On 04/01/2008, Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 04/01/2008, Phil Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You don't need the iPlayer source. All of the heavy lifting on the client > > is done by Flash > > itself. > > Flash is somewhat inefficient as it's adding an extra layer in the way > of the hardware.
Erm, there needs to be _some_ server-protocol-client system between the BBCs hardware and your hardware, so I don't think "extra" is appropriate. Proprietary, though, sure. The Flash stack is a proprietary server for the BBC, a non-standard and patent encumbered protocol, and there are proprietary and free clients (although Gnash, the free client, hasn't yet implemented the RTMP streaming protocol, but it is due this year according to the lead developer, Rob Savoye, when I spoke to him about this issue.) > It is also prohibited to use the Adobe Flash Web Player on anything > that isn't a PC so how can the "heavy lifting" be done by Flash if > Flash is prohibited? That's a good point. Ian just wrote about "not breaking things" and I guess this means legally rather than technically. > Also I thought Flash was only streaming, what if someone wanted to > build a download engine? Some people don't like leaving there PC on > all the time. Why not put download on an always on device? Also a good point that Ian avoided in reply to my earlier post. Ian? > You may want your router to actually do the downloading. Or if you > have some kind of NAS you may want it to do the fetching as it has > closer control of discs and is always on. In that case you don't even > want the playback components so all that's needed is the transfer. No > DRM rubbish as that's on the machine that does playback. But again the > BBC won't let us do this it would appear. The DRM is not turned on at the moment. > Apart form the BBCs "we hate people knowing how this works" attitude Isn't the very point of this thread that the BBC _does_not_ have this attitude? > So BBC what *is* the transfer protocol for the downloads? The one used by Flash Media Server, which was described in the post you reply to and is right there on the next line: > > iPlayer delivers a standard FLV over a standard RTMP stream. These are not > > "open" > > protocols but they are quite well understood. > > URLs of the actual docs would be good. Join the Gnash project if you want to work on this. They have money to pay developers good wages if you are serious. > I don't know of anything > capable of playing iPlayers Flash stream apart from Adobe Flash Player > which as mentioned can't be run on anything that's not a PC. Wait for Gnash :-) > Also do we have a way of getting the URLs of the stream and program > information without the need for "screen scraping"*. Ian posted a link to a blog that mentions this way in his post to the XBMC forum that he linked to in the first post in this thread :-) > Some weird and > wonderful devices may not want to display the information the way the > BBC designed it. Webpages are nice for desktop PCs but some devices > have different UI capabilities. That was the point of the first post in this thread :-) > For all you know someone may want to design a toaster that projects > the programme on the wall if someone asks it to play a certain > programme via voice command. Having to look at a webpage and say > "right right right, down, click" is a lot less intuitive than "play > Have I Got News For You". Yes this may seem a little unrealistic but > why do the BBC want to limit the scope of creativity? They don't, which is why they are inviting toaster designer to meet the iPlayer team. > If anyone wants to implement a downloader for some kind of NAS or > server, or router then it would be interesting to see (once the BBC > hands over what's needed). The BBC doesn't have anything to hand over, other than handing over developer time to the Gnash project. Which seems unlikely, and that's okay; Gnash is raising plenty of money without handouts from UK license fee payers. -- Regards, Dave - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
