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iPlayer Released for Mac, Linux; Adobe Announces AIR for Linux
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Dec 18, 2008 05:03 PM
from the rich-buttery-web-apps dept.
from the rich-buttery-web-apps dept.
Zoxed writes "The BBC reports that their iPlayer has just been released for Mac and Linux (download page). It is based on Adobe Air, but unfortunately the service is only available to UK IP address, so I can not test it out from my adopted homeland of Germany. Perhaps a UK-based Slashdotter could review it?" In related news, an anonymous reader writes "Adobe has announced a Linux version of its AIR 1.5 runtime environment that is supposed to allow rich web apps developed on it to run on Fedora Core 8, Ubuntu 7.10 and openSuse 10.3 with no modification. The company released versions for Windows and Mac OS X back in November."
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Proxy, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Proxy, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Streaming works fine over proxy; currently watching Apparitions
Parent
Proxies ? (Score:2)
Are there any commercial or free proxy servers which one could use to access the BBC-UK site ?
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Our 3rd party mac app lets you use proxies well, and we're hoping to bring in an integrated VPN..
www.lawrencedudley.co.uk/iplayer
potential of Air ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:potential of Air ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Abstraction and cross-platform targeting are both "lazy" and "smart."
I mean, we could all write code in assembly language for every architecture we could ever want. Or we could use Flash/.NET/Java/whatever to target everything we might conceivably want with less hassle. Tough choice, that.
Air/Flash License (Score:5, Informative)
Additionally, Air and Flash have some hefty licensing restrictions. From Adobe:
For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, Distributor shall not distribute any Adobe Runtime for use on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet or Tablet PC (other than Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, media center (other than Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, internet appliance or other internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or (c) other closed system device. For information on licensing Adobe Runtimes for use or distribution on devices see http://www.adobe.com/licensing [adobe.com].
So, they can call it "free" all they want, but it isn't even free-as-in-beer free.
Parent
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Adobe spends money to develop these technologies as does Microsoft. They are not going to hand out that much for free, even as in beer.
I wish every developer would look past proprietary things like Flash and AIR and use web standards instead, but I know this will never happen.
Re:Air/Flash License (Score:4, Informative)
I wish every developer would look past proprietary things like Flash and AIR and use web standards instead, but I know this will never happen.
MythTV can't legally use this product -- and not for lame patent reasons, but for copyright laws (it's a set-top box). We'll be stuck with Adobe's runtime until an open standard takes off. Developers can indeed "look past" proprietary things like Flash. They do it all the time when they develop for the web, and they take it for granted until things like this happen. Hopefully HTML5 will use an unencumbered standard for audio and video (such as Ogg/Vorbis). That, coupled with SVG and traditional web technologies would give us the "run time" that we need to keep the web free.
Parent
Re:Air/Flash License (Score:5, Interesting)
Too bad Theora sucks.
(And to head off the "OMG TROLL!" screams: Vorbis is an extremely good audio format, and one I use myself in my own projects because the libraries for it are reasonably good and easy to handle--but Theora is an absolute shit video format compared to pretty much everything else in common use.)
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Re:Air/Flash License (Score:5, Informative)
iPlayer-Downloader [po-ru.com] has no licensing restrictions and no DRM :-)
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Re:potential of Air ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash has its problems, obviously; it breaks the whole browsing paradigm. However, there's just nothing else out there right now with the same mix of capabilities; it has its niche. (Maybe java applets, but those universally suck. Maybe Silverlight could, but nobody seriously uses it.)
Parent
Re:potential of Air ? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, really? [javafx.com]
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Kind of hard to do that if you're running linux or solaris.
Would holding up JavaFX on 98% of desktops in hopes that Linux will get its multimedia act together really be in the interest of Sun or Java? If so, hold your breath and think "everything should be in Ogg" over and over again until you get your wish. The rest of us have better stuff to do. [java.net] -- Editor, Java.Net . What this has to do with solaris is unclear.
They promise javafx is coming to linux and
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Are usable SWF authoring tools even small-f free yet?
Flex is free and open source, so, yes, usable SWF authoring tools are free. Download Eclipse, download Flex. Voila, you are set.
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Sound and video for starters.
And that's what iPlayer does.
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Flash allows socket connections, data binding for true persistent state across an application, full complete support for managed vector graphics; audio; video; 3D objects and environments, local storage, remote shared storage (shared between users) and all of it is cross platform/browser.
Some of these can be addressed by running special server apps (a Comet server for socket connections, ie: push data to the client rather than pull from the server or polling from the server) or by using cutting edge browser
Fedora Core 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 -- EOL? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this release just in time for support of those 2 versions to be discontinued?
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Don't know about Ubuntu, but for Fedora, stuff that works with Fedora N doesn't necessarily work with Fedora (N + 1). They sometimes make rapid changes between releases and you'll have to do a lot of reconfiguration.
AIR Linux - No Distro Love (Score:4, Interesting)
Having finished a Flex/Air app... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to say it's decent approach to the problem of deploying Web Apps. Granted we did all the backend work connecting the Flex/Air front end to the database using AMFPHP, but it's definitely a decent platform for web applications and hybrid web/desktop apps. However it still suffers one flaw: it requires a third party platform that doesn't run on everything. (think mobile devices)
I see the Support OpenSuSE 10.3, but what about 11 and 11.1 (currently downloading the ISO).
The other approach is what Google and Apple are taking with HTML/Javascript based web applications that try to be browser/standards compliant. The entity that figures out how to make it work as a standalone desktop app has a winner.
Re:Having finished a Flex/Air app... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to pick on you, but this is a bugbear of mine.
Applications written in AIR/Silverlight/whatever are not web applications. They're thick client applications that happen to use a bit of http and javascript.
Web applications run in web browsers. Not in one particular browser, and not in a third party runtime.
I'm glad AIR was a good fit for your problem.
Parent
Linux whining FTW (Score:5, Funny)
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It's not the "whining" it's the fact that there are already millions of Linux users, companies think twice to restricting access to million of potential clients.
iPlayer for Mac Third Party much better (Score:3, Interesting)
The 3rd party ones are better. No DRM, no AIR....
www.lawrencedudley.co.uk/iplayer
Disclaimer: I helped make that on. But it IS good.
We'll be making iTunes playlist support soon....
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Actually, it's usage can't be illegal; all it does is allow you to watch the content available to iPhone users.
Of course you can't save stuff on the iPhone, but the BBC offers these downloads. We just allow you to get them. Kinda like changing your browsers user-agent.
I paid my licence fee, I can tape stuff off the TV. Why the hell do they use DRM when they already allow you access??
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My Experiences So Far (Score:4, Informative)
I've installed AIR and the iPlayer downloader, and so far neither have really worked.
Granted this is probably because I'm using 64-bit Linux, and they don't seem to support it yet (not that I was told this at any stage of the installation process, or the website where I downloaded the installer.
To get the thing installed on 64-bit I followed these instructions [adobe.com], and then proceeded to the BBC website to download something. Nothing seemed to work, no download links appeared. I then followed the links to an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks that other people reported was working. This time a download link appeared, but clicking it took me to install the program again.
To figure out why it wasn't working, I ran the downloader from the command line. It was printing the following: "Unkown desktop manager((null)), only Gnome and KDE are supported". Aha... I'm using XFCE, yet it must use the inter-process communication of either one of those desktops...
Booted into Gnome, and tried again. This time it tells me that it wants libgnome-keyring.so - I realise that no preferences are savable - it must be saving prefs with the keyring. I think that's a bit odd - what's wrong with ~/.Adobe/AIR?
After installing 32-bit libraries for gnome-keyring, the thing still doesn't work, and still won't download anything.
The problem with this application, or rather with Adobe AIR, is the series of arbitrary choices the designers seem to have made. Linux is not a platform where you can assume many things - and it would have probably made more sense to pick some generic ways of getting things done (there's a reason that text-files have always been used for config!) rather than relying upon fairly specific libraries for basic tasks and then not even falling back to a sane alternative. Perhaps a 64-bit version will fix all of this, I certainly hope so!
Titanium (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure if anyone here has seen us yet .. but Titanium is an open source/open web alternative to AIR that just had it's first Preview Release (PR1) a week ago. We currently support OSX and Windows , and are hard at work refactoring and getting a Linux release into the fold for our PR2 release in January.
We're licensed under ASL and using lots of open source techs (WebKit, Chromium, Gears, libXML, to name a few).. come check us out!
http://github.com/marshall/titanium/tree/master [github.com]
http://titaniumapp.com/ [titaniumapp.com]
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no, i just thought that after that many years here I should have at least on first post :)
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Wow, a low uid making a first post comment. Was the account hacked?
This is slashdot.
There are trolls.
Same as it ever was.
Re:first (Score:5, Funny)
Same as it ever was.
And you may find yourself
In a news website for nerds
Fighting the first post trolls
And you may find yourself
Wondering "why, in God's name, am I here?"
And the days go by...
Parent
low uid? (Score:5, Funny)
[*mumbles under his breath and waves cane threateningly*]
Parent
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It's not a fail at all. It's legally required! They have paid for the rights to show the content only to brits (who paid for it with their TV license and taxes). So this is a service for the british taxpayers who paid for it. Quite reasonable really.
Now, if they could license the iPlayer tech to other broadcasters running similar schemes (here in NZ, that's ALL of them), that would be cool and a great way to recoup some of that cost for the taxpayers.
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I'd pay the tax in return for online access to all of the BeeB's stuff.
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So the question is, have non-British people paid for iPlayer through advertising or not? If not, then why not give them iPlayer but with ads?
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Because then it'd give way to British people wanting ads instead of the license tax...er...I mean fee. The BBC have a good thing going revenue-wise and they'll not let up. I'd love for it to become subscription or advert payrolled but this would mean the BBC have to work for their money.
All BBC programmes are paid for with the license fee money, not advertising. IIRC any advertising outside of the UK to non-British audiences is because the BBC sold a show overseas (and the buyer network is the one advertisi
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There are 3 types of show on the bbc:
1) BBC produced, the bbc obviously have complete rights to these, but make a fair amount of money from selling these to foreign companies. As they make money (a.k.a save the taxpayers money) by selling these to foreign companies, they don't want to put this online as it would harm their revenue (a.k.a the taxpayers have to foot more of the bill).
2) Independently produced by uk companies, these have to make up something like 10-15% of all shows, the bbc will buy limited r
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Re:IPlayer UK only (Score:5, Informative)
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That said, I don't see a download option though I do get a high quality flash version. I'm installing Adobe AIR now to see if that makes any difference.
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Re:Doesn't work! (Score:5, Funny)
Thats what happens when you get teenagers to do your configuration management.
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You don't frighten us English Pig-dogs!
Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person.
I blow my nose at you
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I am disappointed that all distros quoted are "old" versions of their existing ones strictly speaking. Why do software companies do this all the time?
Err... Because those are the minimum supported versions? It would be like if a program came out that only ran on Vista, not XP everyone would really question the reason why. Similarly, its not bad that it doesn't require Ubuntu 8.10 to be installed, its quite good in fact that it doesn't.
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