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Comment by cantrevealname | Hacker News Reader

A tip for anyone who can't play the video:

If you're trying to view the video under Windows, you'll get an error that says, "You need to install Flash Player to play this content. Download Flash Player now."

Tip: Install a browser add-on to change the user agent to report "iPad" or another platform for which a Flash Player does not exist. The video will then play. I personally use the Firefox extension called "User Agent Switcher" which works well.

It's so ridiculous that we have to do this. I thought Flash was dead. I'd like to ask the BBC's web developers why they don't just show the non-Flash video if Flash is not installed in the user's browser?

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This would make sense if they didn't have a non Flash option (like Twitch.tv for instance, although they just announced an HTML5 beta).

But if they have a way to serve the video without flash, it just blows my mind.

iPlayer defaults to HTML5 if flash isn't installed, but this hasn't been rolled out to the news player yet by the looks of it.

If I visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5 in Firefox with no Flash installed then I get:

  Flash is not installed or enabled

  If you would prefer not to use the HTML5 Player beta on this device you must download or enable Flash.

BBC recently figured out how to (partially) migrate to HTTPS [0].

Give them a few years to realize that video can be played without using Flash too.

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/f6f50d1f-a879-49...

Good news, but a shame it will stop me injecting a fake breaking news banner. Will have to settle for just DNS blocking, but that doesn't cache for as long.

https://unop.uk/block-bbc-breaking-news-on-all-devices/

Thats crazy... So they do have alternative support but they decide not to use it?! I was able to get the video to play by using chromes built in device toolbar. https://img42.com/XL9PR+

This is my favourite: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTtIx5yWsAErmyY.png

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34799790

Oh the irony.

They do have their reasons. See the sections in this blog post on "Are you planning to add support for Safari on Mac OS X?" and "Firefox".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8be5501d-43e7-4b...

That being said, I've documented some workarounds here:

Firefox - https://unop.uk/how-to-watch-bbc-news-videos-on-a-desktop-wi...

Safari - https://unop.uk/how-to-watch-bbc-news-videos-on-a-desktop-wi...

Ads.

Video ads are 99% flash still. even if your platform is html5, nobody will pay if you can't show their flash crap.

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