Sorry, this programme is currently unavailable

I am a great fan and user of BBC iPlayer, great for catching up on what you have missed and for watching things again (especially when repeated on BBC Three at an unsociable time).

I will often use an iPod touch to watch programmes, either in bed or more often then not connected to my TV. However now and again I get the following message.

Sorry, this programme is currently unavailable

You can see this in the Christmas edition of Doctor Who.

Sorry, this programme is currently unavailable

This means that you have to use a computer to watch the programme. I get the same “error” with the comedy Outnumbered episode seven (but not with the previous six episodes of Outnumbered).

I believe that the error (it’s not really an error, but I think it is) is a rights issue. In other words the rights holders have not allowed the programme to be made available to the iPod touch (or the iPhone).

Why?

Well I suspect that the issue is the way in which BBC iPlayer works on the iPod touch and the iPhone. Basically the BBC serve the iPhone with a DRM free MOV version of the programme. On the iPhone you can’t save this file, so it is not an issue, however a quick Google search provides various ways in which you can get your computer to pretend it’s an iPhone and as a result are able to download the DRM free version of the BBC programme.

Of course I don’t know for sure if this is the issue, or it is a technical problem and the programme just hasn’t (yet) been encoded for the iPhone and the festive break is the cause of the delay.

BBC iPlayer on the Nokia N810

So can you watch content on your Nokia N810

No it doesn’t work as you would like it to, in the main as I guess the processor on the N810 is not powerful enough.

The Flash player on the N810 is the full version which means unlike the iPhone it can access Flash content easily on the web, like BBC iPlayer, but alas though it can access the content, it can’t play it properly.

You can play video on the Nokia N810, but generally you need to encode it specifically for the N810 otherwise it either won’t play or stutters a lot.

Unlike the iPhone, the iPod touch and Google’s G1, as the N810 uses (a variant) of the Firefox browser, the BBC don’t supply the mobile Mp4 files which work on the iPhone and G1 and therefore the N810 is reliant on the Flash versions which (as they are higher quality) require more processing power.

I am going to see if I can play an iPhone BBC iPlayer file on the N810 which should give me an idea if the processor is powerful enough. Will keep you informed.

Seadragon Mobile

In an interesting move, Microsoft Labs have released an application for the iPhone.

Seadragon

Seadragon is designed to provide next-generation visual experiences, regardless of the size of the screen, size of the file or speed of your network. It’s already available on a number of platforms, including Microsoft Surface, and in Photosynth and Silverlight. Now we’re bringing that same graphical smoothness right to the iPhone in your pocket.

Probably the best way to describe it, as a Google Maps but for any large scale image.

Find out more.

Download the app from the iTunes Store.

Fixing Twitterfon

Twitterfon is one of my favourite applications for the iPhone (and iPod touch) however recently it has been crashing consistently everytime I start it up.

According to the Twitterfon website blog, the problem lies with Twitter.

Some users have been reporting me that TwitterFon crashes on launch. This has been happening since this afternoon. The root cause is that twitter has changed their JSON response which favorite status value is null instead of bool unexpectedly and randomly.

Not quite sure that that means as I am not really a techie, honestly!

However all is not lost.

If you apply this patch (and you may have to do it more than once) then it should fix the Twitterfon application until an update is released.

Nokia N97

I see that the Nokia N97 has been announced. A very nice new phone which as well as a touchscreen also has a slide out keyboard.

Obviously designed to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s G1 it is Nokia’a answer to the new internet phone now being demanded by consumers.

There are some early reviews out now, CNET and ZDNet.

Firmware 2.2 on iPod touch stops BBC iPlayer – Update

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.

Firmware 2.2 on iPod touch stops BBC iPlayer

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.

iplayerbbcerror100

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!

JoikuSpotting

I really do like the iPod touch, the interface, the browsing experience, the video playback, the different applications now available.

Of course to get full functionality you need to be in the vicinity of a wireless hotspot. You can’t (for obvious reasons) use a 3G dongle and without bluetooth or the ability to connect a cable you can’t use a tethered mobile phone.

Now I know what you’re saying, get a 3G iPhone, well yes, that is all well and good, but three things are stopping me, one I already have a Nokia N95 which does what I need (well the typing is nowhere as near as nice as on the iPod touch), secondly I am well into a long contract too with T-Mobile. Thirdly, I quite fancy upgrading to the Google G1 phone.

So I was quite interested in trying out JoikuSpot. What JoikuSpot does is basically turn your 3G wifi mobile phone into a wireless hotspot.

So the Nokia N95 connects to the internet via the 3G network and then allows wifi clients connect to it via the 802.11 wifi.

It works very well and is in my opinion very clever.

The free version is limited and doesn’t allow you to do e-mail which is a pity, so I will probably upgrade to the pro version.