More iPlayer moaning

I am really ticked about the DRM on iplayer material since that seems to bugger up just about everything with the player. Also, I have this thing against DRM in that it makes life miserable for the end user, can still be broken, and really doesn't protect anybody's rights anyway. No, it seems to make playback impossible.

Anyway, I had a problem with iPlayer in that get_iplayer was giving me something about the ITV plugin and not letting me download anything. Fall back position was to use the official Beeb iplayer desktop. Amazingly enough the programmes actually downloaded and seem to have done so completely using the official Beeb iplayer desktop. That was a miracle to behold since usually the official Beeb iplayer downloads act wonky as all get out. What's the point of watching something in "hi-def" if the sucker does all sorts of weird things? On the other hand, the shows download and play when I go off line (Ha!).

Get_iplayer has a lot of advantages over the official Beeb iplayer since it removes the DRM that prevents you from keeping the show longer than one week. The official Beeb iplayer desktop has a week's limit to how long you can watch something before you have to redownload it. Also, the the official Beeb iplayer desktop downloads aren't portable (can't move them between computers). Moving the downloads creates all sorts of problems. That's unfortunate since once computer is hardwired and the other is wireless. The hardwired computer downloads stuff in about a 10th of the time.

Anyway, all is well, but I truly wish the Beeb would drop the DRM on the iPlayer downloads since it doesn't do anyone any good.