UKC

No one at either BBC or Virgin seems to be able to do anything about the problems associated with watching 'catch up' programmes. Almost anything we want to catch up suffers from buffering leading to picture and sound break up rendering the programme virtually unwatchable. It's not a problem when catching up on ITV / ch4 and ch5 programmes.

People at BBC seem to think it's a Virgin server problem , and Virgin reckons its a BBC feed stream problem.

Either way it's doing my chuffing head in.

In reply to Lord of Starkness:

Tivo catch-up works wonderfully for me except on HD which I think is more of a bandwidth issue.

In reply to Offwidth:

All the BBC catch ups show that HD is off, and we still get problems.

In reply to Offwidth:

Agreed - record series link is far less stressful than trying to watch again on-demand. It might be a poor connection to the box.

In reply to Lord of Starkness:
It's very often a problem with your broadband, i.e. insufficient bandwidth, possibly due to contention i.e. too many others using your telco's service in your area.

It can be due to wifi interference as well, so if at all possible connect your device to the router with a cable. Mine (Youview) is terrible if you use wifi but fine if you use a cable.

Neil

In reply to Lord of Starkness:

We've been having the same problem for ages, we've had replacement boxes, Virgin blokes coming round to play with the cables etc to no avail. We've given up and record anything we want to watch or use iPlayer on the laptop plugged into the TV and amp, which works perfectly. For us it's definitely not a bandwidth issue we have 30 Mbps cable, it doesn't make any difference on HD or SD and I've done speed tests while Tivo is playing up. My brother actually works for the BBC in the red button/iPlayer department and he says (of course) that's it's Virgin.

In reply to Lord of Starkness:

Why not just skip all of the hassle and torrent whatever it is you want to watch? Quick and easy and you get the same result.

In reply to Geoff F:

Bandwidth should not be an issue for us - we've got 30mbps fibre optic cable, and the problem only occurs on BBC iPlayer. All other channels 'on demand' services are fine.

Virgin engineers have been out and checked our cable connections and all are OK.

Scunnered!

In reply to Lord of Starkness:

I get the same out-of-sync-picture/sound problem, but only when watching on the television. For some reason it works fine on the computer. Which suggests it's the television - but of course the TV manufacturer insists it's the BBC's fault

In reply to Lord of Starkness:

If it's any consolation we have exact same problem as you. I can even watch the same program on iplayer on the laptop with no issue but via the TiVo it's unwatchable.

In reply to nufkin:

This lip sync problem on TV is quite common and something I suffered from too. It's due, and I'm going back a couple of years to when I looked into this, the processing time the larger screens need for the picture, so the sound is delivered before the lips move onscreen. A lot of set-top boxes and AV-receivers have the ability to add delay to the audio stream so that you can sync everything back up again.

Gavin

In reply to Lord of Starkness:

Bandwidth won't be a problem, a separate dedicated connection is used used for the on demand services. It's all computers, some where will be a network switch or server that needs to be turned off and on again. Until it gets worse and more people are effected it won't be traced and fixed. Might be worth speaking to neighbours to see if they have the same issue as it might be an area fault, then complain on mass.