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Amid all the news about BBC iPlayer on the Mac and Linux, you may not realise that it is possible to watch BBC iPlayer on a range of devices, including the Playstation 3 (PS3).
You need to be running the latest firmware, I upgraded mine to version 2.53.
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.
Well I know you are thinking that you could access BBC iPlayer already on your Mac or Linux PC!
Well what we’re talking about here is not the Flash based web BBC iPlayer, but the iPlayer which allows you to download BBC programmes and watch them while offline.
Not tried it yet, but thinking it could be useful for train journeys.
Read more on BBC News.
The BBC has created a version of the iPlayer that works with both Mac and Linux computers.
The two systems, which have been able to stream BBC programmes via the iPlayer for a year, will now be able to handle downloads.
The BBC, working with Adobe, has developed the new version, known as BBC iPlayer Desktop.
Well the BBC have fixed the issue with the device detection, so BBC iPlayer now works on the iPod touch with firmware 2.2.
Yay.
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!
I knew Spooks was coming back this autumn, however not watching much on the television recently meant I didn’t see any trailers. Nor did I get a newspaper either, so didn’t know that it was on tonight at 9pm.
Years ago it would have been a problem as I would have to wait until repeats.
Now we have a few technologies which make it much easier.
I could wait until it appears on DVD, though generally with BBC programmes it takes a long time to get onto DVD.
With Freeview I can watch repeats on BBC Three later this week…
And of course BBC iPlayer means I can watch it now, less than 30 minutes after it finished on BBC One.
Cool.
Well despite trying a few things, I still can’t get the BBC iPlayer working on my Nokia N95, either to stream or download BBC programmes.
Next thing to try is upgrading the Nokia N95 firmware.
If that doesn’t work then I am going to forget it.
A couple of days ago I mentioned that BBC iPlayer was now available on certain Nokia S60 phones including the Nokia N95.
I did have a go and well let’s just say it wasn’t a great success.
So this morning, with what is being Sunday morning and all, decided to try the service again, wasn’t holding out much hope.
Interestingly when I started the BBC iPlayer application there was a message saying an updates was available. Usually when I see that and my application is working fine and there are no new features I ignore them, in this case though, obviously having problems, I did go ahead and download and install the update.
First major difference was that it was now possible to download programmes from BBC iPlayer, something which wasn’t possible before this update and before has only been an available service on the Windows platform.
So selecting something, I clicked download…
4%…
56%…
98%…
Error!
Hmmm.
Phone must be registered with BBC Content Provider. Register phone now?
I guess so…
Unable to download…
Okay
Tried again.
Unable to play content
Okay let’s try the streaming once more.
Oh that still doesn’t work.
Well that’s fifteen minutes of my life I am not going to get back!
I was quite interested in reading this article on the BBC iPlayer for the S60 series of phones.
It seems that the BBC’s version of iPlayer for S60 has gone live, download it here. It has been implemented as a web runtime widget that kicks off streaming in RealPlayer. And it’s also, naturally, a bit fussy about which devices it installs on. It seems happy with the N78, N95 and N96.
Well having enjoyed using BBC iPlayer on the iPod touch, was quite interested to see it working on my Nokia N95.
Well as you can see from this video capture, I did not have a huge amount of success.
I was using wifi and I had configured RealPlayer to use wifi, but still no joy. The video would start, but then it would just start to buffer and eventually the connection would fail.
Hopefully I can get it working soon.