A cessation of hostilities?
The iPlayer changed again today, which broke my downloader. It was a surprise to me: I had thought that the cat and mouse game of countermeasure and counter-countermeasure was over. Had the BBC regrouped for another round?
Well, no. It didn’t take me long to understand the changes. In fact, the latest iteration of the iPlayer-for-iPhone is significantly simpler than the last. It’s just a page with an embedded movie. There are no fiddly web bugs to authorise the client, and there’s no need to resolve the programme ID to a version ID first.
I don’t know the reasons behind it, but I’d like to imagine that someone in charge has recognised the quixotic nature of all attempts to thwart downloads. After all, people have now been downloading iPlayer programmes for a couple of years. The sky hasn’t fallen. Why waste time complicating and obfuscating when you could be making it simpler and better?
Have sensible technical decisions prevailed over futile political ones? I can only hope so.
2009-12-16 22:38 UTC. Comments: 4.
Strawp
Wrote at 2009-12-17 13:27 UTC using Firefox 3.5.6 on Windows NT:
No way, really? Are we now back to v1.0 and I can grep a video URL right off the page and queue it in VLC?John Tapsell
Wrote at 2009-12-19 18:39 UTC using Firefox 3.5.6 on Mac OS X:
IPlayer Downloader.Thank you for the update 3.7 which has enabled me to access BBC Radio once again.
Appzo
Wrote at 2009-12-24 19:11 UTC using Firefox 3.0.15 on Windows XP:
Is there a point in linking to old versions here as I now can’t download with your update (v1.14) ?doc
Wrote at 2010-02-05 13:55 UTC using Firefox 3.6 on Windows Vista:
hey paul, just wanted to say im a big fan of your iplayer work.also, just realised we have a connection … i have done some work with mbm in the past. helped tim out on a project or two.
hope all is going well for you guys.
all the best, doc