BBC iPlayer signin for schools and colleges?

[Trevelyan]

Where I work, it looks like users now have to sign in to be able to access content on iPlayer - has anyone had any experience in how to get around this or is the strategy for everyone to register their own account in order to do this?

[mavhc]

Official TV Licensing website - Schools and colleges

 

A single TV Licence will cover

All TV receiving equipment being used at all sites within the same town and under the control of the same senior official.

This includes all buildings, vehicles, vessels or caravans being used for educational purposes, as long as they are in the same town and under the control of the same senior official

 

Seems like as they're probably going to require a tv licence number on the account in the future, you should have 1 account

[mjk]

What about the iplayer radio service?

[Trevelyan]

We already have a license but we have about 2800 students/1500 PCs. They can't all use the same email address!

[Trevelyan]

TV Licensing were useless when I called; they said you need one license per room you're broadcasting in. And all students will have to share one account. Lovely. JISC time!

[mavhc]

TV Licensing were useless when I called; they said you need one license per room you're broadcasting in. And all students will have to share one account. Lovely. JISC time!

 

That is useless, can't read their own website.

 

Also there seems to be no way to stop an iplayer account having its password changed, tried linking a child account but that didn't help.

[mavhc]

Probably easiest to buy an 8TB hdd and get_iplayer everything educational

[Trevelyan]

Ok so the original guy at TV Licensing hadn't told me to enquire about "Multi licensing" - the next guy gave me a number for them. They've then discussed it, have no idea, passed it back to the guy who I think passed me to them. He now says "you've got a valid license so.. I'm not sure what to do. You've got a valid license"..

 

I was then passed to another dude, probably more senior, who said there's no problem, just have to skip the signin part and we don't have to register. I said you do, he said no you don't, I was looking at iPlayer last night.

 

I asked him to try it himself. His reply:

 

"Oh yeah"

 

Looks like this is something that has changed this morning, really. But odd we are the first education place to have contacted them about it.

 

JISC are also on the case now I think, after we've been in touch with them about it. I imagine they would surely change this later so that, for example, JISC IPs are excluded from having to signin or whatnot. At least, I hope so!

[fiza]

@Trevelyan - Any update on this? We have teachers asking for Podcasts from the BBC to be allowed through our filter but we don't want students having to register for a BBC account just to watch a couple of podcasts.

[mavhc]

Podcasts don't require a licence, or a login

[fiza]

Podcasts don't require a licence, or a login

 

This is the podcast link BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time - Available now

 

As soon as you try to play a podcast it asks you to sign in.

[mavhc]

That's the radio link, the podcast link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/downloads you seem to have to download though, so better to just put the MP3s in a shared drive, automatically if they're being used a lot with a podcatcher, I use castget on linux.

[fiza]

That's the radio link, the podcast link is BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time - Downloads you seem to have to download though, so better to just put the MP3s in a shared drive, automatically if they're being used a lot with a podcatcher, I use castget on linux.

Yeh that's what I ended up doing. Just downloaded the mp3 files required.

[mavhc]

Weird they need a sign in for radio, as radio doesn't need a licence.

[free780]

Or you need planet estream or click view with a free view recorder.

[lyricalway]

I have tried today and all I had to do was tick "I have a TV license" ??

[deKay]

We have this problem now. Staff want to use iPlayer, but need a logon. Obviously can't provide a school one as it'll be shared and the password changed.

 

Did anyone find a way round this?

[mavhc]

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer

[deKay]

Not sure that will wash in front of the BBC employee who will be here in a few days, that we'll be showing stuff from iPlayer in front of!

[mavhc]

In which case, don't fix it, point out to them that their system is terrible for schools and businesses.

[RLR]

Resurrecting thread! I guess the answer is no and probably illegal but are you allow to download and store programs from BBC iPlayer? Got a DT teacher wanting to save a show about materials. The 30 day download limit will run out soon so was wondering if she is able to download it to store. Doesn't seem to be a dvd of it so there isn't really any other choice.

[saggu]

Glad someone posted this. I will be interested to know what exactly we are meant to do in school to play BBC iPlayer. We have TV licence. Do we need to create an account to play in different rooms or we need multi accounts or we do not need account at all.

[mavhc]

You must only need one account because you only have 1 TV licence.

 

Whether you can store iplayer stuff with get_iplayer is an interesting question. Technically you're supposed to record off live tv, there's no difference between the 2 methods, so morally it's fine, but legally probably not.

[free780]

Sounds like you need planet estream or clickview. The issue with iplayer is you can retain useful programs long term.

[RLR]

Sounds like you need planet estream or clickview. The issue with iplayer is you can retain useful programs long term.

 

We had clickview last year and only a couple of teachers used it so didn't renew. It's one of those things that is only used once or twice for a specific video but 99% of the content is not used. Would be useful for this though!