I have Humax HD box & Humax HD PVR and used both with my 42" LCD HD TV & 20 MB Network.

1) The images used at this time for the shows are very poor with blocking showing in the colours.

2) The shows play without break up with my 20MB network on both boxes, but there is blocking on my screen with the shows with me using low band play button or high band button on screen.

3) The Sound on two shows did break up a bit, with the volume seem to go down & up a few times.

4) The screen set up seem a bit of a mess too, with the way it shown, but this may be that I'm used to Virgin Iplayer and Internet.

I feel that the 2MB that the BBC put about this Iplayer is to low as I have 20MB and still had some delay in starting of shows and above troubles.

I did test that it was not my network cable with buying a new one to make sure.

May be this is just a test to see if would work OK and they may change the system to a higher servers for the public?

I would add that the NEXT type of Freesat box's should have more then 16MB flash memory, RAM 256MB & EEPROM 8KB to allow the Iplayer to download a show fully into the box to stop any delay in play back.

About 20 min of WMV in HD is about 300MB.

I would suggest it's simply down to low internet speed at your end, other people find it OK. Just because your provider claims 'up to' 20Mb doesn't mean you're getting anywhere near that, and with high contention ratios whatever you are getting may be shared with a considerable number of people anyway.

Have you performed an Internet speed test?, or tried low quality from iPlayer, see if that is any better?.

We have played a few programmes over the last few days last nights was holby city and i was surfing at the same time and our top speed at the moment is 8meg playing at high speed without any problems.

Hi - any chance of more info on your fourth point (what do you mean by 'the screen set up' e.g general user interface, video playback etc? How do you access the iPlayer on Virgin - via the Red Button, or through Virgin's menu? Also, don't forget that Virgin's on demand service is essentially a managed, closed network, whereas video on the Freesat iPlayer is delivered 'over the top', i.e. over the open internet.) Re. your first point - yes, images are not optimised (for TV, as oppose to PC iPlayer) at the beta stage - definitely scope for investigating improving, hopefully will happen soon.

I have 3Mb internet and high quality is seamless. There's something up with ya internet.

I think that the OP is complaining more about poor picture quality than the videos not playing smoothly which probably rules out a network problem. I haven't tried iPlayer on a 42" TV but isn't it likely that playing such low bit rate video on such a large screen is going to give a pretty poor picture? The iPlayer PQ is OK for a little window on a computer monitor but when blown up o a big screen could be very poor.

The OP doesn't mention the "higher quality" option, makes me think he hasn't found it, I'd agree that the standard quality is rubbish.

I was watching freesat iplayer on my 72" screen for the first time last night - excellent, no complaints over quality.

My Internet is working fine and speed is good on my cable network, so I do not share space, like on phone line Internet service.

The show images on FreeSat Iplayer are blocky on my 42" full HD TV.

The graphics that make up the Iplayer are OK, but need to be a little shaper as on my V+ boxes the Iplayer are clearer and the Internet too looks clearer on all my PC's.

And I would add that as I said above notes I have used both high and low play back on a show and that there is a little difference but the low on a 42" screen looks blocky in a few bits, but this may be down to so many reasons, BBC servers, my ISP servers, cable modem, my router, my humax box's.

The Iplayer is beta and the BBC my have had some reports like my one, but I still feel that it will be a real plus for Freesat.

BskyB must be really upset with so many other platforms getting the Iplayer, with reports that they are going to add it to freeview too.

IP TV is never going to be anything like Broadcast quality as you'd need an Internet connection in the region of 100 Mbs to achieve broadcast level compression.

It may look ok on a computer screen but on a large tv you're always going to see compression artefacts.

IP tv is a folly but one many are falling for in the light of its pormotion as the next big thing.

Satellite is still the future, at least until 100 Mbs lines become a reality with 100% reliability and no slow downs during peak times. In fact, for the latter read 200-400 Mbs lines as probably being needed.

Wrong,

a 3mbit stream using a modern codec like H.264 is significantly better than the current broadcast Mpeg 2 which is typically somewhere between 2-5 mbit depending on the channel in this country.

In fact I can stream a broadcast TV channel in mpeg 2 without re-encding from my TV server over my wireless Ethernet and it barley uses 500Kbytes/s of the available wireless bandwidth at it's peak bitrate.

you should be able to get better than Digital broadcast Quality stream over an actual 5mbit connection with a codec newer than Mpeg2.

HD requires anywhere between 5-20mbit depending apon resolution and quality settings. and i can normally stream a HD channel over the wirless too, but it can glitch.

I have 3mb connection and a 32" TV and I find the picture quality acceptable. Its not quite as good as normal TV, but I can live with that for the convenience... and it's free!

I did notice a couple of occasions this week when the picture quality did go blocky for a few seconds, but it didn't last long enough to cause a problem.

I have been part of the FreeSat iPlayer Beta Test group and have been amazed at the picture quality achieved on my 40in LCD TV. The standard definition pics are OK, but the higher definition pics are at least as good as standard definition over-air transmissions and are much better than on my computer.
My broadband achieves around 5Mbps during the evenings and about 6.5Mbps during the day. Sofar, I have not experienced any hesitation or breakup of the picture. The only noticeable compression artefact occurs as a local fuzziness in areas of the picture where there is rapid movement - the stoat's tail in Attenborough's recent Life series for instance.

The only niggle I have with the iPlayer is the connection which must be via an ethernet cable. It would have been much easier for my setup to have linked to the Humax box through a wireless USB dongle. Connecting via a HomePlug does work well, but it was a major task to free a local socket and move my whole system to gain access.

The only problem I have had with the iplayer is the Humax sometimes re-booting when I press the stop button or the yellow button on the remote control. As for pq I find both the standard and the higher quality ok, and wonder how it compares to channels over the phone line on BT Vision?

IPlayer wont download on windows 7 after downloading Beta version

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Do the security settings allow only one player platform?
After downloading the Beta version to the Humax I keep getting messages that the Iplayer is not downloaded or that Adobe Air has downloaded incorrectly. Tried clean install and now it streams but pressinf the download button produces nothing.

stulaine
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For me the quality was almost flawless on my mum's Humax. Speedtest.net said the line was around 2.2Mbit/s and I was using the high quality version.

The quality was definitely better than my Freeview box back here at home.

The only issue was Hamlet cutting off after 87 minutes, but I'm pretty sure that was a file issue on the server.

I agree the UI could do with a little bit of work - it's quite slow.

Re my post above, where I thought downloading the freesat Iplayer had stopped the Iplayer on my computer working.

Aparrently this is a common problem of incompatability between Windows 7 and the BBC Iplayer desktop. It runs for a while then won't open anymore. Nothing to do with freesat.