BBC iPlayer buffering

[terminal7]

I use an Amazon firestick to watch streaming services on my Smart TV. After watching on the BBC iPlayer app for say 20/25 mins the programme starts buffering. It usually requires complete reboot to reconnect. This does not occur on any other streaming services. Any ideas would be welcome.

T7

[kempiejon]

Can you do a speed test. Does it happen every time you use iplayer? I watch a few of the TVs services on my firestick and regularly had problems with Channel 4, so much so I gave up on it for a while. Less so with BBC or ITV but not none. Could you watch iplayer on your smart TV instead if the firestick if this problem rather than iplayer that'd fix it. Is your firestick able to be wired to the network?

[terminal7]

Can you do a speed test. Does it happen every time you use iplayer? I watch a few of the TVs services on my firestick and regularly had problems with Channel 4, so much so I gave up on it for a while. Less so with BBC or ITV but not none. Could you watch iplayer on your smart TV instead if the firestick if this problem rather than iplayer that'd fix it. Is your firestick able to be wired to the network?

Thanks, indeed, I do watch iPlayer on my iPad and no problems at all - buffering just on the TV. My firestick is not wired to the network - just picks up the signal from the router like the iPad.

T7

[kempiejon]

Hmm,

Thanks, indeed, I do watch iPlayer on my iPad and no problems at all

I'm not much a specialist and the boring recommendations feel like lip service but, cache and files associated with the iplayer app might be a thing. I forget how to do but firestick does let one clear such things. Also perhaps an uninstall and reinstall of iplayer. Trouble is these things are just rough try this try that suggestions. I don't use my ipad for watching tv but I can mirror youtube from my laptop to my firestick. Can you do the same thing with iplayer on the ipad?

found somthing

Go to Settings on your Fire TV. Select Applications . In Manage Installed Applications, select the app you are having trouble with. Select Clear Cache, and then Clear Data.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/custom ... ear%20Data.

[chas49]

Can you do a speed test using your phone in the same location as the Fire stick to see if it's a Wifi speed issue at that specific location in your house?

We had a similar issue with a Fire stick and replaced it with a new one (no change), then added another wifi mesh point (no change) - until I discovered that the Fire stick was still connecting to a different mesh point. Once I forced it to connect to the new one, the problems went away.

So the buffering did seem to be a network speed issue

[didds]

I use an Amazon firestick to watch streaming services on my Smart TV. After watching on the BBC iPlayer app for say 20/25 mins the programme starts buffering. It usually requires complete reboot to reconnect. This does not occur on any other streaming services. Any ideas would be welcome.

T7

how old is your firestick? They have form....

We are on our third now - the previous two did exactly this after some time. FWIW ITVX was the worst culprit for buffering but we also experienced it on a couple of other apps including - sporadically - iPlayer.

Replacing them is hardly a perfect solution and we felt pretty p155ed off that a piece of solid state circuitry with what must be limited firmware footprint just effectively became useless but various other attempts to improve the local signal etc made absolutely no difference.

[mike]

I use an Amazon firestick to watch streaming services on my Smart TV. After watching on the BBC iPlayer app for say 20/25 mins the programme starts buffering. It usually requires complete reboot to reconnect. This does not occur on any other streaming services. Any ideas would be welcome.

T7

Just to give you another piece of info to help trace the problem, I have watched BBC iPlayer on my non-smart TV using a Roku stick for many years, and have never noticed this problem.

[Niksen]

I would suggest doing a network speed test on the Firestick. You can do that without any apps, just go to the settings menu, then click on Network, then press the Play/Pause button on your remote control on your Wifi network name, then choose “Run Speed Test” button.

My experience is that my older Firestick didn’t play nicely with some 5Ghz networks and fell back to using a slower 2.4Ghz connection, but the replacement 4K Firestick is fine.

Also if you use Netflix on the Firestick, that app also has a speed check in the app’s settings.

[Infrasonic]

Sometimes buffering isn't a network 'bandwidth' issue per se as much as a latency one - it will vary depending on load (contention ratios) and for local WiFi things like local RF congestion.

WiFi 6E/7 has an additional 6 GHz band which can help if you've got the requisite number of home 6E/7 WAP's to make up for the shorter reach.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wifi+ ... nt=gws-wiz