Sony Bravia iPlayer stream

[Jon Davies]

On 26 April 2011 09:13, Roger Burton West <roger at firedrake.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 09:05:16AM +0100, tim lane wrote:
>>Would some kind of packet sniffer be the right tool for the job?
>
> I believe tcpdump is available for Windows:
> http://www.winpcap.org/windump/
>
> ... So the next thing to do is analyse it.
> I tend to use wireshark, which is also available under Windows:
> http://www.wireshark.org/

wireshark will do the capture too, so you can work in just wireshark.
As a tool it's pretty straightforward.  The bit that's not
straightforward is understanding what's happening on the wire and how
to decode it...

however, you need to make sure that the packets from your TV actually
get to your PC (running wireshark). some options...

a)  If your PC has a wired and wireless connection, then you could
share your internet connection (from wireless) to the wired ethernet
port, and plug the tv into your PC's ethernet port.  The TV should
continue to get access to the internet via your PC, and you can then
sniff the packets.  similarly if you had a couple of ethernet ports
you could do the same with wires.

b) If your router can do it (surprisingly my really cheap thomson
tg585v7 can) then you may be able to setup a "mirror" port on the
ethernet switch in the router that pushes all traffic that runs
through the switch out of one of the ports.  This counts as horribly
advanced router configuration.

c) if you have an old ethernet *hub* (not a switch) then you could
plug both the tv and pc into the hub.

Are you sure you want to try this? ;-)

It may also be possible to get enough information using just a web
proxy (and none of the nasty stuff above).  For this I'd suggest you
get a copy of Fiddler (http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/), install it
on your PC and configure it to accept connections from outside the PC,
and then configure your TV to use your PC as a proxy.  Fiddler will
not only capture the http traffic going through it, but decode it to
some extent as well.  Since the iplayer site has to tell the tv where
to get its stream from, it should be possible to determine whether
it's the same source as get_iplayer is using.

Cheers
Jon