BBC iPlayer

Cabaal

jocko4 wrote: »

Yes you can do it from any ISP, just follow these instructions: http://hurwi.net/blog/?p=28

Essentially, it involves using a Firefox add-on "FoxyProxy" to reroute the traffic through a UK proxy - all the details are there - it works fine - watched the full Welsh V France rugby game the other night because I missed in on Friday. Only two or three pauses in the whole transmission (on a 3Mb DSl line) and it was in high def - you could see the pores on Chaval's face (oh the horror!)

Edit: I will accept applause & thank yous in a brown paper bag please - just PM me for the drop off point! Oh, did I forget to say I was an FF'er and am still on the make - ask any of my buddies - the developers or the bankers?

After just testing this it now, it works although its extremely slow for me

paddyb125

pauly3 wrote: »

I have been watching the BBC services with their iPlayer for ages without a proxy in Firefox. I am with UTV Internet. Does anyone else know if it is only UTV Internet that allow access to the iPlayer content here in the South?

I'm using UTV Broadband and it doesn't work for me:(

Cabaal

pauly3 wrote: »

I have been watching the BBC services with their iPlayer for ages without a proxy in Firefox. I am with UTV Internet. Does anyone else know if it is only UTV Internet that allow access to the iPlayer content here in the South?

UTv certainly doesn't work for me, UTV used to operate a UK proxy which people in Ireland could use but they shut this down last summer.

No other Irish ISP will work with iPlayer

Cabaal

Right best way to do this is forget about Tor for streaming is a nightmare and is far far too slow, install Tor etc BUT then download the BBC Iplayer download client and do this

Also in order to download episodes you must download the bbc download manager
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/BBC-iPlayer_Setup.exe

Once installed you can now download episodes through firefox using tor/fireproxy setup. But in order for the video to play the software will try to download a license for WMP

It will deny you so you must temporarily change the proxy settings within windows so you can get the license

Open IE, Click Tools and then Internet Options. Go into the “Connections” tab.

At the bottom click the “LAN Settings” button. At the bottom of the new window it says “Proxy Server”. Check“Use a proxy server for LAN” box.

Below that set the address to “127.0.0.1″ and the port to “8118″. Untick the “Bypass proxy server for local connections”

Once you download the license you can undo these proxy settings within IE

godskitchen

I use a proxy service from these guys www.consult-here.com/vpn.html to view BBCiplayer from here in Ireland.

It works very well, never had any problems. The streaming is the same as if you were in the UK, no slowness at all. I am also pretty sure you can use their USA proxy too, which would be handy for services like Hulu. Not tried that myself.

jocko4

Cabaal, Have you tried this? I could never get it to work! Does this setting/resetting of proxy settings have to be done for each download?

Using Tor for streaming is slightly frustrating in obtaining the connection but once the clip starts to play then I find it runs fairly smoothly - I guess this is based on a lot of factors though.

Edit: Another problem with downloading is that there are DRM locks built into the downloaded file so you can only play back with iplayer and then only for a restricted period of time

pauly3

Watching the BBC on iPlayer now. I wonder why I am getting it and others not? I only watch through the embedded Flash player, not the downloadable one.
The high quality stream is very good. I have my Firefox set to 'No Proxy'. My router is the Eircom silver netopia one, into which I have added my UTV login details.
Would be interested to hear if anyone else can watch BBC online here in the South? Also, if anyone can suggest a good Irish Proxy Server so that my brother in California can watch RTE live programming.

jocko4

Pauly3
If you go here: https://torstat.xenobite.eu/index.php?FilterIsExit=1
you can find proxy servers for any country - there appears to be just one for IE which has an exit flag which is apparently what you need to operate this sort of thing.

Again all the instructions are in my link above - just change the country to Ireland!

Blindpew

I use a program called "hideyouripaddressv10" to view BBC Iplayer, you need to get a uk proxy on it and it works fine. The free version is limited in the amount of proxy changes per day and the regged version costs 50 euro. It does work though.

jocko4

Another pay for service - can't get a UK proxy without paying!

byte

I did all what was required in jocko4's link, and finally got it working.

Initially, something happened somehow, where I lost Java, and it was contrary trying to get Firefox to use Java again, despite installing Java again. Anyway, it has rectified itself, and I can now watch iPlayer, site loads slow, but streams seem OK.

robo

I am trying to do this but stupid question...when you are configuring the FoxyProxy, what do you put in on the hostname and port number under Proxy details? I have installed the Tor privoxy and all that but when I go to http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/index.php it says

Your IP is NOT identified to be a Tor-EXIT.
So you are NOT using Tor to reach the web!

byte

robo wrote: »

I am trying to do this but stupid question...when you are configuring the FoxyProxy, what do you put in on the hostname and port number under Proxy details? I have installed the Tor privoxy and all that but when I go to http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/index.php it says

Did you restart Privoxy, Tor and Firefox after making the changes to the textfile?

byte

To update, I've now changed the Pattern from the one listed on http://hurwi.net/blog/?p=28

Instead of http://*bbc.co.uk/*, now I've deleted that one, and added these two patterns... taken from here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/*
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/4/mtis/stream*

By doing this, the whole BBC site doesn't go thru the proxy, just the parts that identify your location. Working OK at the moment anyway.

jocko4

Hi Byte,
I tried this & it does make getting to the episodes much faster but there's something wrong in the streams pattern - it plays an episode fine until about half way through when it stops and says it's not available for your area. Have you found this? BBC must be changing it's url half way through, I'd imagine

Sorted you just need to change the stream pattern to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/*

byte

jocko4 wrote: »

Hi Byte,
I tried this & it does make getting to the episodes much faster but there's something wrong in the streams pattern - it plays an episode fine until about half way through when it stops and says it's not available for your area. Have you found this? BBC must be changing it's url half way through, I'd imagine

Sorted you just need to change the stream pattern to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/*

I didn't watch a full episode of anything yet, so not sure on that front. But you could be right, the stream could be seperated into different chunks.

I'll update my pattern with the one you have just given.

ongarite

I view BBC iPlayer all the time using FoxyProxy also but not using TOR as in the link earlier in the thread.
I used this guide here and these proxy server lists:
http://www.showmethetelly.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2
http://www.samair.ru/proxy/type-19.htm

Spear

byte wrote: »

I didn't watch a full episode of anything yet, so not sure on that front. But you could be right, the stream could be seperated into different chunks.

I'll update my pattern with the one you have just given.

The high quality streams are single files. I can't speak for the low quality ones.

Simon201

Yeah I've got it to work as well using the Cherie's Blog page and Vidalia/Tor, but I don't use Firefox at all, I just use the '127.0.0.1' and port 9050 proxy in the IE connections settings. Seems to work ok. Bit slow when it first opens, but plays the stuff ok.

But here's something - I'm able to click the 'download' to computer link on the programme page and the programme starts to download in the iPlayer (beta) desktop player) but it's slow (cos it's still going through the Tor thingy - says 2 1/2 hours download time for an hour prog). But if you then cancel the proxy settings in IE and re-open the iPlayer downloader you can resume the downloading at your normal d/l speed (without proxies or Vidalia running). Now says 6 minutes to download!
But (there's always a but!) you have to re-connect to Vidalia/Tor and set the IE proxy back when you want to watch it from the iPlayer desktop prog.

The thing that annoys me tho is like... we pay a TV licence fee, so yeah that is for the RTE crap. No getting out of that. But assuming that UPC pass on something to the BBC out of our subscription fees, why cant we watch the iPlayer without all this proxy stuff?
Grrr.....!

pauly3

The BBC launched their HD service on iPlayer yesterday. For the first time I am watching HD television on my PC which is coming down my phone line and over my power supply. (I have a few wireless dead spots so I am using Devolo HomePlug adapters). How weird is that!

The bitrate is 3.5mbps and the BBC have put up a speedtest checker for you to see if you can handle the stream. They are using adaptive bitrate technology, so if you cannot handle the higher bitrates it automatically defaults back down to 1.5mbps or 800kbps.

I am aware that most people in the Rebublic will not be able to access the iPlayer content without using a proxy; I am on UTV Internet and have not had trouble accessing the site. I was wondering if anyone else on UTV can also access the content here? I am on the 7.6mbps tariff.

Link to HD content: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_hd
Link to announcement: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/
Link to SpeedTest checker: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics

jocko4

Yep, I just tried HD through my Netgear wireless router & it works but a bit jumpy - I'm not running this router at it's highest wireless speed of 270mbps, just 54mbps. I'll try this & maybe a wired connection later. My broadband speed is 6Mb/s & I get download speeds in the BBC speed test of about 5Mb/s

Simon, be realistic - no part of our license fee goes to the BBC & I don't believe the BBC are paid for the piracy of their channels by UPC (NTL) either so they are perfectly entitled to restrict this service to only their licensees!

Spear

There's always RTE's new iPlayer clone.

http://www.rte.ie/player

pauly3

Has anyone out there (other than me) been able to enjoy the BBC HD iPlayer service without going through a proxy? The UTV gateway I connect through is 194.46.x.x and the DNS server is also 194.46.x.x . My fixed IP address is also within this range. A search throutgh RIPE shows that the entire 194.46.x.x address range is a registered to the GB country level domain

I found a list of free Proxy Servers by country here:
http://nntime.com/proxy-country/

2 proxies listed for Ireland and 35 for the UK.

Hope this helps some.

Simon201

I can view programmes on the BBC HD iPlayer site but by only using the methods I described above and it is pretty impressive, although rather large download amounts - 1.4gb for Jools Holland's Later prog!. I'm just wondering Pauly3, are you paying the extra for a fixed IP address and is that perhaps why it works for you. My (dynamic) IP addresses are always around 194.46.238.xxx which shows my location as Dublin, but something like 194.46.199.131 (also UTV) shows the location as Belfast (which would obviously enable the iPlayer to work)

pauly3

My fixed IP address (194.46.200.x) cost me a once-off fee of €3.50, nothing more. I pay an extra €5.99 per month for no bandwidth restriction (fair-use policy, of course) which brings my total broadband cost per month to €29.98. That is, €23.99 for the 7.6mb package plus €5.99 for no caps.

I am connected to the UTV Internet gateway 194.46.193.66

How did you check the registered location of the IP address? I was getting my info from RIPE.

I calculate that by watching 2 hours of HD per day I would download around 90GB per month. Which I don't!

Simon201

mmm.... interesting. So obviously the fixed IP address feature may be a loophole to be able to access the iPlayer programmes without all the proxy stuff for us UTVers. Although as you say, it's going to give you somewhat massive download figures if you watch it regularly.

I got the geo-location stuff from
http://whatismyipaddress.com/

byte

pauly3 wrote: »

My fixed IP address (194.46.200.x) cost me a once-off fee of €3.50, nothing more. I pay an extra €5.99 per month for no bandwidth restriction (fair-use policy, of course) which brings my total broadband cost per month to €29.98. That is, €23.99 for the 7.6mb package plus €5.99 for no caps.

I am connected to the UTV Internet gateway 194.46.193.66

How did you check the registered location of the IP address? I was getting my info from RIPE.

I calculate that by watching 2 hours of HD per day I would download around 90GB per month. Which I don't!

Hmm, that is most interesting!

I'd guess though that because you can access BBC iPlayer, you now cannot use the new RTE Player?

Or can you still use one of their other Irish IP for that?

It'd be worth 3.50eur, but only if I could swap and change IP at will.

godskitchen

byte wrote: »

Hmm, that is most interesting!

I'd guess though that because you can access BBC iPlayer, you now cannot use the new RTE Player?

Or can you still use one of their other Irish IP for that?

It'd be worth 3.50eur, but only if I could swap and change IP at will.

You might aswell pay for a proxy at that rate.

pauly3

Using whatsmyipaddress.com I see that my IP address's reverse DNS is
xxx.200.46.194.uk.dsl.sta.u.tv (Location: Ireland) and querying the RIPE server gives the entire 194.46 network (194.46.0.0 - 194.46.255.255) as allocated to UTV Internet, Ormeau Rd, Belfast with a Net ID as 'UK-GENESIS-940228' . Upstream the network seems to route via Esat.net (BT) and Cogentco (Cogent.com) in the UK.

Could someone on a dynamic UTV IP address check and see if their address is
194.46.x.x, or something outside of this range. It would be interesting to see if the dynamic addresses are allocated out of another address pool. After all, the UTV Gateway is a DHCP Server I would assume, and static addresses would be removed from the pool of available addresses.

I just checked to see if I can access the RTE Player, and I can.

byte

WAN IP, Default Gateway, DNS Servers all fall under 194.46.xxx.xxx

My WAN IP is 194.46.252.xx

Gateway is identical to yours.

On Samspade.org, I get this info:
inetnum: 194.46.224.0 - 194.46.255.255
netname: UTVI-INFRASTRUCTURE
descr: RoI Dynamic DSL Pools

From that, it seems 194.46.244.x and 194.46.255.x range is ROI.