It seems that Adobe, after issuing a press release claiming they would be opening up the RTMP protocol in the ‘first half of 2009′, have issued a DMCA take down request for an open source implementation of the protocol, RTMPdump. The SourceForge project site for RTMPdump now shows ‘Invalid Project’.

This is going to mean it’s going to become much harder to get RTMPdump for downloading copies of ABC’s iView files, which I previously posted about. This might also have interesting consequences for XBMC and Boxee which both include this code for supporting streaming media from BBC’s iPlayer.

This is pretty disappointing from Adobe, especially after claiming they would be in the process of opening up the protocol.

A plugin for ABC iView on XBMC has been released. See this page for progress of ABC iView on XBMC.

I just rewrote the iView plugin for XBMC.. and it’s far more robust. There is still lots to finish, but it kinda works. This was spurred on by someone actually trying it out, and then me finding out that ABC changed their XML.

You’ll need the RTMP patch for XBMC, and version 0.2 of the ABC iView plugin for XBMC.

Some things that still need improving are:

• Auth token still times out. That means that if you watch something, you’ll need to go back to the channels list and then back into the channel to list the programs again and get a new auth token. Annoying.
• No thumbnails or extended metadata available for channels or programs.
• Some programs have funny names. Pretty minor, but annoying.
• Programs are streamed in 4:3, but are actually produced in 16:9. I set XBMC to 16:9 Stretch mode.

For more info about the plugin, see this other entry I wrote.

Don’t forget to vote for an iView plugin for Boxee at the Customer Support Community for boxee. It might might help get iView into Boxee!