Content buffering despite high speed connection.

[gb2012]

I've a BDP-S370 which seems to be randomly stalling on playback of web content, particularly iPlayer.  Interestingly cBeebies programmes seem to be unaffected and BBC 2 seems to have the most issues but this may just be a red herring.  Does anyone have any recommendations?  I'm with ISP Zen.

Message was edited by: Catmambo

[neoskywalker]

I've just tried a side by side comparison, running "Mrs Brown's Boys" in SD through both iplayer on my PC and my 370 at the same time.

Both are wired connected to the same O2 router, with O2 connection speed as follows:

370:

Played with no buffering until:

14:07 buffered

15:53

17:31

22:56

24:39

then played until the end (29:09) with no buffering

PC:

Played the entire programme with no buffering.

Draw your own conclusions.

[Piksieben]

Well my personal conclusion is that I've been suckered in to buying a Sony product once more, and I am thoroughly regretting it and I'm angry at myself because I should have know better. Their customer support always has been appaling and I was a fool for believing that this might have changed.

I understand that fixing problems can take a while in a big corporation, with lots of QA etc. but after two months they don't even acknowledge that there is a problem.

I'm just glad I got a Panasonic TV and not a Sony one (it was between the two), and I made that choice precisely because of the sort of thing we can witness here. Looks like I was completely right.

Does anybody know about a nice little streaming box that does iPlayer HD? Maybe even a Bluray player? Decent DNLA support would be a bonus, especially if the user interface can deal with more than a handful albums, unlike Sony's. Then I can dump this Sony junk for good. I honestly don't think they will ever fix this issue. Why would they. They've got our money already.

Message was edited by: Piksieben

[Accelebrate]

As frustrating as this issue is, it is entirely possible that it's not entirely the fault of Sony. It does seem strange that the majority of complaints have come from Be/O2 users. The problems also started around the time that O2 re-jigged their broadband packages and are now offering limited bandwidth per month or a more stringent fair usage policy.

I presume the set top boxes use a different set of streams/CDN servers/ports to the online version of iPlayer, I think it's fair to say that the users outright connection speed is not the issue but it could still be the fault of the ISP applying QOS/throttling/traffic shaping to certain types of connections.

I think I'll experiment with running the box over a VPN or take it into work and see if I experience the same issues over a leased line.

[mackthen]

I think you're right.

My BDP-S370 iplayer was unusable all through January and the first part of February.

Same buffering that everyone else is experiencing, even on SD streams.

Just under two weeks ago I swapped from O2/Be to BT Infinity and iPlayer on the S370 is now playing perfectly.

I haven't watched an awful lot (kind of got out of the way of using it because it had been so awful) but in the time since I changed to BT I've watched at least five or six streams, some HD and none have so much as buffered once.

I suppose it's possible that the issue is still there on the Sony player, it's just that the extra head room with the Infinity connection hides it. That doesn't seem likely though.

Maybe the buffering will return but my experience so far is definitely pointing to o2 being the problem.

[Catmambo]

Hi all

Thanks for the feedback to date. Its indeed strange this seems to be mainly O2/Be users so far. We run standard BT lines at the Office and I have a 30mb Virgin connection at home and have never seen this problem first hand,

We'll raise with O2 and see if they can look into it further.

Thanks

[catdevnull]

There also appears to be an issue from a couple of people on Zen lines too.

Might be worth contacting them too - I hear their support teams are very good at looking into these issues!

[Catmambo]

Hi all,

Just an update, we're looking into this with O2 over the next week or so, hopefully with the assistance of some of the posters on the thread. Its not clear where the issues lies and so we may well have to involve the BBC as well. So I would respectfully ask people to hang tight for the next 10 days or so, whilst we work to better understand the issue.

Many thanks

[Accelebrate]

Excellent, I hope you get somewhere with O2.

Oddly, I downloaded a ~1GB Linux distribution using BitTorrent on my home connection last night as I assumed that if anything would be traffic shaped P2P software would probably be top of the list. But it came down at a fairly constant 1.2MB/s.

I've noticed that iPlayer on my Sony box never maxes out my connection, it downloads in short bursts, even when buffering, but the bursts don't peak at my connections max speed. Oddly when buffering it doesn't seem to actually be transferring data most of the time, it'll sit there waiting to continue playing but my router will be transferring barely anything until it spikes again.

I wonder if O2 are maybe shaping individual unusual connections if they transfer over a specific limit? Hence why it plays fine for the first half of a show and then buffers every minute, maybe up to say 150mb bandwidth is unlimited, then after that point shaping is applied. Going back to the menu and playing again solves the issue because a new connection is made? Torrents maybe aren't affected because they connect to so many different sources that even if one becomes shaped there are many waiting to take over.

I'm just guessing, but it sounds vaguely plausible.

Message was edited by: Accelebrate

[Cascy24]

Hi Catmambo

Thanks for being on the case. Good luck!

[gb2012]

As the person who first raised this issue I'd appreciate it if you also bothered to speak to Zen.

I'm pretty close to giving up on Sony and chucking the currently useless piece of junk in the bin and replacing it with Apple TV.