use --thumbsize=N to select the size of the thumbnails in the cache (use --info to see available thumbnail sizes).
• Use --thumbsizemeta=N to select the size of the thumbnails used in the metadata.
• The --help-basic option was added for a simple help page.
• Accuracy was improved for TV/radio feed 'name' and 'episode' parsing.
• A bug where streaming-only mode would fail if the recorded file already existed was fixed.
• The 'Series' link was added to each prog to allow the creation of a PVR record for that series.

What is new in version 2.26:

• 'Popular' and 'Highlights' TV and radio programmes are now tagged as categories. Use --category=popular or --category=highlights to use them.
• A longer description is extracted from BBC iPlayer metadata for info and metadata files.
• Support was dropped for rtmpdump versions older than 1.5.
• Invocation of flvstreamer, id3v2, vlc, ffmpeg, and mplayer was improved to avoid using the shell.
• A bug was fixed where unlink was called as a command when purging old recordings.
• The realaudio --wav and --raw modes on non-Unix platforms were fixed.
• A new automated installer was released.
• In PVR Manager, external commands use non-shell invocation if possible.

What is new in version 2.22:

• A small bug where the number of matches was not displayed in non-PVR mode was fixed.
• The "Audio Described" category search was added to TV mode.
• The method of merging the list of programme versions for TV/radio modes was changed.
• The "Misc" options were made visible in advanced/long help mode.

What is new in version 2.21:

• This release adds a --packagemanager=disable option for externally managed get_iplayer packages.
• It changes /etc/get_iplayer/options to /var/lib/get_iplayer/options as a default system-wide options file for *nix to comply with Linux FHS.
• It will give a warning if options exist in /etc/get_iplayer/options.
• A --metadataonly option has been added to retrieve program metadata without streaming or recording the program.
• Thumbnails can also be retrieved alone by using --thumbnail option with --metadataonly.
• The --metadata=xbmc_movie format has been added/improved.
• If --multimode is used, all modes are recorded in one invocation of get_iplayer.

What is new in version 2.16:

• This release adds a new 'flashstd' iPlayer TV mode (480kbps H.264 640x360).
• It changes the default TV modes to: iphone, flashhigh, flashstd, and flashnormal.
• It fixes thumbnails and Web URLs for liveradio and livetv.
• PVR Manager has tooltip help.
• Program types are displayed in a multi-row table for better readability.
• All user-definable fields sent to get_iplayer are URLencoded to improve security.
• A --listen option has been added for a listen address, which defaults to 0.0.0.0 (and warns the user of insecure remote access capability if 127.0.0.1 is not used).
• A script update feature has been added.
• A 'Queue' button has been added for each program.

What is new in version 2.00:

• Tag substitution now uses version-specific metadata about the recorded programme.
• Caveat: if --pid is used to record a programme less metadata will be obtained
• Added and tags to allow for these download timestamp tags in filenames etc.
• Options presets can be applied so that you can have a saved set of options and invoke them using --preset or -z
• User options and Presets can now be edited as follows
• Option --prefs-show displays all options in the user options or preset if specified
• Options --prefs-add and --prefs-del adds/deletes specified options from the user options file or preset if specified
• Option --prefs-clear removes *all* options from the current preset or user options
• Option --preset selects predefined sets of options
• Option --preset-list lists all saved options presets
• Using --save option now reports an error telling user to use --pref options
• Option --pvr-single runs a specifically named PVR search
• User profile direcotry can now be overridden using --profile-dir

Requirements:

• Perl
• libwww-perl
• MPlayer
• LAME
• rtmpdump