Re: BBC iPlayer and Samsung A8 tablet

[Vir Campestris]

On 01/03/2023 16:23, C Heywood wrote:
> Help much needed please. Whenever I cast iPlayer to tv from tablet via chromecast, the picture freezes every few seconds. Impossible to watch. Visited by tv and plusnet engineers, and chromecast device replaced. All declared ok. I believe them but no one knows what can be wrong. This is only with iPlayer. Has anyone else had this problem? Most grateful for a response.

(copied to uk.tech.digital-tv)

More detail needed...

What kind of TV?

Does it have chromecast built-in, or are you using a device?

What sort of tablet?

Does iPlayer play OK on the tablet if you don't use the TV?

What else have you tried, apart from iPlayer, to send things to the TV?

Andy

[Adrian Caspersz]

Once the tablet has commanded whatever to play, the data communication
path is between the TV, router, internal phone wiring, phone line and
the internet. The tablet is out of the picture (sorry)

Given that everything upstream of the router has been checked, I'd look
a bit closer at the TV connection to the router. Can it be wired? Is
there a local source of radio interference? Microwave in use?

Is the line capable of sustaining a suitable data rate for the iPlayer
requested resolution of the TV picture? Might be borderline for iPlayer
HD, just based on location. What eventual resolution does something else
like YouTube automatically choose?

Is something else on the local network pulling a lot of data? Is there a
spotty nosed teenager on his PlayStation 5 currently raging war with
aliens, or something else compromised taking part on an active botnet?

--
Adrian C

[Adrian Caspersz]

On 02/03/2023 08:32, Adrian Caspersz wrote:

>
> Once the tablet has commanded whatever to play, the data communication
> path is between the TV, router, internal phone wiring, phone line and
> the internet. The tablet is out of the picture (sorry)
>
> Given that everything upstream of the router has been checked, I'd look
> a bit closer at the TV connection to the router. Can it be wired? Is
> there a local source of radio interference? Microwave in use?
>
> Is the line capable of sustaining a suitable data rate for the iPlayer
> requested resolution of the TV picture? Might be borderline for iPlayer
> HD, just based on location. What eventual resolution does something else
> like YouTube automatically choose?
>
> Is something else on the local network pulling a lot of data? Is there a
> spotty nosed teenager on his PlayStation 5 currently raging war with
> aliens, or something else compromised taking part on an active botnet?
>

Doh, Replace "TV" in the above by Chromecast device (unless built-in,
which is unlikely as the user would be using the TV's iPlayer app then)

--
Adrian C

[Brian Gaff]

I suspect its that the data rate is too fast for some part of the system.
Maybe you are sending 4k though all the time whether it needs it or not.
Also, when you are casting in this way, how is it accomplished, IE is it
direct, through the wifi and router, or all the way back to some server then
back again?
Brian

--

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[Andy Burns]

Brian Gaff wrote:

> when you are casting in this way, how is it accomplished, IE is it
> direct, through the wifi and router, or all the way back to some server then
> back again?

You initiate the casting from the tablet, which tells the chromecast
device to start the stream direct from the BBC servers, so it's just the
broadband side, the router and the presumed wifi connection (could be
ethernet but unlikely) to the chromecast, then hdmi out.

Depends on the various resolutions involved, e.g the tablet might have
been watching a 1280x720 stream, the chromcast may be connected to a 4K
TV and request a higher bandwidth stream, if the broadband can't handle
it, then the adaptive streaming should progressively cut the resolution
until it can be handled.