I have read somewhere that the bbc iplayer will be added to the freesat box soon? is this true.

If so is it a matter of plugging it into the telephone line and will HD be available?

The HDR will require a firmware update first and it isn't yet known when this will happen, iPlayer will need an internet connection via ethernet to work.

Testing of the iplayer service is due to start towards the end of this month, with the idea being that it will be rolled out to the public later on in the year.

For those Freesat boxes with an ethernet port on the back the iplayer service will require that port to be connected to your Broadband router.

There's also a considerable amount of doubt that the SD boxes will work or not, particularly as the ethernet socket has been dropped off later production. It 'may' be only the PVR's which work, which would make more sense in many respects.

Will the pvr models be able to record iplayer content?

Will the picture and sound quality be of an acceptable level?

Automan.

If it's content on demand, why would you record it to watch later?

From using iplayer on their web site the content is only available for a limited duration after broadcast so I doubt they'd want you to record it anyway. They do have a big screen version though, so good if you output a media centre pc I imagine? http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

It may be that you stream media to your hard drive and then play it from there, which would mean that those with slower broadband connections wont have troulbe with the stream halting all the time while more is buffered. Thats just my guess tho as we've yet to get any real details about it.

I checked an episode of Dragon's Den and the option to download the HD version. It reckoned 50 minutes to download but I cancelled it anyway. Something with my Adobe Air being knackered or such.

I thought as part of the Freeast spec all boxes had to have an Ethernet socket?

I got an email from freesat last week asking if i was interested in testing the iplayer on my box.

They asked a series of questions about the box and said that i qualified and they would be in touch later in the month and would be sending me a USB stick to update my box.

I will let you know what happens.

That's a interesting development, the USB stick would have to include the long awaited firmware update.

Would this upgrade this mean we would also get the functionality to play any files from our pc ip address through the port? Or will the upgrade be limited to iplayer.

Patrick

I think it's still unknown if full functionality will be given to the ethernet port in the firmware update, if it's just iPlayer it won't be of any use to me as it will not work with my IP address

Let's hope that the firmware upgrade does open the port completely then! as to me it seems logical that any upgrade should include full fuctionality - it would certainly be more future proof. I would love to be able to play media from my desktop and am not really that interested in iPlayer.

Patrick

Why's that Zetor, are you using an ipv6 address rather than ipv4?

They are in Luxembourg, iPlayer does not work abroad.

Yes that's the problem, iPlayer is for UK residents only, the only way around it is to subscribe to a VPN and I'm not too bothered about not getting iPlayer.

Ahh yea ive been caught out that way trying to view American content before now too. Damned geographic ip's hehe

Ah I remember when there were free proxy servers gaping wide open...

(This is how I got 128-bit encryption for my browser even though it was classified as military hardware at the time, circa 1995?)

Obviously not, as the new SD boxes don't have it (or anything else either).

Quite! Our main purpose in buying a Humax Freesat PVR was to get the BBC HD channel. Freeview was otherwise good enough.... but it is nice to be able to watch true regional news programs rather than "London".

The point is, HD was the key driver. I've no interest in some sub-SD offering over IP, I'd really rather see useful ability to play archived or Freeview captures replayed off the NAS or PC over our LAN.
Its a cool running, quietish box which can decode the sort of H264 which generally has many PC-based solutions struggling and often outputting some inept approximation to the right processing.

Thing with iPlayer is you can download HD versions.

Also, I suspect there will be some cunning implementation to encourage pre-emptive downloading, which you can watch at a time after live transmission.
This to try and reduce the evening peak in t'internet demand.

I think Humax (bob_cat) posted some time back that there would be no storage of the stream involved - personally I think that stinks as it means poor quality for me (2Mb on a good day) and many many others. Hopefully that has been reconsidered.

We shouldn't have wait long to find out - the public trial was meant to start end of the month (poor odds on that not slipping).

Hi,

Haven't seen comment about this specific issue on here, apologies if there has been. I contacted BBC IPlayer to explain that I have a Humax HDR and would like to be considered to be part of the trial and got the following response:

Answer:
Thank you for your interest, but the trial is not available on your box at the moment. As it is a trial stage we are only testing on two box types at the moment and a small number of freesat customers. We currently have everyone we need, but will happily take your details for any future trials or promotions we may have.

SLC.

Which begs the question, which two boxes are being trialled then? I assume they will therefore be able to access sooner than the Humax when it is made widely available???

Steven

If that's true then either HDR firmware is not ready or they are testing the back-end and generic delivery method rather thaan the box firmware. I'm sure some posters know the answer...