BBC iPlayer Streaming on the X1 (or even the Diamond or Touch Pro)

Edit: 11/12/2008 The BBC have annouced that the X1 is now supported, however it won’t run over Vodafone at the mo.

Since the BBC launched the iPlayer for the N96 I knew it wouldn’t be too long until it would be available for other phones. However I can’t wait, so spent today looking for methods in getting my X1 to stream the shows.
I managed to extract the RTSP stream of Buzzcocks and successfully got that working on my phone. My next step was to find a way that didn’t involve me using my PC opening a collection of random XML files in order, to then email a link to my phone.

Several hours of coding and I managed to strip out the opening the files on the PC to a simple web script, however I still needed the 8 letter/number code for the episode to be parsed to the page.
Then when looking at the BBC source I noticed something. They now support the Samsung I900 a Windows Mobile device.
The method for checking if your phone is a Samsung, a simple User-Agent check.

Knowing how to modify the User-Agent in Opera on my X1 I placed the code need to pass the check and BINGO my phone now loads the BBC page and plays the shows.

These are the steps for an X1i Vodafone UK Branded
Run Opera
In the address bar enter opera:config (no http://)
Scroll down to User Prefs and click
Scroll down to Custom User-Agent and at the end of the pre-filled text add sgh-i900
Scroll down some more and press Save. You will get a prompt which suggests you may need to reset the phone, but for this you don’t.

Now point your browser to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/ and enjoy.

If on your phone the Custom User-Agent is blank, try visiting something like whatsmyuseragent.com copying the User-Agent which your phone is currently displaying and then add sgh-i900 to the end.

WARNING: Please only use whilst on WIFI. I accept no responsibility for you running up HUGE bills due to large data downloads. Even if you have an “unlimited” add-on, check with your network for their Fair Usage (Vodafone’s is 500mb) as you can quickly exceed it watching TV on your mobile!

The quality isn’t exactly great on a WVGA screen as it’s been built for the Nokia N96. According to beebhack these are the specs.

Access Method: RTSP streaming
Video Codec: H.264
Video Resolution: 320 x 176
Video Bitrate: 128 kbps
Audio Codec: AAC
Audio Bitrate: 64 kbps
Overall Bitrate: 192 kbps

ps if you get a BBC 502 error, don’t worry. Looks like they are playing about with the site themselves. Just try again later.

20 thoughts on “BBC iPlayer Streaming on the X1 (or even the Diamond or Touch Pro)

  1. Quite frankly, I love you and I wish to have you babies. I have this working and my HTC HD Touch has gone from a frustrating toy to my Most Beloved Device ever. Thank you.l

  2. Cool, but I seem to be getting nothing on the streaming media applet – it connects and buffers, and the counter starts, but the screen is blank.

    ah. live streaming works ok. Must be the beeb jiggering about.

  3. What full ‘User Agent’ did you use ?

    I have ‘HTC Touch HD T8282 Opera/9.50 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) sgh-i900’

    And it doesnt work for me.

    What am I doing wrong ?

    Thanks

  4. I also have tried this on my Touch HD (on Orange) and it doesn’t work for me – I get the buffering message but then just get a blamk screen with the name of the file displayed at the top of the playback area – eg “someprogramname.3gp” – does anyone know where I’m going wrong?

    Thanks,

  5. @John, not sure where you are going wrong. On my X1 I get the HTC Streaming Media player running the programme with the name at the top like you say, but it just works… as I don’t have access to a Touch HD I can’t carry out any tests.
    The BBC now “support” the X1, so it shouldn’t be long before the Diamond, Pro and HD are also included.

  6. HTS streaming installed and with this trick I Can watch all utube videos but everytime I click on iplayer to watch any episode it starts media players with errors? why isnt it launching htc streaming like it does for utube?? isthere any registry tweak so I can actually disable wm6 wmp??

    many thanks

  7. BOUGHT A TOUCH HD , TRIED EVERYTHING TO PLAY BBC IPLAYER APPS ( WHICH WAS ALREADY INSTALLED ), EVEN FOLLOWED THE EXAMPLE HACK ENDING WITH sgh-i900′ BUT TOO NO AVAILE… WHAT IM I DOING WRONG ?

    USING WIFI/UNLIMITED DATA (T-MOBILE) IT BUFFERS FOR AWHILE NOT MOVING FROM 0%….HELP HELP HELP IS THE REST OF MY SETTINGS OK ? WHAT ARE THEY SUPPOSE TO BE ?

  8. Tried on a new HTC Touch Pro 2 and worked first time !

    You are a genius !

    Is there any way to get the iplayer application like the N96 has for this phone yet ?

  9. How are you getting this to work on opera, it doesnt support flash. I’m trying this on my touch pro 2, and opera won’t do it. IE and skyfire will both play a stream in-browser, but it’s quite jerky and out of sync. Am I doing something wrong?

  10. Just upgraded to win 9.5 from 9.1 and tried the above on my Vodafone HTC Touch Pro 2 and all working ok so far.

    Many many thanks. IPlayer was the only reason that I was gonna stick with my Nokia N95, but no need now.

  11. Great fix for my HTC Touch Pro 2, easy to do, so can relax and know that my phone is as good as the rest now.
    Hope my new company HTC Desire turning up soon can do all straight out the box…

  12. Thanks for the article Ryan. I don’t see BBC iPlayer coming to my country anytime soon. However, there are plenty of workarounds available to access it here in my country. Personally, I use UnoTelly for more than a year and I can access BBC iPlayer like I am in UK.

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