I'm very new to Macs (just bought one this weekend, which came with 10.9 Mavericks), but relatively comfortable with command lines etc - I've been happily using get_iplayer on my PC for a year or two.

I've followed the 'manual Mac OS X installation' instructions to the letter. get_iplayer itself seems to work in that it downloads the index of programmes etc.
But when I get to the 'test doing some downloads' bit, rtmpdump gets stuck every time: it says "Connecting..." for ages, then it eventually times out with the following:

ERROR: RTMP_Connect0, failed to connect socket. 60 (Operation timed out)

It then retries for each of the various stream qualities (flashvhigh2 etc etc) but I get the same error every time.
Eventually, I have to use Ctrl-C to cancel.

I can confirm that I can watch iPlayer fine via Safari/Flash, which would suggest it's not an issue with my network connection. I'm in the UK too, so there are no strange proxies/VPNs or anything confusing the issue.

I'm certain that I'm missing something simple... any help would be much appreciated! :)

Out of curiosity, I just tried Get iPlayer Automator, and it has a similar issue: if I Show Log, I see it waiting on "Connecting..." for a long while at the RTMPDUMP stage, then it shows:
INFO: Command exit code 1 (raw code = 256)

Then it tries the other qualities as per the command line version. :(

Sorry chaps... I've just tried another wifi connection and it worked fine. It must be some port or other which is blocked on the 'public' office wifi that I was using.

I'm still stumped as to how the same programme worked OK from Safari via Flash on that same connection, though.

It would be great if I could use the same technique that the Flash/Safari version is using to download on the command line, as it's going to kill my mobile data allowance otherwise! ;)

rtmpdump connects via TCP port 1935, which is often blocked on office networks, VPNs, etc., since it is only used for Flash streaming. The player on the iPlayer site works differently to rtmpdump, so playback on the site is no guarantee that rtmpdump can access the same programme. Get iPlayer Automator just executes get_iplayer, so results will be the same.

Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad it's not my mistake for once! ;)