Glacially Slow iPlayer Downloads

Ascoware / get-iplayer-automator

The goal of Get iPlayer Automator is to allow iTunes and your Mac to become the hub for your British Television experience regardless of where in the world you are. Currently, Get iPlayer Automator allows you to download and watch BBC and ITV shows on your Mac. Series-Link/PVR functionality ensures you will never miss your favourite shows. Programmes are fully tagged and added to iTunes automatically upon completion. It is simple and easy to use, and runs on any machine running Mac OS X 10.7 or later. And since the shows are in iTunes, it is extremely easy to transfer them to your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV allowing you to enjoy your shows on the go or on your television.

GNU General Public License v3.0

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Glacially Slow iPlayer Downloads #302

Closed sxmpete closed 3 years ago

sxmpete commented 3 years ago

For the last couple of weeks, trying to download anything from iPlayer using GIA 1.19.3 has seen download speeds of less than 3 Mbps, resulting in download speeds of HOURS! Whilst attempting download, I ran a SpeedTest and got download speeds of 38 Mbps, as shown by attached log, with speedtest results appended. It looks like BBC is throttling programmatic connections ( I have not tried just viewing from a browser). Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions? FYI, I am using an iMac running Mojave.

Thanks, Peter Donlevy GIA19.3 slow iPlayer download.docx

tracer-x1 commented 3 years ago

I have experienced this for a couple months. I also see the log says BBC may have blocked. It takes over an hour for a 30m show. I'm on a mac as well. Itv is a tad (barely) faster. I've also done speedtests, which are fast. I also have tried multiple VPN's. Same Issue. I also tried using the VPN whilst using BBC's iplayer app,......that goes quickly. Same VPN.

Not sure if the BBC can throttle whatever GiA is using?

Moisie2000 commented 3 years ago

I'm getting this too; at first I thought it was my slow internet - but GiA is definitely downloading more slowly than it used to.

I've tried 1.19.2 on macOS 10.12, and 1.19.3 on macOS 10.12 and 11.1 - same result.

I don't know if it's related, but I'm also seeing quite a few of these errors - though it's possible they're due to my slow internet...

WARNING: Unexpected size for file segment [965]
WARNING: Expected: 5333560  Downloaded: 4602799
WARNING: This indicates a problem with your network connection to the media server

skovatch commented 3 years ago

Keep in mind that GiA isn't doing the actual fetching, get_iplayer is. That said, I have seen this happen on occasion, but not in some time.

For comparison, if you have get_iplayer installed separately try using that to download the same program. If they are different, post the differences.

tracer-x1 commented 3 years ago

Ah! @skovatch . Thanks for that info....I didn't realize Get_iplayer was separate. I gave it a go, and it acts similarly. VERY slow......(eg:warnings of being authorized by the BBC..but if it works, ignore the message (what is seen in the terminal)).

I think you are right though.....it is get_iplayer. For some reason the BBC is throttling it. If I try BBC's app, it goes much faster.

Thanks very much for all you do

Moisie2000 commented 3 years ago

FWIW, it seems to be roughly back to normal for me now - downloading at around 16Mbps, and without the errors I saw previously. Must have been something at the BBC end...

Thanks for an amazing tool!

sxmpete commented 3 years ago

which BBC app are you referring to?

On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 7:53 PM tracer-x1 notifications@github.com wrote:

Ah! @skovatch https://github.com/skovatch . Thanks for that info....I didn't realize Get_iplayer was separate. I gave it a go, and it acts similarly. VERY slow......(eg:warnings of being authorized by the BBC..but if it works, ignore the message (what is seen in the terminal)).

I think you are right though.....it is get_iplayer. For some reason the BBC is throttling it. If I try BBC's app, it goes much faster.

Thanks very much for all you do

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/Ascoware/get-iplayer-automator/issues/302#issuecomment-753234328, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AGZX3OLEBDX5MBKQJFDXA6DSXUMG7ANCNFSM4VK7LQLA .

-- Regards, Peter

tracer-x1 commented 3 years ago

BBC iPlayer site.....if you select a show, you can press ‘download’, which puts it in the bbc’s own app in a proprietary format. It also expires , so not as good as get_iPlayer Automator