BBC iPlayer Issues

I've never seemed to be able to get this running completely without a hitch.

Recently, I thought I'd cracked it, and had a few programmes set up for series download.

However, when I reviewed what was actually available for viewing, random episodes were missing. These were NOT episodes that had either expired, or not yet been broadcast. E.g. in a series of ten, 3 and 8 might be missing. The missing ones are not shown as available, available soon, or expiring. They're not in the alphabetical list of everything, either.

However, if I try to manually download them as individual episodes, it reports they're already on my disk, and it won't download them again! I cannot locate and delete the offending files - which are presumably corrupted - because the file naming conventions bear no resemblance to the actual programme names, so I can't tell which of the many downloads in my iPlayer library are the ones I need to bin.

Add to that, it looks as if several (most?) of those that do show as available for viewing are corrupt too, because when I try to play them, it says: "There was a problem with this download". It then disappears from the "available" list. Again, I cannot manually redownload, because it thinks it's already there.

Any help on how I can correctly identify and remove the damaged downloads? Or do I need to purge the whole library, and begin again? (This would probably take me over my broadband usage allowance).

T.

http://www.catchupsupport.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=21 any good for ideas ?

I don't use the BBC download manager thingy, use a 3rd party tool instead. Seems there are quite a few issues with Adobe Air giving the sort of problem you describe.

Can you identify the files by creation or last access date perhaps ?

whats the 3rd party tool?

No, I thought of the "timestamp" thing myself, but unfortunately, it's still too ambiguous. In most cases, I don't know exactly when they were created, or a lot were created or accessed about the same time, so it doesn't narrow it down far enough.

If I pick the one I think it probably is, there's still a good chance I'll get it wrong, and delete one that was OK. I suppose I could go through the tedium of renaming them one at a time, see which programme disappears (if any), then restoring the name. But it doesn't seem worth the time and effort.

Seriously tempted to just dump all the downloads, and give up on iPlayer altogether. You reach the point that if there are too many obstacles, you stop wanting to watch the programme any more.

I have had problems previously with Adobe Air. It wanted to reinstall it every download, even though it was already installed. If I refused, it wouldn't proceed with the download. If I said yes, the install would fail anyway... Catch-22.

This is what I meant about never got it working right.

But I thought things had finally settled down with more recent versions - it's no longer repeatedly asking for installations of things it's already got. Just doesn't work anyway - or at least, can't record a whole series, without screwing up at least a couple of episodes.

T.

https://squarepenguin.co.uk/get_iplayer-guide-for-be...

On discovering I don't have a broadband usage cap (which I'd completely forgotten), I deleted the whole lot - both software and downloaded programmes - and began again.

I've now gone from worked about two thirds of the time to does not work at all. No error messages, nothing - just doesn't actually download anything - or even try to, that I can tell. The little message saying it's retrieving download information never pops up. There is nothing in the "coming soon" pane, indicating that it's likely to do it later.

I may well try your command line tool instead. I'm getting heartily sick of this. It must be at least the fourth or fifth time I've dumped the whole lot, but each time I start anew, there's a problem. Never the same problem, though. So you never get any closer to solving it. When you think you've understood what the matter was last time, it starts again with some new variation.

there were some interesting threads about fixing it and recovery at that other forum, I gave up on it long ago TBH. Good luck !

Although this is about a command line tool, for Windows at least it comes with a web style interface, which runs from you computer, in your browser.

Great program.

In reply to a post by philippercival:

Although this is about a command line tool,

I guess you didn't scroll down to the bit about "Installing get_iplayer on Windows"