BBC live streaming stopped working

[JCA]

I am using the following incantation to stream BBC News to my Linux system:

get_iplayer --stream --modes=flashvhigh2,flashhigh2,flashstd2
--nopurge --type=livetv "BBC News" --player="mplayer -vo xv -cache 128
-fs -stop-xscreensaver -zoom -"

This used to work until recently (a few weeks ago) but it now fails
systematically. The output I am getting from that command is the
following:

  This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
  This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
  conditions; use --conditions for details.

Matches:
80002:  BBC News - live

INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
MPlayer 1.1-4.8.2 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team

Playing -.
Reading from stdin...
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO: Checking existence of default version
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO: flashvhigh2,flashhigh2,flashstd2
modes will be tried for version default
INFO: Trying flashvhigh2 mode to record livetv: BBC News - live
INFO: File name prefix = BBC_News_live_2014-02-18_163401
RTMPDump v2.4
(c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
WARNING: You haven't specified an output file (-o filename), using stdout
Connecting ...
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   ERROR: RTMP_Connect1, handshake failed.
INFO: Command exit code 3 (raw code = 768)

INFO: Streaming failed with exit code 3
ERROR: aborting get_iplayer
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)

libavformat version 54.6.100 (internal)


Exiting... (End of file)

Now I am doing this from a system in the US, with the help of
Unblock-Us. When my Linux box in configured to to use the Unblock-Us
DNS servers, I can stream BBC News to my browser in this system
without any problem whatsoever. However, using the get_iplayer line as
above, I am getting the output above.

For comparison, if I issue the same get_iplayer line without using
Unblock-Us, the connection fails, as expected, but in a different way:

get_iplayer v2.85, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
  This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
  This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
  conditions; use --conditions for details.

Matches:
80002:  BBC News - live

INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
MPlayer 1.1-4.8.2 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team

Playing -.
Reading from stdin...
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO: Checking existence of default version
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO: No specified modes
(flashvhigh2,flashhigh2,flashstd2) available for this programme with
version 'default' (try using --modes=)
ERROR: Failed to record 'BBC News - live (bbc_news24)'
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)

libavformat version 54.6.100 (internal)

Also as expected, when not using the Unblock-Us DNS servers BBC News
live streaming does not work. Finally, I tried with flashvhigh and
flashvhigh1 (and analogously for the other flash* options) to no
avail.

Any ideas as to what is going on here, and how to fix this problem?