How to download DRM-free video from BBC iPlayer
Updated 15th March: Below will no longer work for iPlayer downloads. :( With scripting - iPlayer behaviour can still be mimicked to get the goodies. Read the bottom of the comments for links to alternative methods.
Updated 9th March: Have corrected the bookmarklet which seemed to be getting cut short when you dragged it to your toolbar. Also tested with the Mac OS X and works for me using VLC as the player.
Yes it's true. The new version of iPlayer for the iPhone delivers mpeg4's without the "You have 4 more hours to watch this show", self-destructing DRM of the Windows Media version. They are 480x272 which is decent, and a 45 minute show comes in around 160MB.
You have to jump through a few hoops to download these, but once it's set up it's easy to download whenever you want, so bear with me.
- First you'll want to make your browser appear as if it's an iPhone. I'm working with Firefox, so sorry if this isn't your browser. Download one of the many handy Firefox plugins, The User Agent Switcher.
- After installation and browser restart, add a new User Agent and supply the following information (Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options > Options)
- Description: iPhone
- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
- App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
- App Version: Version/3.0
- Platform: Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3
- Now switch to having your browser masquerading as the iphone (Tools > User Agent Switcher -> iphone)
- Fire up an iPlayer page of choice.
- Find out the URL that links to the video by dragging this handy bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. iPlayerURL2
- Click the bookmarklet and the the URL you want should appear under the title of the video on the iPlayer page.
- Paste this into a new Firefox tab, the iPlayer site will respond and it will begin to download in your browser. This is a pain, so hit the stop button ("X" in a circle), and instead save the page (File > Save page as..)
- Bingo, your Downloads window should now pop open to show you the progress of the download, and the mpeg4 is yours forever to keep! You will want to download and play them in VLC which is by far the most accommodating of all the players, and is free.
Don't forget to reset your user agent back to default, otherwise you may find you're viewing iPhone mobile versions of web pages.
Also, not all the iPlayer content is yet available yet as the service was only launched Friday 7th March. I'm not sure if the BBC was meaning to release DRM free files, so this information may not be useful forever.
Thanks to PainInTheTech for the User Agent info, and Irregular Shed for his discovery of this iPlayer "feature".
Here's The Sky at Night playing in VLC on a Mac
Labels: Mac tips, tv, windows tips
19 comments
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Ahhh, Harrison Ford looks good! What a relief. Here's a slide show from IMDB of production stills. His co-star Marion (Karen Allen), the hard drinking bar owner from Raiders of The Lost Ark looks almost unchanged. Raiders of the Lost Ark was released in 1981, making her 27 years older. I want her skincare regime/surgeon/diet of stemcells.
Remember handsome Jan-Michael Vincent from Airwolf? The same can't be said about him. At 64, 2 years younger than Harrison, he's not quite so fit and well. This youtube video from last year of JMV makes me not want to drink alcohol ever again. It's so sad I won't even embed it on this page.
Other links of mention are the new HBO show In Treatmeat with Gabriel Byrne as a psychotherapist, bound to be another storming success.
0 comments
Gone in 60 Seconds or I made a BAFTA one minute film
It's been raining for so long. However, it's sunny today and shortly I shall avail myself of this computer and take a stroll to the beach, kicking pebbles, perhaps sighing deeply, looking for all intents and purposes like a wistful dreamer, thinking big thoughts. Or that's the image I wouldn't mind projecting. So quickly on to an announcement. This New Year I made a one minute movie with a friend. It's nominally for a competition between Bafta and Orange (who love to promote themselves as film sponsors) and asked amateur film makers to submit a one minute piece on the theme "Unite". Yes, an unpleasant brief, but one we tackled with agnosticism. With about 2 weeks to write something, cast, shoot and edit it, especially over the Christmas and New Year period, we really surprised ourselves. A few story ideas came and went - mostly due to logistics and cost, and we fixed on a simple if slightly contrived story that we thought we could fit into a minute. Shot in a day, and captured and edited in a day, we managed to get it onto the website with mere hours to spare. A great learning experience, there are a few things I would have done differently - but all in all for getting a story across in a minute, I'm pleased. The film will be on the website until the end of January, please feel free to have a look and of course, give it 5 stars. No registration is necessary, and if you're reading this I'm hoping you are utterly biased and happy to cast aside your honest critical judgment to make me look good. It's called Simply Delicious, watch it here. The movies will be judged by the local film councils at the end of the month and a number of finalists (depending on quality and number of entrants) for each region will be put forward to a public vote. In the unlikely case our film survives the selection you can bet you'll hear from me again. (Note 28th of January is the day the public voting officially opens, votes before that are purely for show). Thanks to all the people we roped into helping us, "It was amazing to work with you guys. Such vision, dedication... " Apologies, we've slipped into my Bafta speech. Oh and very very quickly (the sun sets at about 4 o'clock) some TV/DVD tips. The Wire Season 1: Fantastic HBO series about Narcotics agents on a case in the Projects of Baltimore. I have been slow to chase this up, but it's got some brilliant writing and characterisation and also great insights into drug culture, and police procedure in the US. More on this when I have finished the series. Pushing Daisies Season 1: By Bryan Fuller of "Dead like me" a light comedy, drama about a man who can bring things back to life. Pure eye candy if you like the kitsch, re-invented 50's styling, however not terribly funny or deep. Think Tim Burton (mostly Chocolate Factory/Edward Scissor Hands) in a Desperate Housewives, voiced over style. Doesn't work quite, but a good effort. 5 Easy Pieces Loving my 70's movies at the moment. Awesome performance by Jack Nicholson, and although it's a long (2 hour) film, some scenes make it worth the effort. The angry woman who hitches a ride in particular, bedraggled dark hair, on her way to Alaska because it "looks so clean". She complains incessantly of how "filthy" man is, followed repeatedly by "It makes me so angry, I just don't want to talk about it". Great stuff. Also Jack Nicholson's character mocking the peculiar walk of his relative Carl (incidentally played by Ralph Waite who will forever be John Walton Sr of The Waltons) during a game of table tennis. It rings so true I wouldn't be surprised if it was improvised. A word of advice, I enjoyed this as I hadn't read a synopsis of any sort, and the film is one I believe is best enjoyed in ignorance. 0 comments
Bionic Woman trailer!
It's cool! And Katee "Starbuck" Sackhoff is a baddie! Go NBC, can't wait to see this one! Watch trailer
Labels: battlestar, tv
0 comments
Moving Pictures update and the Muppet Show curse
I really, really want to meet Simon Pegg. What he finds funny is what I find funny.. Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and now Hot Fuzz, we need more talent like this in the UK.
Although Hot Fuzz has the feeling of being "loads of the cool ideas that didn't fit in Shaun of the dead" it's still a cracking laugh, poking fun at the English in the way only an affectionate native could. It's a slow starter but picks up pace after the first half an hour. Perhaps it's 10 minutes overlong at just over 2 hours, but it doesn't necessarily drag. My favourite bits include the way in the small village of Sandford, they constantly mispronounce "London", the somerset PC whose mumblings have to be interpreted, and the mention of "brain freeze" over a Cornetto. Brilliant cast that we've seen in all the other Wright/Pegg outings, and it really looked like a load of fun to make. I was surprised at the inclusion of some hilarious death scenes too (now we know why villages always want to Save the Church roof). I also enjoyed the pacey editing style of Chris Dickens (same editor on SOTD and some Spaced) who IMDB tells me has just completed editing Ringam Ledwidge's first feature Gone. Ringan incidentally was a half decent commercials director so that film is on my to see list.
Manly
Also watched the first 3 episodes of The Dresden Files showing on the Sci-Fi channel, from the books by Jim Butcher. Took all my will power to stomach the cheesy lines and the too-handsome-to-be-straight stubbled features of Harry Dresden himself, Paul Blackthorn who apparently is both English and was the grim reaper in a Virgin commercial. Bizarre. However - this genre bender is standard fare at the moment. It's old fashioned Mike Hammer private investigations, including the required VO ("Sushi, that's what my ex-wife called me. Raw fish") mixed with the ever popular fantasy, magic, good versus evil world used in Buffy, Harry Potter or Charmed (lets hope less of the Charmed influence!). First couple of episodes were a bit awkward, but by the third you could see there would be some longer arcs that might get interesting, and Dresden had a heady encounter with an attractive lycanthrope, which managed to reel me in. It's not as smart as Buffy, or as prettily vacuous as Charmed, but somewhere inbetween. I'm holding out on a judgement untill I've seen more.
Before I forget, and it was some time ago, I made a special effort to catch Children of Men, the pet project of director Alfonso Cuaron. SFX / Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB like this movie. My friends like this movie. This according to all I have heard should have been my film of last year, but it really didn't work for me.. Clive Owen doesn't do that much really.. struggles a bit, apologises to some fighting rebels, delivers some flat lines in his mystery accent.. the supporting cast fail to do just that, and I found no-one in the whole film that I related to or cared about. So, the somewhat bleak end was actually a huge relief for me. Oh, some kudos is due for the excellent scene with almost no cuts where Owen in a small car in a wooded lane gets ambushed. That was cool, and exciting. But that was it.
Last words: Someone stop Michael Caine (born Maurice Micklewhite, trivia fans) from overacting, please. He's was bearable in The Prestige, and he always done a fine job of doing Michael Caine style characters, but in Children of Men, we are supposed to believe he's some kind of eccentric aging hippie. No he isn't - and he can't do accents other than his own. After people have guested on the Muppet show, it's hard to see them as anything other than caricatures of themselves. Mark Hamil, Dudley Moore, and Steve Martin are also victims of the Muppet Show curse.
0 comments