BBC iPlayer introduces Live Restart capability

[dinkypumpkin]

On 20/06/2012 13:51, Shevek wrote:
> Is this going to kill of get_iplayer?
>
> http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2012/06/19/bbc-iplayer-introduces-live-restart-capability/

Not necessarily, though it broke live tv streaming in get_iplayer. 
get_iplayer is as much to blame as the Beeb, though.  All that 
regex-based XML parsing in get_iplayer is a bit fragile, but it would be 
a non-trivial chore to replace it.

I've patched get_iplayer to restore live tv for now.  That's a bit of a 
drag so soon after a release, but then I wouldn't say live tv streaming 
is really get_iplayer's USP.  Still, commiserations to all package 
maintainers.

> Or is it only for live TV?
>
> Will they switch from RTMP to chunked streaming for non live?

I would guess they made this move for live tv on the iPlayer site as 
part of preparations for the hammering they're going to get during the 
Olympics.  There probably isn't much of an immediate incentive to do it 
for non-live content.  The BBC blog post offers no clue if existing RTMP 
streams (live and non-live) are going to disappear at any point.  If 
they do, there may be other options for downloading, though it would 
certainly require major changes in get_iplayer. We'll all have to keep 
an eye on this.  Thanks for flagging it up.