Dutch treat: RTL XL's major FAIL

For all of you non-NL readers:

I'm curious if in your country, you're able to watch TV-programs which were broadcasted earlier, and which technology is used. Especially, does it work with open / free software?

Like, is there a place to watch programs which CNN / NBC broadcasted earlier today?

In Belgium you can see the news, and some documentaries online for free. It's flash, but works perfect on a Linux computer. So far, its very good, and I have no complaints.

The one TV show I watch, is available on Hulu 8 days after initial broadcast.

I just looked, and there were also some tv series that you could watch.

Over here ABC iView is excellent, unfortunately where I am currently I'm more than 2.5 Km from the nearest Exchange, so broadband is a little flakey, so i usually download shows using a python script called iview-gtk. SBS also has a similar Flash based sevice, but It's not as good as the ABC one.

The commercial Free to air stations are realy bad, the seem mostly to have excerpts from the show you might have missed, and Channel 9, which is part of the MS Network has a Silverlight based system.

OK, thanks for sharing!

So it seems most of them are still using Flash I think.

Jim: I look Belgian TV quite a lot so I'm a bit familiar with "ooitgemist", though I didn't use it as of yet.

Ooitgemist is only for setup boxes (digibox, belgacom TV), you can't really watch it online, and you have to pay for it. Documentaries and news you can find on the websites deredactie.be and canvas.be (for free). Side note: Those setup boxes run Linux, but are so closed that you can do nothing with it.

BREAKING!!

I've found a way to watch "RTL gemist" *without* installing Moonlight. It boils down to pretending you're an iPad. I know it is not exactly the same thing, but it allows you to watch at least *some* of the content. Since it is of interest to Dutch users only, I wrote it in Dutch. There is a link at the bottom of the blog entry featured here.

Cool. And I presume that, since the iPad also doesn't have Flash, that you don't need Flash either?

@Sander_Marechal Correct. It is simply an MP4 stream, so MediaPlayerConnectivity (FF addon) and Kaffeine or MPlayer are enough. Probably the MPlayer FF plugin will work out of the box as well.

Already thought such was possible (I reacted to the article with username "Ghans" since that seems to be my OpenID).

Now I'm going to try what happens if you visit "uitzendinggemist" (Dutch 'broadcast missed').

'Problem' for RTL&co is: It sends an MP4 to the iPad.

Now, for an iPad, such a thing is probably a big problem for the content owners. The thing is severely locked down.

For Linux however, I can do a "ps axwww", and copy and paste the mp4 to wget, meaning no content protection if everybody would use this. Hence, I think, it's available for iPad only, and if too many people use the workaround, they'll make sure we can't watch it in another way. It all boils down to "restriction management".

I also tried changing my useragent to iPhone/iPad, and instead of using flash it downloads a playlist with links to MP4 streams. The only problem is that totem, and no other mediaplayer that it tried can play the playlist.

@jimbauwens The problem is not the mediaplayer but the missing codec. Have you installed the appropriate codec packs?

MPlayer works OK though. I use the antique mozplugger. Sadly, I tried iPad on 'uitzendinggemist', and for some reason there are no broadcasts available, even while it recognizes me as an iPad user.

http://www.ipadplanet.nl/10243/uitzending-gemist-beta-openge...

"Op andere apparaten die HTML5 aankunnen zijn de programma’s nog niet te bekijken. Dit heeft te maken met rechten."

(On other devices [than the iPad) who can handle HTML5, the programs are not viewable. This is because of rights")

So, if you're on a device with strong restriction management, you will be allowed to use formats which everybody can use, but if you're on Linux, even if it's available, well, then s*** you.

Giving in the near future there will be lots of Android tabs, I wonder how things will proceed. Maybe the reason there are no Google-approved Android tablets yet, is because Google didn't sort out the restriction management as of yet?

Hans : http://m.uitzendinggemist.nl/ Mobile version, works with totem. The only problem is the bad bad quality :)

Thanks, that's a start!

Just tried 'iPad spoofed' FF4, but at the beta website still no broadcasts available. They're also having technical issues though, and with FF not supporting h264 I'm not sure which side is to blame.

Trying it with H264-enabled Chrome maybe helps (because their iPad detection is very, well, let's say "basic"), I'm currently looking into that.

@hkwint It seems to be a problem with the beta version. I tried the current version and it worked ok. See: http://help.publiekeomroep.nl/conversaties/uitzending-niet-b...

Proof that it works: http://picasaweb.google.com/The.Beez.speaks/TheBeezSpeaks#55...

@theBeez:

Indeed, the current version works in Linux, but it doesn't allow searching (skipping to a certain moment of the video) on my setup it seems. The Picasaweb picture you link however, suggests searching works, so maybe my configuration / plugin is to blame.