Notices

I'll put this caveat right at the beginning so as not to waste anyone's time: This has NOT been through any QA process, and so carries at least the same potential problems as installing stuff from extras-devel.

In order to get this running you need rootsh installed, which comes with caveats of its own. See this page for details: http://wiki.maemo.org/Root_access.

I've updated this first post to contain the current easiest method of getting this working - original post is below.

If you don't understand any of the steps below I suggest you stop and ask (/read on into the thread) rather than just doing them. A small level of knowledge of the terminal is required, but there is lots of discussion of each of the steps later in the thread if you are a beginner.

First, make sure that extras-devel is disabled. There's an un-optified version of Ruby in there that will break things. It reports as being a later version, so i you enable extras-devel in the future it will report an udate for Ruby - don't install this!

Thanks to Kaspernj (click "Thanks!" on his post below!) installing is now as simple as adding his repository:

Name: kaspernj.org
Webaddress: http://maemorepo.kaspernj.org
Distribution: fremantle
Components: main

If you've used application manager to add the repository make sure you close it. Then open a terminal and type the following:

then:

then:

Typing yes at any prompts. Wait for it to finish and then type:

To make life easier you can also type this command:

echo 'alias iplayer="iplayer-dl -d /home/user/MyDocs/.videos"' >> /home/user/.profile

Then type:

This helps ensure that the videos you download are stored in "MyDocs" and are easily accessible from the Media Player.

You can now download from iPlayer by opening a terminal and typing:

Where "URL" is the web address of the programme you want.

Some important caveats:

• Don't accidentally use "iplayer-dl URL" (as opposed to "iplayer URL" above) unless you know what you're doing - this will quickly fill up your 2GB of "application space" and cause considerable heartache!
  
  
• Please note that this has NOT been through any QA process, and so carries at least the same potential problems as installing stuff from extras-devel. However, everything is optified, and no one seems to have had any serious problems to date.
  
  
• Remember you're not streaming, you're downloading, so there's a bit of a wait before you can start watching. The beeb's servers are pretty quick though, so it'll probably only be a short while.
  
  
• Be careful because an hour long show will be in the region of 200MB - too much of that on roaming data and your phone company will probably be giving you a ring! Many phone companies have blocked iPlayer traffic anyway, in which case you will only be able to download when connected to wifi.
  
  
• The BBC probably don't want you getting iPlayer content this way as it in theory enables you to keep content longer than they allow. So delete stuff as soon as you've watched it, and don't go too crazy with the downloads!
  
  
• As with any large download and video watching, this has the potential to drain your battery relatively quickly.
  
  
• Finally, (from the iplayer-dl developer's site):
  
  

  It won’t download every programme that’s on the iPlayer website, because they’re not always available. Sometimes, this is by design (as in the case of films and expensive US series like Heroes); sometimes it’s due to omission or transient problems. In addition, it can’t currently download the embedded videos that are not part of the main iPlayer offering.

And that's it! For a bit more info read the original post below and the rest of the thread.

Cheers,
Jan


--- Original post ---

Hi everyone. After searching the forums, it seems no one has a trivial method for watching iPlayer from the N900. So I thought that as I have one that's slightly more trivial that the current suggestions it would only be fair to share!

It's important to note that the BBC probably don't want you getting iPlayer content this way as it in theory enables you to keep content longer than they allow. So delete stuff as soon as you've watched it. That being said, on with the instructions!

First you need to install Ruby on your device. This is the tricky bit, but it's been made easier by the sterling work of kaspernj, as detailed in this post. You'll need to add his repository, mentioned in the first post of the thread linked above (it's fine to do this from the app manager). Make sure you thank him!

Please note that this has NOT been through any QA process, and so carries at least the same caveats as installing from extras-devel (actually maybe more, if kaspernj decided to be evil!). But in its favour it's all working like a charm for me, and it's been optified - still, here be dragons.

That being said, when you add the repository from app manager it should update automatically, so to install Ruby it's as easy as the following in a terminal:

I'm not sure whether ruby-rake is actually required, but it's pretty small. You could try without and report success or failure if you want.

Next, travel to http://po-ru.com/projects/iplayer-downloader/, read up on the background, and tip your proverbial hat to the developer. You can follow his instructions to get the source from github (here), or for the moment at least you can just do the following in a terminal:

Extract, follow the instructions in README, and you're good to go!

i.e.:

Note that the the number on the end of "iplayer-dl-0.1.18" may be slightly different if you're following these instructions in the future.

In order to make life easier, link the created binary to /usr/bin:

And you're done! Just open a terminal, and type something along the lines of:

And the show that's at "iplayer_URL" will be saved to "/home/user/MyDocs/.videos" (which is the standard place to put videos on the N900).

The quality is great on the few things I've downloaded so far.

Remember you're not streaming, you're downloading, so there's a bit of a wait before you can start watching. The beeb's servers are pretty quick though, so it'll probably only be a short while.

This is obviously a useful feature if you're on the move, though be careful because an hour long show will be in the region of 200MB - too much of that on roaming data and your phone company will probably be giving you a ring!

Please note (from the developer's site):

But it's still good for an episode of HIGNFY every now and again...

Cheers,
Jan

Great find btw. I was wondering when someone would work out how to use this masterpiece!

When I type
wget http://po-ru.com/files/iplayer-dl-latest.tar.gz

I get /bin/sh: wget: not found

How do I overcome this?

Good point! wget is available from the fremantle tools repository. See this link for details on installation.

That's really only there as a convenience. As an alternative, you could just point your browser to that URL and it should prompt you to save the file to you device. If you do this then I think life will possibly be easier if you copy the downloaded tar.gz file to /home/user before proceeding, i.e., save to "Your Nokia N900" and then do the following in xterm:

If you want to do some tidying up you can delete both copies of the tar.gz file after extracting.

Cheers,
Jan

P.S. I keep forgetting that most people have a very small /home partition (and therefore not much space in /home/user) and a very large /home/user/MyDocs partition.

Therefore it's really worth emphasising that when using iplayer-dl you specify a path within MyDocs to save the file (as in the first post).

If you don't you'll fill up /home/user awfully quickly and terrible things might start happening! (Not quite as terrible as filling up /, but still...)

Cheers,
Jan

still get that /bin/sh: wget: not found message even after installing wget

I also entered the address into the browser and saved the iplayer-dl-latest file to my device (root of eMMC) but if I then try to use

tar zxvf iplayer-dl-latest.tar.gz

I get tar: can't open 'iplayer-dl-latest.tar.gz': No such file or directory.

Any further advice you can offer?

ok I'm making progress now thanks to

cp /home/user/MyDocs/iplayer-dl-latest.tar.gz /home/user

Great help my friend!

Working like a dream now!

Great, glad you got it working!

Just thinking about how easy it will be to fill up your application space with videos has got me worried, so here's a possible solution.

You can copy and paste the following in a terminal (make sure it matches exactly):

This means that whenever you type "iplayer" in the terminal it has the same effect as typing "iplayer-dl -d /home/user/MyDocs/.videos", so typing:


Will download the show at URL to your videos directory. Note that this won't take effect until you exit and restart the terminal.

Let me know how it goes.

Cheers,
Jan

I am very happy, that you could use my packages. Didnt see that many replies in my Ruby-thread. If you need me to package any other Ruby-extensions - please let me know.

Since this iPlayer is so popular, I have made a package for it, so you dont have to download, untar and all that stuff yourself.

Simply add my repository and type:
apt-get install iplayer-dl

...unfortunately I cant test this package, since the BBC content is only available to the UK - and I am from Denmark. Can some of you please report back, if the package works as expected?