BBC iPlayer (radio of course)

[Martin963]

Whilst we don't have a fast ADSL connection (max 470 kbps,  often running at less than 300 kbps) we have more than our fair share of trouble with the BBC iPlayer for radio.

I'm just trying to listen again to last week's "Count Arthur Strong" and Realplayer shows a connection speed of 20.7 kbps.   This is slower even than usual,  but other audio feeds (Arrow Classic Rock,  Swing FM) run happily at 128 kbps most of the time,  even on our connection.

More irritating,   the BBC iPlayer often simply breaks down after a few minutes,   and instead of resetting at the point of loss,   eventually "crashes" and the play button has to be reset,  and the programme starts from the top again.   Unless I happen to be watching the screen at the moment of breakdown (and can quickly note the timer reading),  there then follows a long manual search to find the correct place again.

The whole BBC website seems very slow from France at the best of times this year,   and the iPlayer is truly not fit for purpose as used from here.   It wasn't brilliant last year,  but is now virtually unuseable - at least for us.   Does anyone else have any trouble?

And - before you all ask - I'm a fully-paid up BBC licence fee holder  (one of the few).

[Simon]

The bbc site does have some advice that may help, personally I use one of these that handles the buffering pretty effectively when used with AlienBBC.

Regards

Simon

[Martin963]

Well I've fallen at the first hurdle.   My BBC iPlayer RealPlayer window appears not to have a Tools or Preferences tab/button/icon.

As I said,  I've never got on with RealPlayer and it's a terrible shame the BBC make one use it.

Can anyone help please?   (and to think I use to sit behind sound desks actually controlling radio programmes as they went out from Auntie,   to be reduced to this.....!)

[Simon]

Are you sure you are using realplayer not the standard flash based iplayer from the website?

Regards

Simon

[Martin963]

Well I'm using the "player" that comes with the website,   but at the bottom right hand corner there's an icon that has an "r" with a speech bubble round it and one option that I can look at tells me it's RealPlayer version 10.5.

But as you say that might not be like the "real" RealPlayer  (if you see what I mean).

Curiously I seem to get more reliable results by clicking on the "use lower bandwidth version"  (that got me to 44.1 kbps) but I'm still puzzled that Swing FM or Arrow run happily at 128 kbps.

I think it must be something to do with my ADSL here in France because I don't have this trouble when I access the BBC iPlayer from Devon (where even the TV works (sort of)).

[Martin963]

I thought I'd follow the instuctions given on a link at the BBC to de-install RealPlayer,  and then I followed the given link to download the latest version;  and there is - of course (because it's this incompetent bunch of no hopers) NO LINK on the realplayer site given (in France) to download the new version.    When I try to play anything now (even from the realplayer site) I get an error message which is of no help at all,  and to boot I can't get rid of the error message,  unless I do a forced closure of the page via ctr-alt-del

Why is it that I ALWAYS have such trouble with realplayer.   Is it just me?   Is it because I am ill-disposed to it before I start?

So now I have no means of playing most stuff off the internet!

This is not a dig at you Simon,  this is a serious criticism of the ever-useless RealPlayer.

[Martin963]

Using Google UK and going to the realplayer site I now have v 11 which appears at least to be working again.

I'll try it on the BBC iplayer and see if it's any more stable.

Anyway,   thanks for the help thus far Simon.