BBC Website problems causing difficulties to get_iplayer

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Sun Jul 20 11:36:59 BST 2014, Simon Ritchie wrote:

> The BBC website still appears to be in difficulties.
> (snip)
> The effect on get_iplayer is pretty much the same as yesterday.

 The whole BBC iPlayer infrastructure is in a state of disarray currently;
Most of the TV and Radio feeds are off or working intermittently,
so that GiP cannot populate fully the TV & Radio caches.
 At the time of writing (ca. 16:45 BST),

 get_iplayer --type=tv -f --force

returns "INFO: 205 Matching Programmes", while

get_iplayer --type=radio -f --force

returns only "INFO: 423 Matching Programmes",
when normally it is in the region of 3,500 :-(

To make matters worse, the "playlist" & "mediaselector" URLs"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlist/PID
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/4/mtis/stream/vPID

that GiP uses to get access to metadata & stream specs also
work in a random fashion (or not at all), so that even if you
have beforehand the PID of a desired show, it is highly
unlikely to get it with GiP using the --pid command...

To paraphrase the "I LOVE LUCY" catchphrase
(that Ricky never said, see:
http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/05/lucy-you-got-some-splainin-to-do.html )

"Beeb! You got some 'splainin' to do!"

> Oh well, maybe they will fix it tomorrow.

 Fingers crossed! I hope they don't put it down to
the unusually hot weather recently in the London area...
(Currently 33 Celsius in my city in northern Greece!)

Regards,
Vangelis.