BBC Radio iPlay­er — what’s gone wrong?

I’ve been lis­tening to BBC radio on the inter­net — on my PC — ever sin­ce the Beeb redu­ced their Astra foot­print to obvious­ly just cover the Bri­tish Isles. And it’s been working just fine. Until Satur­day mor­ning when I tried to lis­ten in on the Gra­ham Nor­ton Show…

… Satur­day (July, 16th  — was it?) the damn thing star­ted free­zing up.  Kept free­zing up. And it also fro­ze up Fire­fox to the point of no respon­se. All I could do was to clo­se down the brow­ser with the task manager.

WTF?

Of cour­se, one starts goog­ling. The sym­ptoms I’ve been expe­ri­en­cing seem to have been around for years, for some users, at least, but no one seems to have offe­red a solu­ti­on. Well, some were offe­red, but none of them seem to have done any­bo­dy any good. So, is any­bo­dy out the­re who has sol­ved this pro­blem? Or has it gone away all by itself?

My first thought: The­re­sa May may have pres­sed the wrong but­ton & nuked any radio con­nec­tion with non-island­ers. But I could­n’t find any hints as to the Beep cut­ting off bloo­dy for­eig­ners — or Bri­tish expats. (I’d be hap­py to bung you a quid a month, by the way.) But I found this inte­res­t­ing tid­bit by an expat Brit living in France:

So, no trend two years ago…

But come to think of it, it has hap­pen­ed to me befo­re, but a brow­ser restart always mana­ged to sol­ve the pro­blem für weeks or months to come. Now, I may mana­ge an hour or two of lis­tening plea­su­re, or, well, as you keep wai­ting for the free­ze, the plea­su­re part’s been pret­ty much taken out of the experience.

I’ve been try­ing other brow­sers: Inter­net Explo­rer, Edge, Ope­ra & Chro­me, but they also keep free­zing at one point or other. Of cour­se, FLASH is up-to-date, too. And the pro­blem has crop­ped up on all of my PCs con­nec­ted to the inter­net – even on a lap­top that all the­se years cer­tain­ly had­n’t had any pro­blems with the BBC iPlay­er befo­re. This can’t be a coin­ci­dence, can it?

Now, with Fire­fox I get a “War­ning: Unre­spon­si­ve Script” mes­sa­ge (or the Ger­man equi­va­lent, of cour­se: “Nicht ant­wor­ten­des Skript”) I also get a hint as to the ori­gin of the pro­blem: “http://static.bbc.co.uk/frame … /sharedmodules/jquery‑1.9.1.js:14”. Ope­ning the debug­ger actual­ly hints  to a pro­blem on line 14. Yea, but what’s that gon­na help me?

I don’t know the first thing about Java and I don’t know why the BBC needs the infor­ma­ti­on the damn script is asking for & why it did­n’t have any pro­blems retrie­ving it befo­re — or at least only every other month or so. I’m hap­py to give it up, guys! I’ve enab­led Coo­kies, by the way, alt­hough that never made any dif­fe­rence in the good old days befo­re Satur­day, 16th. The pro­blem does seem to ori­gi­na­te with the Beeb, though. I’m also get­ting it at the PC I’m working at. Both use Win­dows 10. Someone sure­ly must know what this Java request does…

Solu­ti­ons, anybody?

Now, all goog­ling got me was a bunch of crap:

Lots of peo­p­le are expe­ri­en­cing probs with the iPlay­er: See here. No Solu­ti­ons. It’s quite inte­res­t­ing, though.

The­se guys — and I’m sure they mean well — tell me to start Fire­fox in “safe node”: Start Fire­fox in <u>[[Safe Mode]]</u> to check if one of the exten­si­ons or if hard­ware acce­le­ra­ti­on is caus­ing the pro­blem (switch to the DEFAULT the­me: Fire­fox (Tools) > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).  It did­n’t do any­thing, cer­tain­ly not help. “The Best Ans­wer”. No, it can’t pos­si­bly be…

The peo­p­le on the Micro­soft Help pages keep asking some poor schlup with the same pro­blem whe­ther he also expe­ri­en­ces the­se pro­blems with Inter­net Explo­rer. Again and again, as the idi­ot refu­ses to try the IE. (How can they help you, if you won’t at least try?) Well, I’ve tried it. The pro­blem is the same. After a while, it gives a mes­sa­ge to the tune of “BBC web­site not respon­ding”. Alt­hough IE offers the slight advan­ta­ge of retry­ing via pres­sing a but­ton. The page is loa­ded again and the pro­gram starts whe­re you left off. But a) that’s no way to lis­ten to the radio and b) after a cou­ple of times it won’t do anything.

As I said, Chro­me isn’t any bet­ter. It sure is a fast brow­ser, though, I must admit. But like the IE or Micro­soft it wants you to hook up to all man­ner of crap you — or at least I don’t want/need. Ope­ra also just packs in after a while. Any­way, Fire­fox being so beau­tiful­ly cus­to­mizable as it is, I real­ly like to keep it. And I still get the odd hour in, so it’s not like the damn thing does­n’t work on prin­ci­ple.

Obvious­ly, it’s not the first time Aun­tie Beep is having pro­blems with her online ser­vices, if you care to check here. Alt­hough I’m cer­tain­ly not in a fury. Nor fury and panic like the­se guys. Jee­ze, it just would  be nice to see it up and run­ning smooth­ly again.

I’ve been was­ting hours on end on this pro­blem. All it got me are four addi­tio­nal brow­sers I don’t want and keep using alter­na­te­ly to have the effing radio running.

So I’m asking any­bo­dy who finds their way to my blog by goog­ling the pro­blem: Has any­bo­dy found a solu­ti­on? Has the pro­blem vanis­hed all by its­elf. PLEEEZE!