The BBC have been quite luke warm about supporting Windows Media Centre for some time now - they had some news video available in Windows Media Centre 2005 online showcase, but it was a bit hit and miss as to whether or not it worked. iPlayer on the other hand is a fantastic vide delivery system from the BBC, but has only really been written for  desktop machines, not machines connected to your TV - the font is tiny, and it really needs a mouse to navigate.

Recently though, the BBC enabled the iPlayer for the Wii, and then to make matters even worse, someone hacked it to work on the PS3. That was just too much for me, so I decided to write a Vista MCE interface for iPlayer.

From there it has evolved to support ITV, Channel 4, Five and Hulu! It is the most comprehensive streaming TV add-in available, and it's completley free (donations welcome though).

You can download the installer from http://www.milliesoft.co.uk/tunerfree.php

Due to BBC, ITV, C4 and Five restrictions, those channels only work for people in the UK, so sorry everyone else, this isn't a hack to get round that. Similary, the Hulu content only works for people in the US. Underneath it still uses the respective web sites to get the data - it just transforms it in to an MCE interface.

To get round that of course, you can use a VPN connection. TunerFreeMCE supports automatic VPN switching as you change between countries to give you a seamless TV viewing experience.

18th April Update

Version 2.8 adds twitter integration

18th February Update

Hulu support has been taken out of Beta in version 2.2.6

30th December Update

Version 2.0 released new user interface.

26th October Update

Version 1.9 released with support for BBC high resolution streams

28th September Update

Version 1.8 released with support for live streaming of ITV and BBC News channels.

15th August Update

Version 1.7 released with Channel Five content added too. The program also now installs under Fiji.

17th July Update

Now fully compatible with the new BBC iPlayer site, and added the ability to skip forward and back through BBC programs.

6th July Update

There is a beta version with support for the new BBC iPlayer screens and with a new background caching process. See here for details.

25th June Update

Version 1.5 released with numerous UI and performance improvements

17th June Update

The program has been renamed to TunerFreeMCE to reflect the fact that it has more than just BBC iPlayer content now.

13th June Update

Version 1.4 is now available, which also has ITV content.

9th June Update

The latest version of iPlayer MCE is 1.3, which has support for Channel 4 content too.

Help?

I would like to live transcode flash content do it works on extenders too. Anyone got any experience of that? See my blog for a specific request on that.

Feedback is welcome!

Thanks

Martin

Dude,

 

Well done!

 

 

I'll be trying this out tonight!

Good effort Martin! Works perfectly under 64-bit using the copy method. Only annoyance for me is that when the video player is set to full screen Zoom isn't available. I have a 1024x768 16:9 monitor and everything widescreen is letterboxed by default even though it is widescreen output, doubt there's much you can do about that.

aliburns:

Good effort Martin! Works perfectly under 64-bit using the copy method. Only annoyance for me is that when the video player is set to full screen Zoom isn't available. I have a 1024x768 16:9 monitor and everything widescreen is letterboxed by default even though it is widescreen output, doubt there's much you can do about that.

Glad you got it working on 64 bit too. I guess your problem is that your monitor resolution is not a widescreen resolution. Is it a CRT TV? I always had problems getting vista to recognize that widescreen TVs exist at all - it always wants to set the resolution to a 4:3 aspect ratio when the output was an RF or s-video output. My solution was to buy a new TV

mmillmor:

aliburns:

Good effort Martin! Works perfectly under 64-bit using the copy method. Only annoyance for me is that when the video player is set to full screen Zoom isn't available. I have a 1024x768 16:9 monitor and everything widescreen is letterboxed by default even though it is widescreen output, doubt there's much you can do about that.

Glad you got it working on 64 bit too. I guess your problem is that your monitor resolution is not a widescreen resolution. Is it a CRT TV? I always had problems getting vista to recognize that widescreen TVs exist at all - it always wants to set the resolution to a 4:3 aspect ratio when the output was an RF or s-video output. My solution was to buy a new TV

It's a Pioneer Plasma using a D-Sub input. In Media Center the Zoom settings need to be changed to get the correct aspect ratio after initial set-up. PowerDVD needs to have the aspect ratio set every time.

I've got a genuine 1920x1080 LCD upstairs but using my XBox 360 I get the application up nicely via the extender but can't "Press Click To Play" by any foul means I can think of, wonder if a regular USB mouse would work?

aliburns:

using my XBox 360 I get the application up nicely via the extender but can't "Press Click To Play" by any foul means I can think of, wonder if a regular USB mouse would work?

The video is a flash component, and it doesn't recognize using the remote to select and press the item as a mouse click. In principle flash components can have methods which are called via javascript so that a web page can make it do things, but I don't know what the methods are since the BBC haven't exposed them in any way. The only option I have found is to use the mouse to click to play and to click to make it full screen. I would love someone who knows different to speak up! For your xbox 360, I think that plugging in a mouse may be the only option.

Martin

Excellent, I was really hoping someone would do this.

 

One question though - Vista Only?  Could it be made to run on MCE2005?

mmillmor:

For your xbox 360, I think that plugging in a mouse may be the only option.

No joy sadly.

Cafe.Racer:

Excellent, I was really hoping someone would do this.

One question though - Vista Only?  Could it be made to run on MCE2005?

Thanks. There is nothing technically stopping this from being re-written to run on 2005. I did it in mcml because all of my PCs are now vista, and the mcml UI is so much more flexible. If anyone is interested I will post the source code.

Martin

just wish I could find a fake IP to watch stuff in the UK, as having lived there for a long time I miss ITV, BBC, etc.

rgreenpc:

just wish I could find a fake IP to watch stuff in the UK, as having lived there for a long time I miss ITV, BBC, etc.

Yea, sorry about that. Rather cruely, I think that it will probably show you all of the programs that are available, and only fail when it comes to play the program.

silly question but if i install this in vista, will it show up on the xbox360 under MediaCenter?

TW4T:

silly question but if i install this in vista, will it show up on the xbox360 under MediaCenter?

Apparently it will appear, but you may have difficulty getting the video to play, since the remote alone cannot currently make it play.

Yes, I'd be interested in the source code - to see if I can get it to work under MCE

Cafe.Racer:

Yes, I'd be interested in the source code - to see if I can get it to work under MCE

Have a look at the site now - there is a link to the source code.