[Young Turks]

Any idea why BBC cannot cope with 3g/4g technology in this day and age?

Some bizarre reasons they only allow you to download on wifi, as if this was not bad enough, try streaming on 3g/4g and the picture quality is worse than VHS video I stopped watching 10 years ago!

I know it is not my connection as I tested with Sky Go that does not offer HD yet but still 10 times better than BBC iplayer. I have then tried TVcatchup and the picture quality on same channel is still miles better than Iplayer.

I have deleted and downloaded the app again but still very poor, however, if I connect to home wifi suddenly magic happens and picture quality matches Sky Go & TVcatcup so it is clear that BBC can’t cope with 3g/4g technology.

I am using Note 3 phone if it makes any difference, well it should make difference as this phone has one of the best displays out there but iplayer picture quality is still worse than VHS video.

I have checked the settings to ensure streaming quality is set to high but still very poor picture quality basically unwatchable

Anyone else is having some problem or any suggestion to improve the picture quality please?

[voice_of_reason]

Yeah, that's normal I'm afraid. Picture quality over 3G/4G is unwatchable. They're perfectly capable of making the picture quality on mobile networks as good as it is on wi-fi, but from what I understand the stream over mobile networks is crippled to restrict bandwidth useage. Given that iPlayer is such a widely used app, if everyone was eating up bandwidth watching full HD streams, the network/infrastructure providers are bearing the brunt (and cost) of the BBC's app. I think there's a similar conversation going on between ISPs and Netflix - ISPs think Netflix should be contributing to their costs.

So presumably the BBC take the easier route and kill the mobile networks stream so nobody actually bothers using it over 3G/4G!

That doesn't explain why there are other big apps out there (e.g. YouTube) that stream in perfectly good quality over mobile networks...

[The Phazer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by voice_of_reason

That doesn't explain why there are other big apps out there (e.g. YouTube) that stream in perfectly good quality over mobile networks...

YouTube significantly reduces their stream quality over 3G too, and always have (the original iPhone YouTube app explicitly picked between two encodes for YouTube - one for wifi and one for cellular, with the latter being less than half the bitrate of the former).

Indeed, the iOS Application Developer Guidelines explicitly state you should do this if streaming video, and at least at some point a few years ago Apple did reject apps that didn't comply with it.

[voice_of_reason]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Phazer

YouTube significantly reduces their stream quality over 3G too, and always have (the original iPhone YouTube app explicitly picked between two encodes for YouTube - one for wifi and one for cellular, with the latter being less than half the bitrate of the former).

Indeed, the iOS Application Developer Guidelines explicitly state you should do this if streaming video, and at least at some point a few years ago Apple did reject apps that didn't comply with it.

Fair enough. The point being though, to my eye, at least, the quality of streams over 3G/4G on YouTube and the BT Sport app (to name but two) are barely distinguishable from streaming over wi-fi. Both very good and perfectly watchable.

Whereas iPlayer is absolutely, 100% unwatchable over 3G/4G.

[paulker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Young Turks

Any idea why BBC cannot cope with 3g/4g technology in this day and age?

Some bizarre reasons they only allow you to download on wifi, as if this was not bad enough, try streaming on 3g/4g and the picture quality is worse than VHS video I stopped watching 10 years ago!

I know it is not my connection as I tested with Sky Go that does not offer HD yet but still 10 times better than BBC iplayer. I have then tried TVcatchup and the picture quality on same channel is still miles better than Iplayer.

I have deleted and downloaded the app again but still very poor, however, if I connect to home wifi suddenly magic happens and picture quality matches Sky Go & TVcatcup so it is clear that BBC can’t cope with 3g/4g technology.

I am using Note 3 phone if it makes any difference, well it should make difference as this phone has one of the best displays out there but iplayer picture quality is still worse than VHS video.

I have checked the settings to ensure streaming quality is set to high but still very poor picture quality basically unwatchable

Anyone else is having some problem or any suggestion to improve the picture quality please?

Its a samsung issue. The quality on iOS is great on 3g and 4g and I also tried a moto g and the quality is good. I did have a note 3 and a GS5 for a while and the quality was diabolical on 3g and 4g. Wifi is watchable.

[jaffboy151]

I second 'paulker' here...
as someone who switched from iphone to a Samsung S4 but stayed with the same network (Three) I found Iplayer unwatchable on my Samsung via the App when it was crystal clear on iphone, Simple solution I found is to just forget the android app, and use your web browser for iplayer, the picture quality is 100x better..

[voice_of_reason]

UPDATE - the November 2014 Android update has SIGNIFICANTLY improved streaming quality over 3G/4G networks - at least, it has on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

They've got rid of the 'streaming quality' setting, and the app instead uses your available bandwidth to determine the stream quality. I'm assuming this has something to do with the improvement, because, testing it over 4G yesterday (I'm on the '3' network), whilst the picture quality still isn't up to wi-fi standards, it's a MASSIVE improvement and is finally watchable!