iPlayer to close on some devices in September

[Dave2002]

Bit technical this, but it may affect people who aren't too technical.

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/tv/v2_closure

Some devices, including some PVRs, won't work with iPlayer from some date in September - I'm not sure which.

If there is interest, we could have a thread of work arounds in the Techie area.

[Lento]

I'm guessing these devices can''t be all that old: iPlayer has only been going for 8-9 years. Maybe 5 years is now "old" for TVs as with computers. PVRs seem to start losing functionality anyway, round the 2 year mark, if not before, in my experience.

[Dave2002]

I'm guessing these devices can''t be all that old: iPlayer has only been going for 8-9 years. Maybe 5 years is now "old" for TVs as with computers. PVRs seem to start losing functionality anyway, round the 2 year mark, if not before, in my experience.

One such PVR on the threatened list was only bought about 2 years ago.

[Gordon]

Not only this removal of support for MHEG coding and rendering [rather than say html] from September 1st this year you'll need a TV licence to watch iPlayer on any device. MHEG was introduced at the start of terrestrial digital many moons ago and has evolved somewhat [eg to support red button] but has been replaced by other means. Early set top boxes had it as did connected TVs. Latterly these TVs have had browser type software instead but still these are not very functional and suppport limited apps.

This was in the BBC White Paper as part of the government's encouragement of the BBC to raise revenues by introducing subscription fees for certain services where possible. How this will be policed is not yet clear so watch this space. We've touched on this before - one possibility is that you may have to enter your address and licence number to gain access or perhaps create an account using them and then get an ID and password linked to cookies and maybe IP addresses.

So far no one I know in BBC can say how this will work although it should not be too difficult to link the licencing data to the on-line access system, after all it's only software. As it seems aimed in part at students seems to me that they are the very people that might hack it!!!

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/577872/bbc-iplayer-licence-fee-loophole-to-close-in-september/

I'm a bit doubtful of using IP addresses because sometimes when using iPlayer on this machine I get a message stating that I cannot receive the service because I'm outside the UK!! Seems my ISP sometimes uses non UK allocated addresses. But then my location is occasionally stated as being many many miles away!! When using the AA web site ealier this week to calculate a journey it suggested that I was up North when in fact I am in Hampshire!

[Dave2002]

I am uncertain whether any of the affected players could actually have a software upgrade to overcome this issue.

Here is the list - http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/tv/v2_closure which does certainly include a few models from 2013 and 2014.

As many models now can be upgraded by sofware downloads there is a question of whether the BBC has worked with manufacturers to enable that route to overcoming the service issues. Also, were manufacturers of some of these more recent models aware of the forthcoming changes?

Software upgrades are not a possibility for some earlier devices as the computer chips they contain are too slow to work with the software needed, or there is perhaps insufficient memory for that to be feasible.