ARD Mediathek offline viewing on Ubuntu

By Leo Gaggl

July 1, 2014

Since I am a bit of a sucker for German “Krimis” as well as some their excellent documentaries I like to watch ARD Mediathek IPTV. However there are several problems with this when you live at the opposite side of the world. ARD has a block for any films that are 15+ years outside of 20.00h-6.00h GMT+1. Which makes it pretty much impossible to watch at a reasonable time in Australia. I also like to watch these things on the plane which requires download of the media files.

Install JSON Parser

sudo apt-get install jq

Download script

wget https://github.com/leogaggl/media/raw/master/download_mediathek.sh<br></br>chmod +x download_mediathek.sh

Usage

./download_mediathek.sh -f save_as_filename.mp4 -q 3 MEDIATHEK-URL

The -f and -q parameters are optional.
-f filename.mp4 (or full path + filename to save in different directory). Defaults to original filename
-q quality setting from 0 to 3 (where 0 is lowest and 3 highest quality). Defaults to highest quality

Please leave a comment if you find any issues or log an issue on GitHub.

NOTE (2014-07-06): If you are only interested in the Tatort series I suggest you look at this script by Felix Knecht (see comment below)