Problem recording from BBC iPlayer

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The BBC is currently showing ‘War and Peace’ in 6 episodes, and my wife asked me to record it.

The first week I recorded it on the DVD recorder whilst we watched on TV, but checking later that all was well, it was not there. The recorder isn’t used much now we have dumped Sky, and hadn’t been used for a month or two, so several hours were spent checking the manual and ensuring that all the settings were correct. The result of all this was that the input selector was set on DV, whereas it should be AV2, and it would not change. My conclusion was that the input selector key no longer worked, whereas all the others are OK.

I called Panasonic to order a new zapper, but they insisted on first running a series of tests, which got nowhere, so I ordered a zapper, which finally arrived this week. The problem WAS the input selector key, as tests with the new zapper have enabled recording, thus we are good to go with episode 4 this evening.

During this period of waiting I have been attempting to download W and P to my PC via iPlayer. Since last May we have downloaded c 10 operas and ballets from http://www.theoperaplatform.eu , another on demand download service, but BBC iPlayer consistently fails. Initially it seemed that the BBC were blocking recording via the iPlayer, however, this proved not to be the case when eventually I managed to d/l the first episode.

667 MB seemed to indicate a partial d/l, but it is all there, but unlike the excellent downloads in mp4 from theoperaplatform, this is .flv. The poor quality is of no great importance, as the recording is for my wife, who see no difference between HD and lousy visuals – probably due to the fact she is short- sighted and has glaucoma, or just doesn’t care. At 667 MB per episode, all 6 would fit on one DVD.

I continue to have no success with downloads of episodes 2 and 3, which is so frustrating when it worked once, and I’m not aware that I did anything different on that occasion. It’s also annoying that each attempt means the PC is unavailable for an hour.

All attempts made using Ant.com.

Any suggestions?

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Why use ant.com?

iPlayer works fine for me, I select the Download from the main iPlayer site and then select the HD version in one of the following screens (the other asks if you already have the iPlayer program installed), a 60 minute show in HD is ~1GB.

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The answer, is because I didn’t know anything else. Hence this thread.
When theoperaplatform started up last year, I asked here how to download video from the web, somebody recommended Ant, which is easy to use, just click their button on the Firefox toolbar, and the results are superior to anything produced by my old DVD player, so I didn’t need to look for anything else. However, Ant doesn’t work with the iPlayer, so I am very grateful for your suggestion, which looks promising.
I was out yesterday afternoon and early evening, when I came home I dealt with my emails and daily exercise routine, then remembered to see if there were any replies to my posting. I went to the iPlayer site, found the d/l button and installed the software, and as there was only 50 minutes before War and Peace began selected a 7 minute children’s programme to d/l. When opening the video folder it was there, labelled Unknown and a long series of numbers, but it would not open with VLC, Irfanview or WMP. However, it did open with Word, showing a meaningless page of numbers and letters. Unsure whether I had allowed the programme to start running before selecting d/l, I tried again with the same result. With time running out a 3 minute preview was selected, with the same result. I next clicked the iPlayer icon on the desktop, both downloads were there and played without problems, but in a quite small frame. That was real progress.
After watching War and Peace and the BBC News, followed by my supper, a return to the d/l issue. The episode had successfully been recorded on the DVD recorder, so that is now OK, and returning to the PC, to see if there was some way to get it to show in a larger format, I accidently clicked one of the d/l whilst it was running, and it immediately switched to full screen. The same with the other one, so the issue seems to be resolved.
Hopefully, I will find time today to try again with one of the W and P episodes, but it looks as though all should go well.
Again my thanks for your help.
George

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Why use ant.com?

The answer, is because I didn’t know anything else. Hence this thread.

When theoperaplatform started up last year, I asked here how to download video from the web, somebody recommended Ant, which is easy to use and the results are superior to anything produced by my old DVD player, so I didn’t need to look for anything else. However, Ant doesn’t work with the iPlayer, so I am very grateful for your suggestion, which looks promising.

I was out yesterday afternoon and early evening, when I came home I dealt with my emails and daily exercise routine, then remembered to see if there were any replies to my posting. I went to the iPlayer site, found the d/l button and installed the software, and as there was only 50 minutes before War and Peace began selected a 7 minute children’s programme to d/l. When opening the video folder it was there, labelled Unknown and a long series of numbers, but it would not open with VLC, Irfanview or WMP.

Unsure whether I had allowed the programme to start running before selecting d/l, I tried again with the same result. With time running out a 3 minute preview was selected, with the same result. I next clicked the iPlayer icon on the desktop, both downloads were there and played without problems, but in a quite small frame. That was real progress.

After watching War and Peace and the BBC News, followed by my supper, a return to the d/l issue. The episode had successfully been recorded on the DVD recorder, so that is now OK, and returning to the PC, to see if there was some way to get it to show in a larger format, I accidently clicked one of the d/l whilst it was running, and it immediately switched to full screen. The same with the other one, so the issue seems to be resolved.

Hopefully, I will find time today to try again with one of the W and P episodes, but it looks as though all should go well.
Again my thanks for your help.

George

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Clicking the ‘square’ symbol above the iPlayer timeline will activate fullscreen, the ‘S’ will activate subtitles and the ‘AS’, when it’s shown, activates BSL signing and subtitles.

iPlayer uses DRM, once downloaded, you have 30 days to watch most programmes, once you begin watching a programme, you have 6 days to finish watching it.

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Reply from Ant.com:
Unfortunately, website bbc.co.uk uses some videos with streaming protocol, like RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) which is not supported by Ant.com Video Downloader yet.
We are constantly working on the improvement of our video downloader and will include the support of RTMP protocol in new versions.

Using the iPlayer, I’ve now downloaded an episode of War & Peace without any problems, other than the fact it’s only 645 MB, which is really poor viewed full screen on my 21” monitor. Perhaps not too bad on a TV, when one is sitting further away, but see below.

iPlayer uses DRM, once downloaded, you have 30 days to watch most programmes, once you begin watching a programme, you have 6 days to finish watching it.

Presumably this means the download can’t be copied to DVD, making it unfit for purpose, as my wife was looking for a permanent record.

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Reply from Ant.com:
Unfortunately, website bbc.co.uk uses some videos with streaming protocol, like RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) which is not supported by Ant.com Video Downloader yet.
We are constantly working on the improvement of our video downloader and will include the support of RTMP protocol in new versions.

Using the iPlayer, I’ve now downloaded an episode of War & Peace without any problems, other than the fact it’s only 645 MB, which is really poor viewed full screen on my 21” monitor. Perhaps not too bad on a TV, when one is sitting further away, but see below.

Presumably this means the download can’t be copied to DVD, making it unfit for purpose, as my wife was looking for a permanent record.

Correct. I’d be fairly sure that the BBC will be selling it on DVD themselves soon after transmission, so they don’t want to encourage (illegal) competition. As you say, you can still do it yourself using a PVR.

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Yes, but unfortunately not after an episode has been transmitted, and the first three could not be recorded due to a faulty zapper – see #1

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I note that the 6-part series is being released as a 3-DVD disk set (or 1 BluRay) for rental on Amazon’s LoveFilm By Post on 8th Feb. as well as being available for purchase (DVD – £15.99; BluRay – £19.99) from Amazon.

Hope this info helps…

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