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WORKING: BBC iPlayer on XBMC (ATV2)

fabian9

fabian9

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 28, 2007
1,148
171
Bristol, UK
Guys,

Just to confirm that the BBC iPlayer addon is working with the latest buildable repo of xbmc for Apple TV 2.

This is huge news for me, and suspect it will be for many other ATV2 users in the UK. I love it!

TV Catchup addon also works but is not playing in the correct aspect ratio.
 
fabian9 said:
Guys,

Just to confirm that the BBC iPlayer addon is working with the latest buildable repo of xbmc for Apple TV 2.

This is huge news for me, and suspect it will be for many other ATV2 users in the UK. I love it!

TV Catchup addon also works but is not playing in the correct aspect ratio.
Click to expand...

Sweet, I was almost about to sell my ATV on ebay because of its inability to play iPlayer.

I'm from East Grinstead btw!
 
iPlayer on ATV2

"XBMC"? !

For a complete numpty, could you explain how you go about streaming from BBC iPlayer to a TV via an ATV2?

Many thanks in advance
 
OK looks like I'm getting an ATV2 then!

How good is the XBMC plugin - can you choose which stream to watch (flashhd (720p), flashvhigh etc)?
 
Grammar51 said:
"XBMC"? !

For a complete numpty, could you explain how you go about streaming from BBC iPlayer to a TV via an ATV2?

Many thanks in advance
Click to expand...

tallyho said:
OK looks like I'm getting an ATV2 then!

How good is the XBMC plugin - can you choose which stream to watch (flashhd (720p), flashvhigh etc)?
Click to expand...

the plugin is pretty good, haven't had a chance to test it to death yet, but all streams that I clicked on worked flawlessly (including HD streams). There might be an option to choose between different qualities in the Settings, haven't checked yet. I should say that the iPlayer XBMC addon has been around for a while so it is quite stable - the new bit of functionality is the ability to install XBMC on the Apple TV.
 
fabian9 said:
I should say that the iPlayer XBMC addon has been around for a while so it is quite stable - the new bit of functionality is the ability to install XBMC on the Apple TV.
Click to expand...
Great -- ATV2 now on order.

As a side issue, I'm actually not interested in the rest of the XBMC functionality -- I have all my videos encoded with Handbrake and tagged with Subler to iTunes standards (I've messed around with the likes of Plex, but couldn't get it to scrape non-US metadata. Sounds trivial but I don't want movies rated "R" and so on, because that's just not how we do it in Britain).

With my ATV1 I got this working last year
http://jonathan.tweed.name/2010/02/09/bbc-iplayer-for-apple-tv-an-update/
And it was great, because it took the iPlayer feeds and put them into the native ATV interface. Unfortunately, the guy who did it had to take it down, and then when the BBC implemented SWFverification it stopped streaming anyway.

But that kind of thing is what I'm really hoping for...maybe if/when there's an official app store it might happen...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Didjt said:
Do I have to jailbreak ATV2 to enable iPlayer?
Click to expand...

Yes, you do.
 
tallyho said:
With my ATV1 I got this working last year
http://jonathan.tweed.name/2010/02/09/bbc-iplayer-for-apple-tv-an-update/
And it was great, because it took the iPlayer feeds and put them into the native ATV interface. Unfortunately, the guy who did it had to take it down, and then when the BBC implemented SWFverification it stopped streaming anyway.
Click to expand...

Whereas this breaks the SWFVerification, which is illegal. I wouldn't buy an Apple TV on the strength of this - the BBC are bound to break it or take legal action against it eventually.

Phazer
 
The Phazer said:
Whereas this breaks the SWFVerification, which is illegal. I wouldn't buy an Apple TV on the strength of this - the BBC are bound to break it or take legal action against it eventually.

Phazer
Click to expand...

The plugin has been available for other platforms for a number of years now without the BBC taking any measures against it.
 
This might be a daft question, where do you get the plugins from? I can't find TVcatchup or iplayer on the list of plugins on XBMC on the AppleTV. Do you have to download the plugins seperately and SSH them on?
 
The Phazer said:
the BBC are bound to break it or take legal action against it eventually.

Phazer
Click to expand...
Well perhaps, but then again a native iOS iplayer app is apparently due very soon for iPad/iPhone so who knows whether someone will be able to get it to run on the ATV2?
 
fabian9 said:
Guys,

Just to confirm that the BBC iPlayer addon is working with the latest buildable repo of xbmc for Apple TV 2.

This is huge news for me, and suspect it will be for many other ATV2 users in the UK. I love it!

TV Catchup addon also works but is not playing in the correct aspect ratio.
Click to expand...

fabian9, I've been trying to get the iPlayer to work. I'm running the 10.0 build of XBMC and version 2.3.2 of iPlayer.

What am I missing?
 
That's great! Do the subtitles work in iPlayer? Could someone check please?

iPlayer on my iPhone has no subtitles, which ruins it for me (I'm deaf), but iPlayer on the iPad has subtitles (I checked it in the Apple store).

Separately, are ITV Player and 4oD also available via XBMC on ATV2? Subtitles for them? (4oD carries subs, iTV Player will do so soon, no idea if subs work on iPad or not)

Thanks!
 
fabian9 said:
The plugin has been available for other platforms for a number of years now without the BBC taking any measures against it.
Click to expand...

Err... apart from all the times they have, such as introducing SWF Verification.

tallyho said:
Well perhaps, but then again a native iOS iplayer app is apparently due very soon for iPad/iPhone so who knows whether someone will be able to get it to run on the ATV2?
Click to expand...

Well I'd imagine that the app will use a secure client authentication certificate, given the webapp does now, to make sure it goes to the platform it's intended to only. That's the entire basis of the BBC's content protection on iOS. If anyone broke that that would be a very, very big deal.

Phazer
 
ashy7 said:
This might be a daft question, where do you get the plugins from? I can't find TVcatchup or iplayer on the list of plugins on XBMC on the AppleTV. Do you have to download the plugins seperately and SSH them on?
Click to expand...

You download them and SSH them onto your Apple TV.
BBC iPlayer Plugin
TV Catchup Plugin

chimpy0813 said:
fabian9, I've been trying to get the iPlayer to work. I'm running the 10.0 build of XBMC and version 2.3.2 of iPlayer.

What am I missing?
Click to expand...

The latest build hasn't been released yet, but the files are all in the repo. So you have to create your own builds of the repo. Somebody has already done this and made his build available though.

More Info Here

RedTomato said:
That's great! Do the subtitles work in iPlayer? Could someone check please?

iPlayer on my iPhone has no subtitles, which ruins it for me (I'm deaf), but iPlayer on the iPad has subtitles (I checked it in the Apple store).

Separately, are ITV Player and 4oD also available via XBMC on ATV2? Subtitles for them? (4oD carries subs, iTV Player will do so soon, no idea if subs work on iPad or not)

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Not sure about subtitles, maybe somebody else can chip in. Haven't found any 4oD or ITV plugins yet.

The Phazer said:
Err... apart from all the times they have, such as introducing SWF Verification.
Click to expand...

Sorry, that was meant to read legal measures.
 
Last edited:
I don't think there is a 4oD plugin. Most people tend suggest using a Youtube plugin, then accessing the channel4 youtube channel.

Thanks for the heads up for iPlayer. It works really well.
 
SSH details for BBC iPlayer and TV Catchup

Hi Fabian,

I've just jailbroken my ATV2, and installed XBMC, very impressed so far.

Can you please tell me what I need to type into terminal to SSH BBC iPlayer and TV catchup into XBMC on ATV2? or if anyone else knows, that'd be great.

Would really love to be able to use a web browser like Firefox with ATV2/XBMC, could then stream 4OD, Five On Demand, ITV player, SeeSaw etc.

Also, do you think it's only a matter of time until Boxee for jailbroken ATV2 appears?

Many Thanks
:)



fabian9 said:
You download them and SSH them onto your Apple TV.
BBC iPlayer Plugin
TV Catchup Plugin



The latest build hasn't been released yet, but the files are all in the repo. So you have to create your own builds of the repo. Somebody has already done this and made his build available though.

More Info Here



Not sure about subtitles, maybe somebody else can chip in. Haven't found any 4oD or ITV plugins yet.



Sorry, that was meant to read legal measures.
Click to expand...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I usually do it via cyberduck, not very good with terminal commands! :)

You can get a browser for atv 2 if you use atv flash (black), made by firecore. I've tried using it to get to various video streaming websites though and it doesn't seem to be working.
 
curious to know if it works in the US as well. I suppose I'll find out for myself later tonight, but if anyone is using it in the US, please post your findings.
 
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