BBC plugin needs updating please

Current FRD version used - 0.9u4

Plugin for bbc.co.uk ( version 1.5.2 - author ntoskrnl+tong2shot )

I've tried different options ( Stream types - HDS and RTMP )( CDN - Akamai, Limelight, Level3 )
An example link not working ( [www.bbc.co.uk] ) gets the response - Following URLS not supported by plugins.

Thanks

The breakage is caused by two BBC (Radio) changes:

1. Several months ago they started using ProgrammeIDs (PIDs) beginning with the letter m, while prior to that (mostly) only PIDs starting with either b or p were used (and are supported in current FRD iPlayer plugin).

EDIT: For BBC World Service Radio, PIDs starting with the letter w and with a string length that can go as high as 16 were also introduced

2. More recently, BBC iPlayer Radio was rebranded as BBC Sounds (another idiotic, IFAM, change, just to cater to mobile devices and justify the salaries of new and "trendier" app programmers); as a result of that change, radio programme pages were changed accordingly:

Language: XML
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001kmg => https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0001kmg

Regexp inside current FRD plugin has to be modified to adapt to both changes above...

If you have a radio PID starting with (b | p), you can start a download by reversing the URL format change, for example,

Language: XML
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06sbqzx

will fail to download, but

Language: XML
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06sbqzx

if fed to FRD, will download successfully!

Of note, also:
1. Tor should be unchecked in the plugin's settings, if you're outside the UK; the BBC have completely blacklisted ALL GB Tor exit nodes - this means you can now only fetch lower quality (96kbps via HDS, 48kbps via HDS/RTMP) radio programmes - for TV, you'd have to use a whitelisted VPN/Proxy etc...
2. RTMP streams remain, as of this writing, available for radio shows (with Akamai/Limelight CDNs), but NOT for TV ones (Level3 RTMP CDN has been dead for years...).
3. RTMP and HDS streams are on the way out, considering the planned obsolesence of Flash Adobe plugins; the FRD iplayer plugin should be rewritten with AppleHLS and MPEG-DASH streams in mind...

(I am attaching a verbose log generated on attempting to fetch OP's radio link)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2018 04:28PM by TVjunkie.

Thanks, I can confirm it works.