Author: jamesclay

Well a couple of interesting bits of information have come my way since I posted yesterday about how firmware 2.2 on the iPod touch stops the BBC iPlayer from working.

Though Apple updated the firmware, and the BBC did not change anything, it is looking like the BBC’s platform/connection detection code is coming to the wrong conclusion.

That code according to FrustratedByiPlayer on the BBC Message Boards, looks like this.

case ‘STATE_CONNECTION_TYPE’:

// hack for demi – in case demi variables mysteriously disappear as they are prone to do.
if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’ && _failOverCount < 3) {
_failOverCount++;
return device.connectionType();
}
else if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’) {
_self.setState(“STATE_MEDIA_UNAVAILABLE”);
return;
};

if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’ && data.response.IP_IS_UK_COMBINED === ‘yes’) {
_state = ‘STATE_IS_MEDIA_AVAILABLE’;
_mediaAssetProfile = data.response[_serviceType.toUpperCase() + ‘_MEDIA_ASSET_PROFILE’];
_self.setMediaAssetProfile(_mediaAssetProfile);
return mediaSelector.mtis(_versionPid, _mediaAssetProfile);
}
else if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’) {
_state = ‘STATE_OUTSIDE_UK’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
}
else {
_state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
};

It is the _state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’; which is the result of the detection code failing to correctly recognise the iPod touch as a wireless device and thinking it is a 3G iPhone.

Note that the 3G iPhone on wifi works fine!

By adding the correct device to the detection code by the BBC web development team this should solve the issue.

Lakeuk on the BBC boards has been able to recreate the error on Firefox.

User Agent for FW 2.1.1 works:-

Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F138 Safari/525.20

User Agent for FW 2.2 gives the error everyone is getting:-

Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77a Safari/525.20

According to the BBC Message boards this message has been passed onto the BBC team.

BBC iPlayer on the iPod touch is one of the best things that arrived on my iPod touch. However bad news if you upgrade to firmware 2.2, you won’t be able to access BBC iPlayer on your iPod touch!

When you try you get the following error message.

Sorry, programmes can only be accessed over a wifi connection.

Hello!

The iPod touch only does wifi!

It would appear that the fault lies with both Apple and the BBC.

The BBC use a browser detection script which identifies that the user is using an Apple iPhone or an iPod touch. I would assume before firmware 2.2 that the browser identifier used by the iPhone and the iPod touch were different when on wifi compared to when the iPhone was using 3G or Edge.

With firmware 2.2 it would appear that the BBC script incorrectly identifies the wifi iPod touch as a 3G iPhone. Now this could be because of a change by Apple on the mobile version of Safari.

So alas at the moment we have no way of watching BBC iPlayer on an updated iPod touch!