IPlayer TV

Programme IDs
All programme episodes on BBC TV are assigned a programme ID (PID) made up of lower-case letter and numbers of around 8 characters. More information on the format of the PID's can be found at the BBC Programme Guide. For Instance for Torchwood, you can see which programmes are available on iPlayer.

In addition to this, it is possible for episodes in iPlayer to have several published "versions". Every episode of a programme should have at least one version - the "original". Other versions that exist are:

Retrieving programme meta-data
See IPlayer_Metadata

Subtitles
Subtitles are available on some iPlayer programmes. The subtitles are in W3C Timed-Text format. The S button on the Flash based iPlayer makes use of this file. The URL for a specific subtitle feed is determined by obtaining the 'version pid' for the programme. Retrieving programme media stream information as described above. It will have a stanza with something like:

 

The subtitle feed can be downloaded from the URL pointed to in the href field, e.g.: http://web.archive.org/web/20090912060117/http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/subtitles/b0008dc8rstreaming89808204.xml

Scripts and programs
See Programs

Windows P2P Version
See Windows P2P

Flash / RTMP Version
See Flash iPlayer

iPhone Version
See IPhone H.264 version

Nintendo Wii Flash Version
See Nintendo Wii

Nokia N96 / RTSP Version
See Nokia H.264 version

Note about technical image quality
Please note: the technical image quality varies widely across the different versions of iPlayer output, particularly between the DRM-enabled version for Windows, and the iPhone version. Taking one program as an example, "House of Saddam" episode 1, broadcast on Wed 30th July 2008, the compression details are as follows (iphone and Windows DRM versions only were compared):