BBC iPlayer for S60 goes live... with caveats

[slitchfield]

It seems that the BBC's version of iPlayer for S60 has gone live, download it here. It has been implemented as a web runtime widget that kicks off streaming in RealPlayer. And it's also, naturally, a bit fussy about which devices it installs on. It seems happy with the N95 and N96, obviously, other success stories welcome. Screenshots and more comments below in a moment...

Read on in the full article.

[Jaggz]

Works a treat! No, it's not as good as the iPhone version - 132,000 pixels verses 56,000 pixels. But hey, it's still the best mobile TV service in the UK, besides Slingplayer of course.

James @ Nokia Creative

[entwisi]

Installs on e90 but when running it I get a script alert about user agent not recognised. doesn't do anything beyond that

[Nexus1974]

I tried this on my N95 8GB using the Contract Internet profile via Vodafone, Realplayer complains there is not enough bandwidth over the 3G connection.

It works however if I set the Realplayer connection to use a local Wi-Fi connection.

Hopefully this will be resolved soon.

Does anyone know if the is a Vodafone firmware issue and if unbranding would help or really due the bandwidth provided by 3G and that used by the iPlayer.

[JonWill]

Doesn't seem to work on the E71 - get:

Sript alert:

device: user agent not recognisedmozilla/5.0

and then some more stuff ....

According to your first screen shot some of the content looks a bit dodgy. Especially the "Coming of age" episode!

Getting a "Sorry, television programmes can only be watched over a wifi connection" message when I try to stream a show ...

Won't work on my N82 with firmware 30+. Script alert: device: user agent not recognized? So much for Web Run Time...

Just open the Widget as a ZIP and look for the JavaScript files...

Search for the User Agent of a supported device or the error messages in the *.js files... Then just edit the Javascript to include the UserAgent of the device you want to use it with!!

Works a dream on my e71

[Tzer2]

The "wi-fi only" message is apparently a deliberate action by the BBC to try and avoid overwhelming the mobile phone networks. Macwhu's N96 blog mentioned it I believe ( http://hellon96.tumblr.com/ ).

The story goes that the PC version of iPlayer takes up a huge proportion of UK internet traffic because the familiar brand name of the BBC has encouraged so many new people to try watching TV online. If the same thing is repeated on mobiles (so they say) it could cause havoc with mobile bandwidth availability.

BTW as far as everyone knows this is a UK-only service, with no subscription possible? Or can people overseas pay to access it too?

[ajck]

NOTE: It's not an S60 app, it's a Nokia Web Runtime (Nokia widgets) file, so your firmware needs to have WRT installed for it to work.

I'm currently hacking the code to work on more than just the n95, n96, n78 - the reason it only works on these is because these are the only user agent matches coded into the script. I hope to post a quick and easy fix shortly. Not sure what handsets can have WRT tho - N82, 6220, e71, e90, any others?

Alex
phonething.com

Got an n958gb.

Iplayer launches. Access point defines. Clicks on a programme from the list. Then same list appears but with a white background and nothing happens when programme is clicked on.

Anyone else with similar problems? Any solutions?

Web runtimes makes it easy to reverse engineer any protocol. Should be pretty straightforward to create a S60 native app if needed.

work's perfect on my n95 with old firmware v21(this is fab).

[Berty]

Can't get it to install on my E71. Anyone of you tech blokes are welcome to be my new best friend if someone can fix it to work.