Recording programmes more than 30 days old

[RS]

There is a forum post
https://forums.squarepenguin.co.uk/thread-1835.html
by someone who wants to record a Law in Action programme broadcast in
June 2015, b05zktnf. Its expiry date in the iPlayer is 1 January 2099,
so it does not seem an unreasonable want.

The response from dinky is,
"As is made clear in the docs, get_iplayer only supports programmes
broadcast in the past 30 days. It often works with older programmes, but
not always. Try youtube-dl for those."

I was able to download it with get_iplayer v2.99. --streaminfo reported
hlsaaclow at 62kbit/s and hlsaacstd1 at 128kbit/s, with the HLS
streamer, both from Akamai.

I did not need to go back as far as v2.99. v3.13 also worked.

The v3.14 release notes say,
'Removed all "hls"-prefixed TV and radio modes, except for "hlshd"
(***@25fps). Old values are automatically mapped to alternative
modes, with warning emitted.'
That is not a lot of use if there are no alternative modes.

I was unhappy about the removal of Flash support before the BBC had
abandoned Flash, but at least in that case we were given plenty of
warning. I have kept a copy of v2.99, the last version to support
Flash. Removing HLS support with no warning when there are programmes
only available in HLS seems premature. What does anyone else think?

If the best response is go to youtube-dl, maybe it is time to do just
that and give up on get_iplayer.

[James Scholes]

Post by RS
If the best response is go to youtube-dl, maybe it is time to do just
that and give up on get_iplayer.

There's nothing stopping you from doing so if you feel suitably offended
by this, or if ytl fits your needs as much as/better than get_iplayer.

For what it's worth I agree with you about the removal of HLS modes, but
there's also a case to be made here that the program in question can't
even be played on the official iPlayer site without Flash. That's
something which rests squarely in the BBC's camp and I'd hope that, if
this program is indeed available until 2099, that they upload a DASH
version before that date. But I doubt they will. The only reason it's
available over HLS at all is because mobile devices don't support Flash.

Regards,

James Scholes
https://twitter.com/JamesScholes