Confused Newbie

[Barrie Avis]

On 07/03/2014 11:39, Jeremy Nicoll - ml get_iplayer wrote:
> Barrie Avis <barrie.avis at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am clearly just a confused Newbie and I just cannot see the
>> big picture of what I am doing. Although I have used Windows for
>> many years, I am totally new to the Pi, Linux and Raspbian
>>
>> I want to run the BBC iPlayer on my new Raspberry Pi.
> Is that possible?  (I don't know.)
And having read you next answer below, I now realise that what I 
want is the *functionality* of the BBC iPlayer.

>> I have been trying to follow the instructions that are in
>> http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html
>>
>> I downloaded get_iplayer onto my laptop (running Windows 7) and installed
>> it. I then followed the instructions under Command Line Interface (CLI)
>> and got a CLI that ended up with a prompt C:\Program Files\get_iplayer>
>> but do not understand what to do next.
> The purpose of get_iplayer is not to "get (the) iplayer", but instead to get
> sound (radio) and video (tv) files from the BBC website using get_iplayer
> instead of the BBC's downloader.
Oh dear. Silly me.

Having gone back to
        http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html
I now realise that once you know this, things start to make more 
sense.

I would have found it so helpful if there was something like 
this paragraph of yours at the beginning, immediately after the 
heading "About get_iplayer". (I realise that once you know it, 
it is not necessary, and clearly the person who wrote it already 
knew it, so didn't see the need - but if you do not know this, 
it can be confusing, especially since the name get_iplayer 
seemed to me to imply that the tool would actually *get* (the) 
iplayer!)

I don't know if the person who wrote it would consider doing 
this? (This is not meant as a criticism but just as a, 
hopefully, helpful suggestion.)

> But you say below that you already have BBC iPlayer installed on your
> laptop, which suggests (if you are happy with what it does) that you don't
> need get_iplayer as well.
Yes it is beginning  to make sense now. (And a first look at the 
get_iplayer tool leads me to think it could well be better than 
the BBC iPlayer.)
>
>> Moving now to my Raspberry Pi:-
>> it says "Paste these five lines into a terminal window" Thes following
>> lines start with "sudo bash etc." so seem to be things I should be putting
>> into raspbian on the Pi. But I am on the Windows laptop so don't
>> understand how I am to do this. Should there be some way to paste from the
>> Laptop into the Pi?
> No.  Either: use a browser from the Pi to find the instructions and c&p them
> to a terminal window on the Pi, or move the sample commands there on eg a
> USB stick, or just type them carefully yourself.
Yes clearly I need to learn a lot more about the RPi - for 
starters how to run and use the RPi browser (I presume there 
must be one). And after that how to access a USB stick. (I will, 
in any case, want to use my 16GB USB stick as the storage medium 
for downloaded programmes anyway.)

Thanks ever so much for you help - it is really appreciated.

Barrie