iPlayer Released for Mac, Linux; Adobe Announces AIR for Linux

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."

Re:Fedora Core 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 -- EOL?

[platykurtic]

Those are the minimum supported versions

Air/Flash License

[ink]

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.

Re:Proxies ?

[FugitiveMind]

http://samair.ru/proxy/ [samair.ru]

Re:IPlayer UK only

[Kalriath]

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.

Re:Proxy, anyone?

[Tatsh]

Streaming works fine over proxy; currently watching Apparitions

Re:Proxies ?

[Wizard Drongo]

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

Re:potential of Air ?

[greg_barton]

However, there's just nothing else out there right now with the same mix of capabilities...

Oh, really? [javafx.com]

Re:IPlayer UK only

[thetoadwarrior]

Who is paying £1,000 for a TV licence? It's £139.50, dumb ass.

Re:potential of Air ?

[pallmall1]

Hopefully people will realise its potential.

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 solaris, but they don't mention when. Sun promised the same thing with the 64-bit plugin TWO YEARS before it was released, so why should anyone hold their breath for javafx on linux or solaris.

Linux users may have a seat at the back of the bus with Adobe, but Sun doesn't want linux or solaris users to even get on the bus.

Re:potential of Air ?

[Si-UCP]

I take it that you haven't heard of the Canvas element [wikipedia.org] yet?

Re:Proxies ?

[Anonymous Coward]

At this present time you only ever need a TV license in the UK if you receive broadcast television signals across radio waves or by cable/satellite.

You do not need a license to:

• Use your tv to watch dvd's
• Use your tv to play games from a console
• Use your tv to watch iPlayer (provided it's not a live broadcast)
• Use your tv to watch other online tv services
• Use your tv to watch downloaded material (illegal it may be, but you sure as hell don't need a license to do it)
• Use your tv as a dust magnet

Far too many people think if you have a tv you need a license, but it's not the case. Granted that is the norm for most people who own a tv, but there are enough ways around it if you really want them and saying you will get a £1000 fine under all circumstances is just wrong. And in the context of this article, you don't actually need a license as it's using the iPlayer!

Re:Air/Flash License

[chrb]

iPlayer-Downloader [po-ru.com] has no licensing restrictions and no DRM :-)

Re:IPlayer UK only

[Anonymous Coward]

If you flat out refuse to buy a licence year after year and flaunt the fact in their face then maybe they would take you to court and fine you a grand. Usually they just get you to buy a licence at the normal rate.

Most UK government agencies are like that - big scary ad campaigns on the dire consequences of non-compliance, but little real-world follow through.

(I say most, because HM Revenue & Customs is a notable exception - they don't need the scary ads because everyone knows that if you mess with them, they will hang you up by the balls.)

Re:Air/Flash License

[ink]

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.

Re:Air/Flash License

[windsurfer619]

You're in luck! Firefox 3.1 will have native ogg theora rendering [mozillalinks.org]

That's a step in the right direction.

My Experiences So Far

[TheRealJFM]

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!

Re:Flash authoring tools: $700

[terjeber]

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.

Re:Fedora Core 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 -- EOL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu 7.10, Fedora Core 8 and OpenSuse 10.3 are minimum supported distros for Adobe AIR. It works fine on Ubuntu 8.04, Opensuse 11 and other newer distributions too.

Re:Linux DRM

[howlingmadhowie]

provided you distribute closed-source software, you can get a sort of drm working under linux. an expert will tell you how difficult it is to crack this though.

Re:iPlayer for Mac Third Party much better

[Molt]

iPlayer does include a lot of externally provided content, it's just that people don't realise that this isn't internally producted. Just as a couple of popular examples take Have I Got News For You (Made by Hattrick), and Spooks (A Kudos production). This is ignoring things like The Apprentice which is BBC produced but as is it's based on a US property the distribution agreements are likely to be draconian. In order to keep the license agreement the BBC did end up agreeing to buy-in a certain percentage of programming every year- I did have a quick look to see if I could find the actual percentage but didn't come up with anything. You're right that the geoIP restriction to UK is likely to be to protect the foreign distribution rights but it's also part of the BBC's general remit to provide value for the license fee payer. Giving the fee payers IP access to television is giving them value for money, giving non-fee payers access isn't as it results in money being spent on scaling the service in ways that aren't benefiting those funding the system. The fact that UK-based people who don't have licenses but can access iPlayer can be taken as an acceptable cost here for not requiring registration. You're right though about not all of the BBCs funding coming from licenses, but according to the 2005-2006 annual report for last year it was £3.1bn from the license and about £650m from other sources. This does ignore the BBC World Service which is funded in a different agreement directly from taxes but as that doesn't affect iPlayer-like systems at all it's safe to ignore.

Re:IPlayer UK only

[RiotingPacifist]

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 rights to these programs, so that they can be resold elsewhere in the world.
3) Stuff bought from other companies (heros, etc), the bbc have to negotiate on these contracts, with some (heros) not even being allowed onto iplayer.