Right, I’m currently stuck with the fantastic download speed of 0.5mbps on my home broadband – there’s nothing we can do about it: no cable in the street, and it’s purely a result of distance from the exchange with no prospect of upgrades in the near future. This is somewhat limiting: I cannot watch iPlayer, youtube, etc – hell, I can’t even upload photos to my flickr a/c unless I set it off overnight!

So, is there RELIABLE software or programmes that I could use to download/save videos from the likes of youtube, mpora and BBC iPlayer? The idea being I can set them off to download then watch the video/programme back without lag/interruption once completely downloaded. I’ve tried a couple of free ones online (can’t recall which) but nothing’s worked so far.

Any suggestions welcomed. Happy to buy a programme if it’d reliably work, but free is good too…

Real player works well with youtube. Dont know if it works with iplayer. But doesnt the iplayer desktop application let you download programs anyway?

3G/mobile broadband any better?

But doesnt the iplayer desktop application let you download programs

Unless they have recently removed it, yes.

woody2000 – Member

3G/mobile broadband any better?
Tried T Mobile, Vodafone and 3 dongles but no better unfortunately.

Didn’t know that about iPlayer, will have another look. And will look into Realplayer too. What really hacks me off is not being able to see a lot of the biking vids that appear online – the likes of PinkBike, Dirt (sssh), etc. Anything that works with them is what I’m looking for…

Have you looked into satellite-based broadband?

Not sure if it will work with iplayer, but in the past I’ve used flashget for downloading large files that might get interrupted.

I use igetter on the mac.

Try DownloadHelper extension for Firefox. Great for ripping mp3s from music videos on YouTube* but also saves videos. Think they’re in flash video format though, so unless you’re handy with codec installation etc, then I’d suggest getting VLC Player as well. Plays pretty much any file type you can think of.

*i.e. music videos where the music isn’t available in any other format. I pay Spotify for my general listening pleasure, so I have a clean conscience re: music “piracy”