Big changes afoot on PS3iPlayer.com; I’ve rewritten the whole site from scratch to be far more stable and immune to the BBC’s now frequent changes.
The previous version was basically a proxy which rewrote sections of the BBC’s HTML and a set of patched JavaScript files which would be served in the place of the BBC’s original JavaScript files. However this would cause problems when the BBC made updates to the HTML to refer to new or renamed functions in newer versions of the JavaScript.
Thankfully the iPlayer has come on leaps and bounds since the version available when the Wii support was announced; it now requires many fewer modifications to get things working on the PS3, meaning things at my end can be simplified a lot. This means that the new version of PS3 iPlayer can now not only rewrite the HTML, but can also apply patches to the BBC’s JavaScript on the fly – meaning any updates on their end should automatically appear on this version.
The new version will probably have a few bugs which may have previously been fixed in the old version. So if you spot anything please leave a comment here.
Also, as you will have noticed, I’ve moved over all the previous PS3 iPlayer update notices to my website. You can keep up to date by bookmarking, or subscribing to the PS3 iPlayer category on this site.
Sorry for the downtime lately. I’ve been away and busy working on other things so couldn’t keep up with the BBC’s changes. It should be up and running again, but when I’ve got some spare time, I’d like to change the way this site works to be able to handle the BBC’s updates automatically.
In the mean time, if you want a bit of spy-themed fun and at the same time help raise as little bit of cash for Cancer Research UK, please visit the online game I’ve been working on called Operation: Sleeper Cell!
We’ve now got something that represents a usable media player. When the episode page loads, hit ‘X’ or enter and then ‘R3′ to zoom full screen. Pressing ‘Down’ pauses the stream, ‘Up’ resumes playback, ‘Left’ rewinds and ‘Right’ to fast-forward. When you’re finished, hit ‘O’ (circle) to return focus to the browser and ‘R3′ to zoom out (don’t worry, the player now provides a help screen). I’ve also got the radio recordings working (no live streams unfortunately) and parental guidance protected programmes are now also accessible. Still left to do: recently-played programmes.
We’re back up and running and with the bonus of using iPlayer 2.0 too! As suspected the PS3 doesn’t like the BBC’s latest embedded flash media player, so until this can be resolved, I’ve created very simple temporary alternative. There’s no volume or playback controls at the moment, but I’ll probably add those soon.
A quick update on what’s happening regarding the current playback problems. The BBC are in the process of rolling out the beta of iPlayer 2.0 which should be available at some point today. Once it’s publicly available, and if required, I’ll attempt to update this site to get the new version running on the PS3.
My apologies for the current unavailability of all programmes. It looks like the current version (2.3.3460) of the BBC embedded player is not compatable with the PS3, either that or the server now checks the User-Agent name of the Flash environment. I’ll keep digging to see what’s going on, so please check back soon.
Unfortunately, I’m not going to make it to Mashed (Hackday 2008) – so instead, here’s a video of a fun iPlayer-related project I’ve been working on. Excuse the stuttering at the start of the videos, it’s due to me turning down the amount of pre-buffering so I could cut down the time for the streams to begin playing for the purpose of this video.
