iPlayer and other catchup TV

Mr_Toad

Prompted by comments in the Internet speed thread.

Someone mentioned that even with Virgin cable that iPlayer was buffering. Well I have the same issue, not always but then again I don't use it that often, because of the buffering.

I have BT Infinity and get good speeds.

It's not just iPlayer, I recently tried to watch something I'd forgotten to record on the ITV player.

It was so bad, constantly buffering, that I gave up in the end. What really annoyed me was that before the program started I was forced to watch the adverts which of course played perfectly without any buffering. Adverts end buffering starts then buffering every few minutes of program. Then comes the advert break and no buffering at all.

Other people I know with none fibre BB don't seem to get these problems so I'm open to suggestions as to what the problem might be.

My TV and Youview box are both on a wired Ethernet connection and both suffer buffering when using the various catch up players.

mirko

May be the device you're running it on rather than the internet.

If you're running it on the PC have you tried running it on a tablet/phone to see if the buffering still happens?

It may be that there are a lot of background apps/software running on your PC that need to be closed before you run iPlayer.

Fightsback

Try running a ping and/or traceroute over a long period of time, start at the TV ethernet. I had an intermittent high ping problem that was eventually down to an issue at the exchange.

AndyPix

I hear this time and again from cable customers.
Im not exactly sure that the speeds they advertise and show up in speed tests are actually true.


I think they may actually throttle ports/sites usually used for video streaming


but allow full speeds for speed testing sites etc.
Similar to the VW scandal.


This is of course only my conjecture and i dont use cable

Mr_Toad

I'm getting the same problem using the player app on the TV and on the Youview box. I've never watched them via a tablet or PC.

I have Netflix and get no issues at all with that.

I'll run traceroute/ping as suggested.

Mr_Toad

AndyPix wrote: »

I hear this time and again from cable customers.
Im not exactly sure that the speeds they advertise and show up in speed tests are actually true.


I think they may actually throttle ports/sites usually used for video streaming


but allow full speeds for speed testing sites etc.
Similar to the VW scandal.

This is of course only my conjecture and i dont use cable

This was my thought too. In my mind I had kind of decided that it was ISP traffic shaping and forgotten about it.

That said my girlfriend is also a BT customer but on the standard BB getting a 8.5meg download speed and she uses iPlayer etc. a lot and doesn't have these issues.

AndyPix

Yeah, as iv said before , i have a standard copper 4.5Mb connection and i never get buffering on anything

Cornucopia

I'd suggest using the Download facility on iPlayer as a workaround.

In terms of the underlying technical issue, there are several possible causes, and you'd need to work through a rigourous process to eliminate each one.

I'd start by attaching one or more devices directly to the Router by Ethernet cable to eliminate wifi as a possible cause. Also, you could look at changing the wifi channel.

Use a good broadband speed checker to see what actual speeds you are getting. There are differing views on the required speed, but I would say that 3-8 Mbps is a reasonable range, above which you shouldn't have any problems. There are other technical qualities to the connection such as latency which can also affect this (though they shouldn't if the player is properly engineered).

Naf

The catch-up services are massively over-subscribed; and iPlayer more than the others. The buffering isn't lack of bandwidth for customers (although peak contention won't be helping), it's lack of bandwidth at the server side.

buglawton

Spend £50 to diagnose the issue, invest in a 4g MiFi or allow your phone to be a Hotspot and test that way. If it works fine then it's your Internet Service Provider that needs kicking out, pronto.

On Virgin cable have not seen buffering for years on any catch-up TV, and at my mums on Plusnet ADSL quoted at about 14 MB/s, zero buffering.