[BNW]

Whatever the problem with ripper on some machines where the index would not download (hence the fix to run if off a local database instead), the latest version (2.15) seems to have somehow fixed the problem. At least on my rig. With 2.15 it happily d/ls the index from the internet, something it's not been able to do in any previous version.
There have recently been some .net patches for the version ripper uses. Maybe there were issues with the original .net release that meant ripper couldn't get the index on some rigs, given the hardware and /ot software environment, and the recent patches fixed it? From the comments, quite a few have had the same issue. I chalked it up to a tv-card, but they are not that common these days, so I doubt it's that. .net quirks sound more likely.