Notices

Seems like the BBC have already admitted a few days ago to changing how they stream their content:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...ew_bbc_ip.html


Also found this on the meddage boards over there:

"Announcement of support for Hardware Acceleration on BBC Blog

Message 1. Posted by tonyddd (U14413313) on Wednesday, 26th May 2010permalink

A few users of this board have previously tried to raise problems with the Adobe Flash 10.1 beta and hardware acceleration, although some other users have seemed to object claiming that our machines are simply not good enough and we shouldn't be asking for Hardware Acceleration to be enabled.

However, the BBC iPlayer blog has now mentioned forthcoming support for Hardware Acceleration under Adobe Flash 10.1:

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/...

Quote: "This new adaptive bitrate system, coupled with Adobe's upcoming Flash 10.1 release with H.264 hardware acceleration, should give better quality, less jerkiness and lower CPU usage on PCs equipped with a graphics cards that support H.264 hardware acceleration".

So are we now allowed to ask whether problems with Hardware Acceleration not working with the 10.1 Betas have been resolved? Is it something that Adobe will be changing in the full release of 10.1 or will the BBC be making a change to the encoding to allow Hardware Acceleration to function?

I don't want to hassle anyone, simply ask if the BBC could let us know whether the problems have been recognised and whether a solution is being worked on now that Hardware Acceleration is definitely on the radar.

Many thanks!"

Here' a wild quest:
When a flash video is accessible on the N900, keep touching the menu and note what numbers the JW Player has. Mine is 4.5.216 and clicking on About does nothing as it does for the rest of the options of Toggling Fullscreen or changing the Stretching.
I wonder what version those without ptoblems have and those still with PR 1.1
Also, the jw player went through version 5.0, 5.1 and even 5.5 as it seems, did Nokia forgot to update the JW Player for us?

Please explain

Hi everyone,
I've played about a bit more and can confirm that there are items on iPlayer that I can play easily and smoothly, and others not. When I try to look at the differences, the main thing I can see is a huge leap in bitrate in the videos that don't play.

On average, the ones that play have a bitrate of around 350 (can't remember exact amount). Those that froze or showed a blank screen and only played sound were around 750 on the bitrate front. That is when using the popout etc.

Sorry if others have said this already - I've not managed to read everything recently.
It does sound as though iPlayers "variable bitrate" changes may be causing this as a previous post mentioned.

Not sure if there is much we can do about it for now unfortunately. Though it'll be good if someone does work something else out - or iPlayer gets sorted out if it is them!

I got a message to upgrade Flash when visiting YouTube... I had a look at about: plugins and it says no plugins installed? Huh? Did I miss something...?

There are 5 plugins in /usr/lib/browser/plugins:

N900:/usr/lib/browser/plugins# ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6723876 Apr 16 12:37 libflashplayer.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24256 Feb 17 14:42 mediaplayer-plugin.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43812 Apr 7 16:17 npatlas.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 32380 Apr 7 16:17 npmessagebus.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20752 Feb 10 19:57 osso-plugin.so

just got it to play iplayer using this method:

Click on rogram you wish to watch, then alter the web address as follows:
You need to add /console/ to the web address, but you also need to chop off the /episode/ part as well as the /program_name/ part, so for example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...and!_The_Band/

becomes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00snk78/

The program then opens up in a consol which you can then pop out etc just like you used to be able to when it worked like normal

PS please don't comment on my choise of profram I picked it at random from the first page on iplayer, so there

Hope this works for everyone else who is having difficulties. I have reproduced it working on a few programs now and it works great.

Only one that hasn't worked so far is pirates of carribean.

It's a shame as it ALL used to work near perfectly. MUST be to do with the BBC experimenting with nitrates. Hope some knowledgeable person can figure a workaround as has been said. hereams hoping

[QUOTE=kyllerbuzcut;689641

MUST be to do with the BBC experimenting with nitrates. [/QUOTE]


WOW!...so the bbc are experimenting with chemical compounds?


heeeheeheee

I can confirm that I have similar issues with iplayer on my (2005) desktop and laptop computers. I think its to do with the variable bitrate being upped because of my fast broadband, but the cpus on my aging computers can't cope with it.

Maybe there is a way to limit the amount of bandwidth available to iplayer? Alternatively, maybe we can somehow cap the bitrate in iplayer?

wouldn't of thought so. the bbc are using variable bitrates so we have no control on the streams. if you need to watch live bbc try tvcatchup as they now have a low stream which works perfectly now on the n900. If for tv shows you have missed then some work and some dont from the bbciplayer site.

I'm just wondering if theres a way to make the player think that it has less bandwidth than it actually does, maybe through an app. Therefore it would send a lower bitrate stream and the N900s processor would cope.