Yep, grabbing original broadcasts will get you higher quality, and if you record SD or unencrypted HD the original .TS file can be played on any device which supports it – you could probably remux to AVI to increase compatibility too.

I must say, as nice as it is for the Foxsat to have an iPlayer client I barely use it because I can get 720i50 HD via XBMC’s iPlayer addon. Which to my discerning eyes is very very close to the quality you get from original 1080i50 broadcasts.

Partridge2 – 14 hours ago  » 

Not from the Humax, but to record onto your computer then this works well and is well-maintained:

http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html

…but not if you use the Windows version. I can get it to download SD stuff, but flvstreamer for HD content brings up a “your version of flvstreamer/rtmpdump doesn’t support SWF verification”. According to some website on the subject, Windows support is “an afterthought” and a lot of Linux guys are “elitist”. Precisely the sort of reason a lot of Windows users won’t jump ship, I’d guess.

Any thoughts you have on how to get this working for the HD streams would be good because I just don’t have the time or patience… seems like I’ve been doing little but jumping through hoops sorting out tech problems recently rather than being able to sit back and use my TV as a TV rather than a monitor for my PC!

EDIT: Nevermind, the solution was actually fairly simple. It just involved downloading a Windows binary of RTMPDump 2.4 and unzipping all the files into the directory of the original RTMPDump version installed with get_iPlayer by default. Still a little more techie than your average user would want though…

Instructions here: http://www.tempusfugit.ca/techwatch.ca/gip_rtmpd_2_4.html