Having trouble watching videos on itv player

knobby


Joined: 21/09/2010
Posts: 28

Message Posted:
16/12/2011 15:19

I am having a problem with watching the videos on the itv player. Whilst watching the programme the video starts again while the original is still playing and the soundtrack can be heard. When refreshed the video continues normally but the same problem recurs and so it continues.

I know of at least two other people having this problem. Does anyone know what ,if anything, can be done about it. Thanks.

Micho


Joined: 03/10/2010
Posts: 425

Message Posted:
16/12/2011 15:43

I have had the same problem but don't know why..

erolz


Joined: 17/11/2008
Posts: 3456

Message Posted:
16/12/2011 16:10

Such things are not easy to diagnose. The following are at best, best guesses as to what is going on.

It is most likely a network related issue, though that does not necessarily mean it is your ISP's fault. Restarting is most likely caused by packet loss, rather than insufficent download speed. On a normal download if a packet is lost then the downloading device just asked for it to be resent, which means a small decrease in overall download speed but not much else. With streaming however lost packets can cause the stream to restart. You can test for packet loss by pinging a specific site. Unfortuantely itv.com does not respond to ping requests so you can not test for packet loss against that specific address. You can test against other sites like say bbc.co.uk

If you want to see if you are getting packet loss and do not know how to ping a site just ask and I'll do my best to explain. Occasional packet loss is to be expected. Consistent packet loss indicates an issue.

Ed1957


Joined: 03/09/2011
Posts: 377

Message Posted:
16/12/2011 17:44

For us things have been out of synch recently. The sound starts ok but as the programme goes on lips do not match sound



any ideas?

erolz


Joined: 17/11/2008
Posts: 3456

Message Posted:
16/12/2011 17:58

Ed1957 what is the content you are playing ? Is is streaming ? If so from where? Downloaded ?



Again these are best guesses but generally lip synch issues are not network related but most often down to the way the content is encoded and the player software that decodes it at your end. More often than not you can not do anything about it, except try a different source for the content, or depednig on the content a different player. BBC iplayer destop content played via adobe air software does have lypsynch issues and its something the BBC is aware of and hopefully will rectify in due course. Downloading the windows media player version rather than the iplayer desktop helps and it seems the higher the quality the worse the lip synching is. I do notice get synch issues with BBC streaming content only the downloaded. I do not really use ITV player so not sure about them.

knobby


Joined: 21/09/2010
Posts: 28

Message Posted:
19/12/2011 17:43

Thank you for your reply Erolz. I have had this problem for about two weeks so I would say it is consistent, but have never had it before. I would be grateful if you would try to explain what I can do to establish the cause and how to rectify it but I am a computer novice so would be grateful if you could use only words of one syllable!