[UK users] BBC iPlayer for New Nintendo 3DS / Wii U By jsa005

By @jsa005
POSTED: 15 Nov 2015 10:36
CATEGORY: Related Website
FEATURED: Yes (@Haruspex)
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tl;dr

I've made a way to watch live and catch-up TV off the British BBC iPlayer on a New Nintendo 3DS. http://iplayer.nonm.co.uk/

Hello, SDKers!

I've been working on a website to allow you to watch BBC iPlayer catch-up and LIVE TV on a New Nintendo 3DS system. Please note that this will not work on non-New 3DSes (ie, 3DSes without a C-stick built-in) because it uses the native HTML5 video decoding functionality of the New 3DS's browser. Trust me, I spent a year (yes, a year!) trying to get it to work on non-New 3DSes (using the YouTube app), but to no avail. (The process back then involved downloading the video off iPlayer, uploading it to YouTube, downloading it off YouTube again and playing it via the 3DS YouTube app. WAY too complicated, it took ages to process AND YouTube had an upload limit of 15 minutes.)

It DOES also work on the Wii U. (And it's pretty good!)
It SHOULD also work on modern smartphones, tablets etc. (You might want to use my iPlayer over the official one on those devices because my iPlayer is much more lightweight but still pretty much as functional.)

I have pretty much all the main features of the official PC BBC iPlayer implemented, such as:

Live TV (approx. 1 minute delay I believe, this is on the BBC's side) & catch-up TV streaming

Programme search (search for the show you want to watch, then choose the episode)

Subtitles for catch-up TV (press "Subtitles" while watching the video)

Nearly done:

Previous/next episode in series (for shows this applies to)

Cache live TV stream URLs

What's left to do (when I get round to it):

What's On guide for live TV

Here's a screenshot: (outdated, but gives you an idea of the design if you can't be bothered to click the link)

(Click to view full size.)

Please note actual video streaming will (probably) only work for people with UK IP addresses as I pass the direct stream URLs from iPlayer to the New 3DS, and BBC iPlayer does not allow people outside the UK to access its content.

Here's the link: http://iplayer.nonm.co.uk/

UPDATE 27/06/2016: I'm now working on a Crunchyroll webapp for N3DS/WiiU. So far, it can stream content given a Crunchyroll URL; stay tuned for more progress.

+3 -0

ianoliver604
01 Dec 2015 03:13

The website seems to be down, could you take a look at it?

jsa005
01 Dec 2015 10:34
In reply to ianoliver604

Yes it is down just having some server troubles, I can't get through to my friend who's hosting it for me. Also affects NONM.co.uk.

I would've re-hosted it by now but I can't get my code off! xD

(learnt my lesson about backups... Git version control all the way)

ianoliver604
01 Dec 2015 21:40
In reply to jsa005

Lol, I can try to see if I can get you some hosting. No promises though, as the site I use to host my sites isn't working anymore, the websites aren't even created.

jsa005
14 Dec 2015 20:40
In reply to ianoliver604

Back up!
Now it's even faster - I rewrote (well, wrote, considering it just called get_iplayer before) the stream URL grabber in PHP which speeds everything up tenfold and also allows me to get higher or lower quality streams as per my (or the user's) preference. Yay!

jsa005
02 Dec 2015 00:12
In reply to ianoliver604

Problem being it needs to be VPS hosting as the process is actually quite complicated -- take a deep breath:

- Get stream URLs (bash script calling Perl)
Launch get_iplayer (perl script, slooow takes approx 2 seconds ish?) to get stream URLs (through a proxy server to get around geoblocking to fetch the URLs, makes it even slower unless server is in UK, note this does not circumvent stream geoblocking)

- Get subtitles (bash script calling wget and python script)
wget TTML subtitles from URL returned by get_iplayer
convert to WebVTT using pycaption (Python script)

- Cache all that (saves time if the content is requested again)

- Above steps are skipped if the content stream URL is in the cache

- Fetch metadata

- Return some meaningful result to humans* person (*not a typo) using PHP

So all in all not simple

ianoliver604
19 Nov 2015 00:36

I just checked this on a Windows Vista using Mozilla Firefox, and it gave me an "No video with supported format and MIME type found."

This might be a client-side problem, so I'll test it again on Saturday.

jsa005
19 Nov 2015 09:30
In reply to ianoliver604

By the way, Chrome on desktop does not support HLS at all, but it does on Android/iOS.

jsa005
19 Nov 2015 09:26
In reply to ianoliver604

Do you have a smartphone or tablet? Try it on Chrome and the default Android browser, or Safari on iOS. (HLS is an Apple protocol)

jsa005
19 Nov 2015 09:24
In reply to ianoliver604

Yes, it's a client-side problem - the video stream is a H.264/AAC HTTP Live Streaming stream - I don't think Firefox supports HLS with H.264.

Also, Windows Vista? I mean, if it works for you then great (it is the nicest-looking Windows OS ever), but it's supposed to be really buggy.

ianoliver604
20 Nov 2015 02:15
In reply to jsa005

Well, this Saturday I'll have access to a computer with Windows 7 and an Android device. I'll test it again then and see if it works, but I'll try it again on Vista with IE. (eew ie)

jsa005
20 Nov 2015 10:13
In reply to ianoliver604

Android device: try Chrome and the default browser
Win7 laptop: try IE11

thanks for doing this

ianoliver604
21 Nov 2015 03:09
In reply to jsa005

I tried Vista with IE, but with failure.

I'll try with something else tomorrow.

ianoliver604
17 Nov 2015 00:33

My only reason for this:

DOCTOR WHO DOCTOR WHO
DOCTOR WHO DOCTOR WHO
DOCTOR WHO DOCTOR WHO
DOCTOR WHO DOCTOR WHO
DOCTOR WHO DOCTOR WHO

ianoliver604
17 Nov 2015 00:34
In reply to ianoliver604

If only I was British and had a New 3DS.

jsa005
17 Nov 2015 09:47
In reply to ianoliver604

Try it out on an iPhone/iPad/Android device - and let me know if it works.

ianoliver604
18 Nov 2015 04:39
In reply to jsa005

I'll try.

No promises doh

jsa005
18 Nov 2015 07:34
In reply to ianoliver604

Thanks

Rlad116
16 Nov 2015 03:42

Well, too bad I'm in the US

jsa005
16 Nov 2015 11:36
In reply to Rlad116

Actually could you give it a try for me? I'd like to know whether it works

Finrod
16 Nov 2015 01:02

Ooh fancy.

Monstercat
15 Nov 2015 17:01

Oh, sweet. I'm pretty hyped to watch CBeebies on my New 3DS.

[UK users] BBC iPlayer for New Nintendo 3DS / Wii U

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