Availability Pattern (?)

[Vangelis forthnet]

 It's still early days to say anything with an acceptable
degree of certainty, but I have examined the following
set of 4 available episodes (of Series 45 of L...WJH):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006ml0l/episodes/player

Here are my findings:

---------------------------------------------------------------
pid: b04lckj1
First broadcast: 10 Oct 2014 (< 1wk ago)
inside the TV cache
XML playlist: OK
JSON playlist: OK
expiry:         2014-10-17T23:45:00Z
ms4: expires="2014-11-09T23:45:00Z"

pid: b04lcjrt
First broadcast: 07 Oct 2014 (< 1wk ago)
inside the TV cache
XML playlist: OK
JSON playlist: OK
expiry:         2014-10-14T23:25:00Z
ms4: expires="2014-11-06T23:25:00Z"

pid: b04kng5y
First broadcast: 03 Oct 2014 (> 1wk ago)
not in the TV cache
XML playlist: noItems
JSON playlist: OK
ms4: expires="2014-11-02T23:40:00Z"

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Availability switchover: weekend of 27-28 Sep
-----------------------------------------------------------------

pid: b04jtzj1
First broadcast: 26 Sep 2014 (> 1wk ago)
not in the TV cache
XML playlist: noItems
JSON playlist: OK
ms4: expires="2014-10-27T00:40:00Z"
-----------------------------------------------------------------

 Existence inside the TV cache was
checked with: get_iplayer "Holland"
 For the two more recent that were in,
get_iplayer -i pid:[pid]
produced the "expiry:" info.

 So, for episodes that were broadcast
less than 7 days ago (& were added after
the switchover), GiP exhibits the standard
behaviour: episodes populate the TV cache,
XML playlists work and the expiry reported
is based on the old regime of 7-day availability (*).
 Episode broadcast more than 7 days ago & added
after the switchover is not to be found within the cache;
XML playlist is "broken", so for recording one
must use the "PID method" along with the
GIT HEAD version of the script, that supports
the JSON playlists.

(*): I understand that the expiry reported by GiP
is dictated by the listing feeds; we'll have to wait and
see whether the existing feeds update properly so as
to reflect the 30-day availability (or maybe newer feeds
will be created for entries older than 7 days...).
FWIW, it has been reported
(https://squarepenguin.co.uk/forums/topic/cant-get-programmes-available-on-iplayer/#post-9736)
that for at least 3 TV shows,
GiP shows the correct expiry.

Of note are the results I list under
"ms4: expires="
These are accessed by visiting the
"mediaselector/4" URLs for each episode, e.g.

pid=b04lckj1
JSON pl -> vpid=b04lckgr
ms4 URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/4/mtis/stream/b04jtzhv
->  <media bitrate="1500" encoding="h264" expires="2014-11-09T23:45:00Z"

These are the CORRECT values for every episode;
if GiP could be patched to parse that info,
it would always report the correct expiry!

V.