Since the BBC launched their iPlayer it has been a massive success. What puts it way above the ITV and C4 player is its ability to download programmes to watch offline. Which you can obviously do using the iPlayer Desktop program. However these downloaded videos can only be used within iPlayer Desktop and you can’t download radio programmes. However with a really simple terminal command you can download DRM-free videos and radio shows as mp3’s.
Previously people used get_iplayer for this, however for various reasons this is no longer avaliable to download. So this will show you how to download and install iplayer-dl.
Note that it will not download every programme. Programmes are not usally avaliable for download as soon as the go on to the site, but usually are within a few hours. Also all films are not avaliable for download.
These instructions will work on a variety of different linux flavours, just remember to change your install commands as such. First we need to install Ruby and RubyGems (as iplayer-dl is not in the standard repos):
We can now install iplayer-dl using gem:
We can now run the program. To see all of the avaliable options:
To download a programme (tv or radio) all you need is the PID code of the programme you wish to download (it is usally 8 characters long) and you can find it in the web address for the programme (usually after /episode/).
So for example you would type:
Please note the above is just an example and is not a real programme.