BCC releases iplayer desktop for linux

BBC recently announced that iplayer now supports downloads on windows an linux, in the form of iplayer desktop. You can get started on the iplayer labs page.

So I decided to try it out…

iplayer security dialog - extremely bad! Why can't they get a digital signature for the download?

First I had trouble upgrading flash – Installing it was easy, but I found I still had a flash 9 install listed in my about:plugins page. Following the Flash – MozillaZine Knowledge Base page helped me solved this (it turns out I had a flash 9 file in my ~/.mozilla/plugins folder)

Then it was time to install iplayer. First it installed Adobe AIR, which was simple enough. Then the iplayer desktop app installed inside AIR – the security dialog for this was particularly unappealing as it did not have any knowledge of the publisher, let alone a secure signature or certificate to assure me it was really BCC content I was installing

After that it was plain sailing – Top Gear started downloading straight away, and was done within minutes.

It plays great, works fullscreen (though my laptop can’t manage full screen well, I probably need to look at setting up 3d acceleration which I didnt do when I installed it ~2 years ago as the drivers were rubbish), and the volume still goes to 11 like the iplayer.