[Patio]

Thanks Cap't T for all the time and effort you put into this addon,  very much appreciated !

[ciar67]

Does anyone know, or can point me in the right direction, for getting iplayer to work with nord on kodi? Unotelly left me high and dry. thanks and sorry if in wrong forum section.

[User 272336]

Sorry @ciar67 , many of us dislike geo-locking. Supporting people to overcome it isn't something we allow on this forum.

[jazzdude]

I have been using Kodi and its addons from the days that it was called XBMC and can say that i all those years it has evolved into an amazing piece of kit that I wholly support going forward.

Whilst I appreciate the comments on here that geo-locking comments are not discussed fully, I am someone who has been using iplayer WWW for a long time and it is great, albeit in on a smartdns service as I am an expat living in Europe. Now something has changed recently which I have spent a while trying to sort out, but before I throw in the towel completely can I just ask a simple question.

With the latest version 39, all the catchup services and shows listed under 'Highlights' and 'Popular' work just fine, but the live TV section tells me that it is now out of the UK. Is this to do with a change in the addon or the BBC blocking just part of the addon's functionality?  For the record, I just need the BBC for the breakfast news, I use Kodi to watch other non live tv shows and am not into live football.

[gb160]

@CaptainT Hi mate, excellent add-on that I've been using for ages now.
Just interested in whether or not it's possible to view the UHD HDR version of the series Dynasties that the BBC are currently showing?
From reading this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/lates...asties-uhd

It states that they will be available for a limited time, but I'm guessing these UHD trials will become more and more frequent as time passes.
No problem if its not worth the work, considering the limited time they'll be available, just thought I'd enquire.

[CaptainT]

Just interested in whether or not it's possible to view the UHD HDR version of the series Dynasties that the BBC are currently showing?

Right now: No.
In the future: Unlikely.

Let me explain a bit how an add-on like this is developed. You start with the functionality in a browser on a computer. You look at all of the calls the browser version makes and try to duplicate them in Kodi. The good thing about this is: As long as you are running your browser on a computer, it is possible to monitor these calls locally. It is easy. For this particular add-on, some things don't work exactly like in a browser. In particular, it uses a different kind of "mediaselector" to get streams. The browser version uses a tiny bit of cryptographic code for this, which nobody duplicated so far. I believe it can be duplicated, but I also expect they would change it then. A rat race.

Currently, UHD streams are only available on Smart TVs. These use a different access to the Beeb's services, most likely a different "mediaselector". Unfortunately, you cannot (easily) grab all of the calls your TV makes to understand what is going on. In the good old days, where everything was unencrypted, this was easy by using a network sniffer. Nowadays, all of the traffic is encrypted, so you don't see the complete calls any more, just which server they are referring to. To work around this it would first be required to get access to the operating system on the smart TV, then modify it, so that it passes this information and so on...

Long story short: It's complicated.

I would like to see UHD streams in the add-on, but I am currently unsure if I am able to gather the required information. If anybody with experience in working on smart TV operating systems would like to contribute, please PM me.

[gb160]

@CaptainT Thanks for the explanation, I now see the difficulties faced.
I suppose we can only hope at some point that the UHD streams make their way to the browsers and other platforms.

Thanks again.

[TVjunkie]

Just interested in whether or not it's possible to view the UHD HDR version of the series Dynasties that the BBC are currently showing?

Currently, UHD streams are only available on Smart TVs. These use a different access to the Beeb's services, most likely a different "mediaselector". Unfortunately, you cannot (easily) grab all of the calls your TV makes to understand what is going on.
Long story short: It's complicated.

I would like to see UHD streams in the add-on, but I am currently unsure if I am able to gather the required information.  

  Hello there KODI community
I specifically registered to throw the next piece of info into this discussion...

During last year's BBC UHD VOD trials (for the Planet Earth II series), except for Smart TVs, the Roku Streaming Stick+ was the only non-TV device that was equally supported; at least one owner of such a device has publicly admitted he had managed to identify (and record to disk, purely for testing purposes) such a UHD VOD MPEG-DASH stream; below is the link to the post he made on AVSForum:
https://www.avsforum.com/forum/34-hdtv-p...st55378928

According to this, the Roku (2017) is still eligible for the Dynasties UHD VOD streams so, perhaps, rather than reverse-engineering a SmartTV, the Roku+ might be the optimum approach in the quest for identifying the DASH playlist manifests (technically called MPDs, Media Presentation Descriptions); I agree it's a case of a specialised mediaselector value, coupled with some kind of authentication token (e.g. "iptv-uhd" is a valid value, but currently only gets you the subtitles track... ); it's still possible some kind of device certificate also plays a role in the connection, but I'll leave this to the real experts...

Just thought I let you know about this, in the hope I haven't broken any forum rules (which I did read in brief...)

Best regards

[CaptainT]

During last year's BBC UHD VOD trials (for the Planet Earth II series), except for Smart TVs, the Roku Streaming Stick+ was the only non-TV device that was equally supported; at least one owner of such a device has publicly admitted he had managed to identify (and record to disk, purely for testing purposes) such a UHD VOD MPEG-DASH stream;

This is the easy part. Most likely that user used a very similar approach to how I figured out the URLs of the UHD Live Trial streams. It does not help us in this case, however. I would be able to find out the URL of the MPD for each episode of Dynasties and hardcode them into the add-on. This is not a solution, though. For the next programme that does support UHD, these URLs would be different. What we need is a way to retrieve these URLs based on a request which contains the programme ID/name/whatever.

According to this, the Roku (2017) is still eligible for the Dynasties UHD VOD streams so, perhaps, rather than reverse-engineering a SmartTV, the Roku+ might be the optimum approach in the quest for identifying the DASH playlist manifests (technically called MPDs, Media Presentation Descriptions);

I agree. It might be better (cheaper) to use a Roku stick. The steps required may well brick the device and at least a Roku stick is only 50 quid, not 2000. In the meantime, I have come across some information which may allow me to understand what the smart TVs do. I will give this a try first, but if it fails a Roku might be a good next step.

I agree it's a case of a specialised mediaselector value, coupled with some kind of authentication token (e.g. "iptv-uhd" is a valid value, but currently only gets you the subtitles track... ); it's still possible some kind of device certificate also plays a role in the connection, but I'll leave this to the real experts...

Authentication seems to be the key here. As you may know, the Beeb now enforce smart TVs to log in with a BBCiD as well. I believe it is no coincidence this change happened shortly before Dynasties became available in UHD. Unfortunately authentication on smart TVs works different from computers. Also, I already figured out, that smart TVs use a different server for getting "their mediaselector". So just guesstimating URLs based on what we already have is not going to get you there.

[tydrago]

I've just installed iPlayer www on Kodi, both on my Windows 10 laptop AND my Amazon Fire TV Stick.  I'm using ExpressVPN to connect to a UK server.  

I can see all the shows and episodes, but when I try to play any of them on either device, I receive this perplexing error: "HttpConnectionPool(host='mm.bidi.bbc.co.uk', port=80): Max retries exceeded."  I've tried every available UK server and I've tried all of the CDN's for iPlayer.  So far nothing changes.

Any suggestions would be wildly appreciated!  Thanks!

[Hitcher]

I've just installed iPlayer www on Kodi, both on my Windows 10 laptop AND my Amazon Fire TV Stick.  I'm using ExpressVPN to connect to a UK server.  

I can see all the shows and episodes, but when I try to play any of them on either device, I receive this perplexing error: "HttpConnectionPool(host='mm.bidi.bbc.co.uk', port=80): Max retries exceeded."  I've tried every available UK server and I've tried all of the CDN's for iPlayer.  So far nothing changes.

Any suggestions would be wildly appreciated!  Thanks!

 No VPN support here.

[tydrago]

I'm not looking for help with the VPN.  I'm looking for help with iPlayer WWW.  The VPN is working fine.

[DarrenHill]

The use of a VPN to access content that you would be geo-blocked from normally is a violation of our VPN Policy (wiki) and as noted above, it not supported here.

[CaptainT]

I'm not looking for help with the VPN.  I'm looking for help with iPlayer WWW.  The VPN is working fine.

Brilliant. So just switch off the VPN, please, and it should work like a charm. That is assuming you are in the UK.

If you are not in the UK and want to bypass the geoblocking using a VPN: see Hitcher's post above.

[bergqvistjl]

I'm unable to view the live channels using DASH. Here is the log output: https://paste.kodi.tv/kujunohefa.kodi

When I load the mpd file in VLC, it plays fine.

On demand programmes using DASH play fine in Kodi.