504 programmes in the In Our Time archive

The BBC have put 504 programmes — almost the complete archive — from Melvin Bragg’s In Our Time on iplayer.

UK usersUsers from anywhere in the world can download all of them with get_iplayer:

./get_iplayer --type=all --get 'in our time'

At around 30 minutes per programme, there’s about 250 hours of excellent entertainment here.

The full listing is after the break …

BBC breaks get_iplayer, and a fix

I suggest you read this muddle-headed blog post, and then the comments after it.

Anyway, Phil Lewis has unfortunately pulled get_iplayer. Luckily get_iplayer lives on in this git repository. You will need the following very small patch to make it work:

 # Update this script if required
-update_script() if $opt->{update} || $opt->{pluginsupdate};
+#update_script() if $opt->{update} || $opt->{pluginsupdate};

get_iplayer and cron

What’s better than BBC’s iPlayer? get_iplayer of course, a Perl script that rips programmes to your local machine.

I now have get_iplayer set up with cron to download TV programmes that I’m interested in (have a guess from the list below):

0 3 * * *	cd Desktop && get_iplayer -l --nopurge --get Beatle
30 3 * * * 	cd Desktop && get_iplayer -l --nopurge --get Brooker
0 4 * * * 	cd Desktop && get_iplayer -l --nopurge --get Japan
30 4 * * *      cd Desktop && get_iplayer -l --nopurge --get Horizon
0 5 * * *       cd Desktop && get_iplayer -l --nopurge --get Buzzcocks

Update

Everyone points out in the comments that get_iplayer has a --pvr option that makes this even easier.