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BTW, get_iplayer does not bypass DRM since the BBC do not use any.

http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer

From the link above:

"get_iplayer, does the recording, indexing and searching of the iPlayer TV/Radio programmes and podcasts available. It can even stream the iPlayer TV programmes while recording them to mplayer, vlc or xine, etc. It does not circumvent any digital rights management security (see the BBC’s website on how to do that with the Windows-only DRM content they provide)."

Not entirely true. iPlayer uses SWF verification. It's a pretty worthless DRM mechanism, but its there.

"However, the BBC is unlikely to be able to use any such mechanism unless we feel that it is sufficiently secure that there would be the possibility of legal action in the event of bypassing it."

Not sure why you would defend the BBC, but that is pretty much the definition of a sanction. In fact it states quite clearly that the BBC is less interested in about how good the DRM is [they expect it to be broken], but whether anti-circumvention provisions is protected by law e.g. DMCA. It is just focused on stopping the people forced to pay for service in the UK having unrestricted access to the content they paid for.

The BBC has a rather bonkers idea about DRM anyway. For example, HD Freesat receivers are required to implemtn DRM on their output (i.e. HDCP on the HD output, no analogue HD output, etc.), even though the DVB-S signal they are receiving is transmitted in the clear anyway. All it does is inconvenience legitimate consumers - anyone planning on copyright infringement is going to find it more trivial to record the raw DVB-S stream rather than an HDMI stream anyway.

Similarly, iPlayer's DRM is so weak as to be completely useless, and yet they still use it and therefore insist on using the terrible Flash player instead of making the video streams available in a standard format that would work on all platforms. (The flash player is so bad that I invariably just use get_iplayer and then play it with mplayer).

BTW, get_iplayer does not bypass DRM since the BBC do not use any.

http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer

From the link above:

"get_iplayer, does the recording, indexing and searching of the iPlayer TV/Radio programmes and podcasts available. It can even stream the iPlayer TV programmes while recording them to mplayer, vlc or xine, etc. It does not circumvent any digital rights management security (see the BBC’s website on how to do that with the Windows-only DRM content they provide)."

I did some research this week. I found that on most of my UK credit and debit cards (Santander, MBNA, Barclays, etc) you can effectively disable the contactless feature by damaging the antenna. This is very easy and will NOT affect the Chip-and-PIN feature that s relied upon for ATMs and in-store purchases. (DON'T FOLLOW THOSE STUPID YOUTUBE VIDEOS THAT DRILL OUT THE VISIBLE CHIP!!!).

All you need to do is use a pair of scissors, make a small vertical cut of around 7mm at the top-middle of the card - just above the magnetic stripe. If you look very carefully into the cut you will see 4 or 5 very small wires that have been severed. Job done.

Without the antenna loop, the contactless chip cannot energise and communicate.

See my blog post on this in more detail: http://linuxcentre.net/disabling-contactless-cards

I've just been doing this using dansguardian and squid with some extra blacklists+voodoo for a primary school (ages 5-11) these last two weeks. See http://linuxcentre.net/wiki/index.php/Web_Content_Filtering . Personally I find this kind of filtering not completely effective - even the best commercial filters out there are no better in 'protecting' the kids. This was a lot of effort for 100+ children. You probably wouldn't want to go to so much trouble for a home setup. However, the above link does represent a real-life setup and not just a theoretical setup.

I worked on this project for a Primary school. It's worked well for >2 years for 120 pupils.
http://linuxcentre.net/wiki/
The parts about automatically resetting the homedir after reboot is probably of interest to you.
http://linuxcentre.net/wiki/index.php/Detailed_Maverick_Meerkat_OS_Netbook_Customisation below Home_Directory_Synchronisation

I worked on this project for a Primary school. It's worked well for >2 years for 120 pupils.
http://linuxcentre.net/wiki/
The parts about automatically resetting the homedir after reboot is probably of interest to you.
http://linuxcentre.net/wiki/index.php/Detailed_Maverick_Meerkat_OS_Netbook_Customisation below Home_Directory_Synchronisation

They use RTMP streaming, I believe. There are utilities which can capture it, but they continually vary their implementation. There have been DMCA takedown notices sent to rtmpdump, but perhaps not by them in particular : http://linuxcentre.net/rtmpdump-can-be-used-to-download-copyrighted-works-like-a-web-browser

Ok, it's just a distribution glitch that some stuff still downloads without SWFV. See Linuxcentre.

Not sure how you missed knowing what iPlayer is before, given the number of times that it's been covered in Slashdot (including one article in the last two weeks). Sony doesn't deliver it anywhere. The BBC delivers it, Sony just ships a front end for the PS3. You can only access it from a UK IP address. If you can find a proxy server in the UK, then you can just go to the iPlayer site using it. If you want to avoid Flash, then use get_iplayer, which downloads the videos (play them back with VLC for about half the CPU load of the flash plugin...).

No, it's (mostly) Adobe only, using Flash for streaming (via RTMP) and AIR for downloaded programmes. The iPhone version uses HTTP streams. get_iplayer is a nice script to download iplayer content a little more permanently.

Here is some more detailed info on the RTMPdump DMCA takedown.

http://linuxcentre.net/rtmpdump-can-be-used-to-download-copyrighted-works-like-a-web-browser/

sf.net may have taken it down, but the other sites are still up and running. Here are some download links:

get-flash-videos
index of rtpdump-1.3a, including source rpms
download page for getiplayer
linux/unix tarball

sf.net may have taken it down, but the other sites are still up and running. Here are some download links:

get-flash-videos
index of rtpdump-1.3a, including source rpms
download page for getiplayer
linux/unix tarball

You get get the rtmpdump v1.5a source here, although this is not the latest version. AFAIK v1.6 was the last version to be released but it seems to have disappeared from the Web, even on non-sourceforge-affiliated sites.

jdb2

You get get the rtmpdump v1.5a source here, although this is not the latest version. AFAIK v1.6 was the last version to be released but it seems to have disappeared from the Web, even on non-sourceforge-affiliated sites.

jdb2

I use get_iplayer because full screen flash maxes out my CPU (i cant even watch porn on some flash sites!!!!) But id quite like to see a feature and performance comparison to the official product
i know that get_iplayer has:
streaming: x
bandwidth: unlimit
upload usage: 0 (not sure if thats so good, but as it stops virgin media throttling me i wont complain)
performance: ~0 for downloading and player dependent for full screen video (but fairly low in mplayer)
interface: CLI only
search: pretty much anything assuming you know regex
DRM: none (but you soon find out that you have no HDD space left, if i don't erase stuff)

The only missing 'feature' is it doesn't advertise new shows, as i don't have a TV id quite like to know when there is a new show or new season of a show a might like.

Out of the various internet methods of accessing the iPlayer content, the BBC recently said that 90% of users are watching their output using the RTMP/Flash/H.264 streams on their iPlayer website. A handful (less than 7%) download using the Windows/kontiki/p2p method and 3% use the iPhone/HTTP/h.264 method.

So clearly the Flash streaming player version is the most accessible and widely used.

The iPhone method, I reckon, also includes quite a number of users utilizing one of the unofficial download clients like get_iplayer which spoof being an iPhone so I question whether downloading is really that popular when most people just want to watch a TV programme once, at a time that suits them, and then just delete it.

You also have to consider that many UK based ISPs have volume caps (typically 1GB - 10GB for the cheaper deals) which include upload as well as download usage in their quotas and therefore p2p is not necessarily very acceptable.

You can download all these radio shows in MP3 format with get_iplayer.

You can download all these radio shows in MP3 format with get_iplayer.

It's not DRM - just Adobe's RTMP streaming - just plain obfuscation with little open source support yet. get_iplayer script will actually download video on-par with the normal quality flash service btw.

Use the get_iplayer script to download stuff from iPlayer. Something like: ./get_iplayer --html bbc.html && konqueror bbc.html
(Then look at the index numbers for the program you want) ./get_iplayer --get 123

One of these obligations is to make their programming available to the greatest number of people. This is easy with analogue TV and Radio, since anyone can build a TV or Radio capable of receiving the BBC's content. With the iPlayer, it's different. Imagine I want to build a mobile device that can be used to access iPlayer content. If I'm someone like Apple, then I just release the device and the BBC (for some reason) implement a special-case front-end for my device. But if I'm a small player just entering the market, I can't. This harms innovation in the UK. If the BBC used an open standard, I could create a service that grabbed their content and transcoded it to something that would play on my phone's tiny screen (for example). Or I could transcode it on my PC to play on my 770 easily.

It is not the BBC's job to favour one or more manufacturers in the market. Imagine if they had decided in the '60s that they would only allow Sony TVs to receive colour TV signals. Would you consider this to be acceptable?

You can download it PC and transcode it easily to your 770 - just use get_iplayer ( http://linuxcentre.net/iplayer ). It's an open source / GPL Perl script I develop which pretends to be an Apple iphone and is able to download H.264 BBC iplayer videos (and radio/podcasts) on many OSes...