Can only watch BBC Parliament and BBC Alba live

[dinkypumpkin]

On 03/09/2012 00:51, Hawes, Mark wrote:
> problems. BBC Parliament and BBC Alba will play live OK but all other
> "livetv" channels (e.g. BBC One, BBC Two, BBC News) will not. I'm using
> version 2.82 of get_iplayer (build c3aafce) running on a slackware 13.7
> linux platform and playing the stream out through cvlc.
> The commands I am using are:  'get_iplayer --stream --modes=best
> --type=livetv "BBC Parliament" | cvlc -' which works, while 'get_iplayer
> --stream --modes=best --type=livetv "BBC One" | cvlc -'  does not.
> I notice that the available modes for the two working channels are
> different, with BBC Parliament and Alba playing out OK using
> 'flashnormal' while BBC One and the other live channels try to use
> 'flashvhigh2' which is  unsuccessful. I have also tried explicitly
> specifying each of the available modes for these channels, but again to
> no avail.

Sometimes --modes=best won't work and you need to specify explicit CDN 
sources in --modes.  For example, with BBC One try --modes=flashstd1 and 
if that fails try --modes=flashstd2.  Unfortunately, the "1" and "2" 
suffixes don't always correspond to the same CDN for successive 
invocations of get_iplayer.  The stream sources are generated 
dynamically and get_iplayer only attempts to stream from the first one 
in order.  It may require a few attempts to land on a working CDN.

Why is this necessary? The main entertainment channels like BBC One are 
usually available on 2 CDNs with multiple encoding qualities on each. 
However, the first CDN selected may not respond for some reason, or the 
encoding quality you request may not be available on that CDN, or you 
may be attempting to access a geo-locked CDN from outside the UK.  You 
thus have to point get_iplayer to whichever CDN is actually available at 
a given time.  BBC Parliament and BBC Alba are only streamed from one 
CDN at a single encoding quality, so the above shenanigans are not required.