BBC Radio 4 Extra not supported in pre-Oneiric versions

[Jamie Lokier]

This patch released on 2 April adds supported for BBC Radio 4 Extra:
    http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2011-April/001230.html
and is incorporated in the get-iplayer packaged for Ubuntu Oneiric:
    https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/get-iplayer/2.79-2
with this changelog:
    get-iplayer (2.79-2) unstable; urgency=low
       * Patch for Radio 4 Extra support
    -- Ubuntu Archive Auto-Sync <email address hidden> Sat, 30 Apr 2011 12:47:15 +0000

Although this is far from a priority item, as long as Ubuntu Oneiric is not ready for general use,
I think users of Natty and maybe earlier Ubuntu versions would appreciate get-iplayer seeing all the channels.

Until googling to find this patch, I thought a BBC programme I was looking for was simply unavailable via get-iplayer, thinking maybe they'd started using DRM or a new incompatible scheme. But no, it's just that get-iplayer hard-codes the channel list.

I have applied the patch to Natty's get_iplayer 2.79-1 and it checked that it works perfectly. (Except that it doesn't automatically fetch the new channel until you do --refresh, but I am sure that is a quirk/bug in all versions.)

Therefore I think this patch should be backported at least to Natty and perhaps older Ubuntu versions (it's such a trivial patch it probably applies easily.)

I don't need this change personally, as I simply run the patched get_iplayer on Natty. But I think other users would appreciate it.

Ideally the list of channels would be downloaded periodically from somewhere, just like the content listings, but for now it is hard-coded into specific versions of get-iplayer, which unfortunately means users of properly released Ubuntu versions depend on this kind of backport to keep up with channel changes.

[Jon Davies (jon-hedgerows)]

Another example of ignoring problems until the Ubuntu release goes end of life... radio 4 extra is accessible in all versions from Oneiric onwards.