Shopping & Style6 mins ago
bbc Iplayer
My bbc iplayer only plays for a second or so then I get the "loading" circles coming up before it plays for another second etc etc etc.
How can I get it to play continuesly and smoothly?
Idiots guide please and thank you in advance
How can I get it to play continuesly and smoothly?
Idiots guide please and thank you in advance
Answers
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(2-part post):
As others have indicated, you're having to wait for your PC to 'buffer' the data which it isn't receiving fast enough. Unless you can find a way to get the data quicker you're stuck with the problem.
There are a few things you need to be aware of:
1. Contention ratios: Most domestic users share their 'street level' internet connection with about 50 of their neighbours. (Business services typically have a 1 to 20 ratio, instead of 1 to 50). That means that your broadband service will be slower at peak times (e.g. just after all of the local kids have arrived home from school). iPlayer is likely to work better at off-peak times.
2. Service throttling: Most ISPs limit the speeds of downloads of specific services. (Some apply the same limits throughout the day but most apply stricter limits at peak times). This has generally meant that downloads from newsgroups and, in particular, peer-to-peer services (such as Limewire) have always been much slower than downloads from websites. However UK ISPs hate the BBC iPlayer. They regard it as an abuse of their services and they're seeking to get the BBC to contribute to the funding of the upgrade of their infrastructure which is necessary to allow the iPlayer to work properly (without slowing other internet services).
As others have indicated, you're having to wait for your PC to 'buffer' the data which it isn't receiving fast enough. Unless you can find a way to get the data quicker you're stuck with the problem.
There are a few things you need to be aware of:
1. Contention ratios: Most domestic users share their 'street level' internet connection with about 50 of their neighbours. (Business services typically have a 1 to 20 ratio, instead of 1 to 50). That means that your broadband service will be slower at peak times (e.g. just after all of the local kids have arrived home from school). iPlayer is likely to work better at off-peak times.
2. Service throttling: Most ISPs limit the speeds of downloads of specific services. (Some apply the same limits throughout the day but most apply stricter limits at peak times). This has generally meant that downloads from newsgroups and, in particular, peer-to-peer services (such as Limewire) have always been much slower than downloads from websites. However UK ISPs hate the BBC iPlayer. They regard it as an abuse of their services and they're seeking to get the BBC to contribute to the funding of the upgrade of their infrastructure which is necessary to allow the iPlayer to work properly (without slowing other internet services).
As a result of this dispute, many ISPs are 'throttling' BBC iPlayer streams. (It's not as vindictive as it sounds. If they didn't take such action, the whole of the UK's internet access would almost grind to a halt).
3. 'Bandwidth hungry' services will never be reliable in this country until the UK gets much faster broadband access. The UK government is committed to ensuring that all households will have access to broadband, at a minimum of 2Mbps, by 2015. That's pathetic. The South Korean government's target is that, by 2015, all homes will have broadband access at a minimum of 100Mbps. That requires the installation of fibre optic cabling all of the way from the ISPs to users' PCs (with no copper cabling at any point). It's unlikely that the UK will get to that stage before 2035 at the earliest. (So you might have a long wait before the BBC iPlayer can be relied upon!).
Chris
3. 'Bandwidth hungry' services will never be reliable in this country until the UK gets much faster broadband access. The UK government is committed to ensuring that all households will have access to broadband, at a minimum of 2Mbps, by 2015. That's pathetic. The South Korean government's target is that, by 2015, all homes will have broadband access at a minimum of 100Mbps. That requires the installation of fibre optic cabling all of the way from the ISPs to users' PCs (with no copper cabling at any point). It's unlikely that the UK will get to that stage before 2035 at the earliest. (So you might have a long wait before the BBC iPlayer can be relied upon!).
Chris
I have the lowest Virgin media broadband speed and it works fine for me.
Try testing out your broadband speed. There is a test on the iPlayer help pages. When I ran the test on mine it said all would OK except for HD. here is the page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics
Try testing out your broadband speed. There is a test on the iPlayer help pages. When I ran the test on mine it said all would OK except for HD. here is the page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics
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