If you are downloading iPlayer programs (as opposed to "streaming" them) - turn off your proxy (or VPN) connection after the download has started. [or toggle your Internet connection to - "Direct Connection"]
This way the peer-to-peer nature of the Kontiki download software will not know where you are getting the authorization from. When you download the program is more than likely NOT coming from the BBC server (hence it is not blocked outside the UK) - it is coming from other computers on the Kontiki network that have downloaded the material.
See the message in the Download manager that tells you the speed and the number of sources to see what I mean.
If you do this you will minimise the chances of the BBC working out where the requests for its programming is coming from as well an lightening the load of the proxy or VPN server. In fact it is probably a good idea to download ALL the programming that you want to watch in this way.
If you are outside the UK the connection for the download is likely to be slow as you are connecting to other computers in the UK (or at least slower that if you were located in the UK). It is also likely that the speed of the download is pretty much the same as it would be if you have the connection via a proxy or a VPN - but it could be faster!
3 comments:
This won't work when the new Adobe AIR version of the iPlayer takes over from the 'download manager' as the new version doesn't use P2P technology - it has direct downloads from the BBC servers.
Thanks Ryan,
You beat me to it!
I was going to blog about Adobe AIR next. It sounds like you may have some inside information on this. I await the replacement of Kontiki with bated breath.
Any news on when they are going to roll it out?
It's been running as a beta product for BBC iPlayer Labs users for the last month or two and works on Windows, Linux and Mac - using Adobe DRM.
It is actually a pretty impressive tool that downloads pretty quickly although at the moment the quality is fairly poor - about as good as the regular streaming.
But this will improve as they switch over properly from the Kontiki service to the new AIR platform.
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