BBC iPlayer Plugin - is it possible?
I would like to try and develop a plugin for the BBC iPlayer site:
It has an RSS feed for recent additions:
http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
Could someone tell me, firstly, if this feed is useable to drive a Connected plugin and also possibly offer any tips or even a skeleton source to start me off?
I suppose, once I got the hang of it, it may even be possible to provide a search/browse facility on the site.
Thanks in advance, John
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/lw.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/5livesportsextra/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radioscotland/programmes/schedules/fm.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbchd/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/programmes/schedules/england.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcnews/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/parliament/programmes/schedules.xml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/programmes/schedules/london.xml
Get entire day's schedule:
http://ukfree.tv/igoogle/a/getalltodaysschedule.php5
You can get each channel's program listing for each day by using, for example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/programmes/schedules/london/2008/07/09.xml
Take a deeper look at what the BBCi Player does (This is a random example).
Show: Mock the week, Series 4 Episode 1
URL for Show page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00794sj/Mock_the_Week_Series_4_Episode_1/
When you click play on the video the website makes a call to the following XML page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/4/mtis/stream/b006qx1d?cb=49582
You will notice the page describes several ways to view the show.
If you look at the mobile wmv section you will see a full url to the file:
http://directdl.iplayer.bbc.co.uk/windowsmedia/MocktheWeekSeries4_Episode1_200810292200_mobile.wmv
Length: 29:20
Bit rate: 628 Kbs
Video size: 320 x 180
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Video codec: Windows Media Audio 9.1
128 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo 1-pass CBR
I should have got the ball rolling a bit more, so can someone finish off the work for the other media types.
I agree, this would be a superb plugin.
Can't tell right off the bat since BBC restricts users from outside the UK to access the player. What's the process to access the content? Do you need to login before you are able to watch content?
No, there's no requirement to sign in. The RSS stream has links to pages that contain each video. Adobe Flash Player is loaded when the video is selected and the video is then played from that page - very much like YouTube. The quality is excellent and the videos are the full programs as played on BBC previously.
The only drawback may be that the web site is not very well set out for a uniform access approach which may make it difficult to develop anything beyond the RSS feed driver.
I have thought of looking at some sort of site scraper to find the content and index it, but I'll walk first ;)
Are you able to access the iPlayer site thru a proxy like I (based in the UK) have to for Hulu?
Do videos autoPlay when you load the page, or do you have to click play?
There are tons of example plug-ins that use RSS feeds to bring in Flash-based content (Break, YouTube, Dailymotion, etc). This feed, for example, could easily be ported:
http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/popular/tv/list
The question is, what happens once you get the page/player loaded inside DivX Connected? If it autoPlays, then it's just a matter of scaling the page/player to fit nicely in the TV. If it doesn't autoPlay (it requires a mouse click), someone needs to find a parameter for autoPlay, or you'll find yourself just looking at a video thumbnail :-/
Again, I can't work on this because I'm in the U.S. You all can tell me how easy it is to set up a proxy and I can tell you how easy it is to make a plug-in ;-)
I'll be glad to help out with code snippets, etc.
Yes, it does need a mouse click on the flash page to make the video play. There's a video frame with a play arrow overlaid. Any help with skeleton code would be appreciated.
You can use a proxy server by using HotSpot Shield here. It's what I use to watch Hulu here in the UK as it's restricted to the US.
We'd need to find a way to autoplay clips, since there is no mouse for DivX Connected. This is how all the other Flash-based plug-ins work... they all have an autoplay parameter that we're using to play the video as soon as the Flash content is loaded. One way to discover autoplay for a site's player is to poke around and see if they have it set to "false" in their flashvars - then all we'd have to do is set it to true. Another thing to look into is try to find any videos for any shows on their site that appear to autoplay - some sites feature a video on first load to autoplay even though by default the other videos don't. Then, you'd want to look around the source and see if you can get other videos to autoplay.
Please read the posts on this site:
I would love Iplayer too. Hope someone can figure it out.
Hi All,
It would be great plug in , even better if someone could check if its possible to stream live show from TVU or TVants?
Whereby i could watch all programmes on these applications direct to my TV set wirelessly.
TVU,Sopcast,TV Ants are brodcast programmes that can show movies, sports, other channels from around the world live on your pc screen, it would be great if someone could figure out how to transfer this direct to the dlink box - i would pay the man/woman who could make this reality :)
Yes! http://labs.divx.com/node/15763