nirving

Here is a link to a video I made showing that it does work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIyiOB64fc8

Ka Ora!

That could of been done anywhere, and you still haven't said what your big secret is it makes no odds to me as i have Sky HD. I know the proxy method works and i posted a fast working UK proxy in the Lab not so long ago, and the VPN method works very well but costs. Post a video but not telling people how you went about it suggests its a wind up.

sdale100

I sill didn't understand anything anyway!!!

Pierlek

All this very complicated, retirement is not for complications; We have 3 HDTVs in the house all fitted with sat receivers with freeview. Things have move on since,BBC & ITV have introduced the Freesat HD; cute little receivers are sold in the UK for a £100 or so. All you have to do is to plug it to a Sat dish facing Astra2D & to your tv. You will receive 100s of channels in HD (Mpeg4) I shall have to get 3 of them & give away the sky ones with freeview crds. Move on mate.pier

Ka Ora!

Not all the channels on Freesat are High Def they are just up scaled by the boxes to the output settings You have BBC HD and soon ITV HD but the ITV one will only have a limited number of True HD programs on. as it stands even with out Freesat or SKY you can just buy a Digital Freeview Sat box in Bricolage and a Dish point it to 28.2 East with the correct elevation for your area if you get a HD one you can Get BBC HD as well.

nirving

Hosted at http://www.darkedges.com/bbc/

Indeed you are correct to not to believe me, as there is nothing to prove where that video came from, but unlike those lamers with the PS3 I am going to document what I did. Well not 100% as you will have to find your own UK host to hold some files, and that version will be release later on once I have finished documenting it.

Here is another way that does not involve hosted files, and uses GreaseMonkey and FoxyProxy to emulate what I did to make it all work.

1. Download the addons for for FoxyProxy and GreaseMonkey.
   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2464
   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
2. Next we need to configure FoxyProxy to be used in Patterns mode so that when the request to get a particular URL from the BBC is made it is made via the UK Proxy. This URL contains the token to view the video.
3. From within FireFox select the Tools Menu then FoxProxy menu and then the Options Menu.
4. Click the Add New Proxy button
5. In the Proxy Name Field enter BBC iPlayer Proxy
6. Select the Proxy Details Tab
7. Select the Manual Proxy Configuration Radio Button
8. In Hostname and Port enter the Hostname and Port (and select if it is a SOCKS Proxy and version if using SOCKS)
9. Select the Patterns tab
10. Click the Add New Pattern button
11. In the Pattern Name field enter "BBC iPlayer Media Selector Pattern"
12. In the URL Pattern enter http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/*
13. Leave the WhiteList and WildCards radio buttons selected
14. Click the Ok Button
15. Click the OK Button
16. Go to http://www.darkedges.com/bbc/iPlayer.user.js
17. When prompted click the Install button to add the GreaseMonkey Script
18. Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ and select a video to stream
19. A preview image will show and and a white "Click to play" button should appear and now your should be able to view the video. First the ident appears and then the video, which is not streamed via the proxy.

What my GreaseMonkey script does it to replace the "Sorry" information with an embded iplayer (Found out how to do that here http://jonathan.tweed.name/2007/12/h...yer-embedded-m) and examines the URL to find the PID of the programme to be viewed and replaces it. The FoxyProxy addon enables all requests to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/* to go via the UK proxy, which returns the correct token etc and the video plays.

My original version replaces all links to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/* with a PHP script located on a UK based server, and so you do not need to have a UK proxy configured within your browser. The request is proxied via the UK Web server and all the user needs is GreaseMonkey. I have tried to write a bookmarklet so that GreaseMonkey is not required, but could not get it to work properly, but will continue to make this as easy as possible so that a wider audience can use it.

For those who want to know how to change the location of where the mediaselector is called from take a look @ the following code.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/emp/xml/config.xml contains the configuration of the iPlayer and also where to check that the user is in the UK. Looking at that file we see it contains the following
So if we replace it with say

and add a crossdomain.xml file to the root of your webserver, you will find that if you write a script to proxy the request via a UK proxy, or host in the UK it will return the correct token for you.

That is all you need to do to get this to work.

Too technical? I guess so, but it works

Ka Ora!

Far from to technical for me im always curios as to which way people do it and if it fits with my downloading the drm free versions from the BBC by spoofing the iPhone in firefox. Thanks for posting it.

sdale100

Piece of cake!!!.............................NOT!!!

:confused :

nirving

Yes it is a technical thing that you need to do to get this to work, and I have yet to figure out a way to make it easier to do. Another way would be to use Tor with a UK endpoint, which a couple of Americans have got working after I documented the instructions.


Never said it was going to be a piece of cake, hacking the iPlayer requires some back door tricks, as you need a physical presence in the UK to get the authorisation token for the video to play. If you look at some of the scripts out in the public space, they require you to be technically minded.

sdale100

Err, doesn't "hacking" rhyme with "srictly illegal"?

Ka Ora!

That depends on what side of the line you stand. Its not hacking anyway i would class it as reverse engineering with an intent to identify design flaws and improve the quality of service to a broader audience.


Its at a technical level that i understand i did not mean it was easy for the average Joe.

Ka Ora!

Well i can confirm it works a treat...started watching that Russia thingy with Johnathan whatshisname. Thank You again, i would be very interested to see how this goes and if you manage to simplify the process.

sdale100

Well in nay case, your instructions are excellent. I've "cracked" it!!

Cheers mate

nirving

Okay perhaps hacking is the wrong word to use here. I found a flaw that allows me to gain access to content that I should not have, and it is simply a flaw. The BBC will discover this hole soon enough and close it, but I am not sure how exactly they will achieve this, as with using a programmable Web Proxy such as WebScarab it would be possible to rewrite the content back to what I need it to do. This is exactly what I do when I want to watch videos on www.hulu.com.

For those who don;t know hulu.com has a lot of content for the US only, but they do a geo check to confirm that you are in the US, so all you need to do is either use FoxyProxy to direct requests to http://releasegeo.hulu.com/geoCheck to use a US Proxy, or use WebScarab to programmatically change the response from not-valid to valid and use FoxyProxy to use WebScarab for that URL. I have written a FireFox plugin to rewrite the content, but it does not work with Flash players, but I am working on that.

sdale100

OK, I'll take your word for it. I'll just use you as my reference when I get done for it!! Nah, only kidding, you're probably right, the Beeb will get wind of what's going on soon enough, if they don't already know, and do something about it. By then, guys like you will probably have found another "back door".

Keep up the good work.