We’re listening: 4oD Catch-Up 1 week old
Well over a million people have watched 4oD Catch-up in the last few days, so we must be doing something right. However things haven’t been totally smooth for some users. Here is a quick update on what’s been going on behind the scenes in the last week.
Issues and fixes
We know that some of you have been complaining about these issues on the new Flash-based 4oD Catch-Up service:
- “Juddery” playback of programmes.
- “Frames skipping” resulting in an odd viewing experience.
Our developers have been working on the problems. We have released a ‘patch’ this morning that we hope should improve the viewing experience for those having issues, but we still ask for your feedback to let us know that your experiences have improved, or not.
Beating the Judderman and Dropped Frames
We have a found a couple of items that may contribute to juddering playback, particularly on older machines or certain graphics configurations. In particular a ‘memory leak’ in the player and a conflicting bit of code from a third-party Javascript library we had been using. We have resolved both of these issues in the patch, so we’re hoping that playback is much, much smoother.
We are also experimenting with alternate encoding profiles to get the best balance between picture quality, smooth delivery and performance.
Good news
It’s easy to overlook just how impressive the upgrade to the service has been if we concentrate solely on responding to problems some of you may have noted here in the blog comments, or over on our GetSatisfaction site. So we thought we’d share a few of the top-level numbers around the new player that tell its story so far.
More people getting to more content, and fewer errors
Here are some encouraging stats from our first full week with the Beta release of 4oD Catch-Up. Bear in mind that officially no television or online marketing has accompanied the release as yet.
- Catch-up Video Views on Channel4.com are up by 82% week-on-week *
- Traffic has increased by a third to our Programmes pages as a result of the integrated Catch-Up pages.
- Thursday 2nd April was the first day that 4oD Catchup on channel4.com accounted for the majority of Channel 4’s PC video-on-demand with 54% of the total.
- 6.7% of users are arriving from a Mac platform, with that number on the rise. That’s a big proportion of our audience that previously had no access to Channel 4’s Catch-Up at all. (Mac users may also notice a special ‘Sorry’ ad played before they view a full-length episode on 4oD Catch-Up).
- At one point last week our streaming servers were registering 12 simultaneous new play requests per second – more than at any time under the old player.
- The new player has a view-to-load ratio of about 87%. This means that we are losing about 13% of viewers from load (a user clicking on play button) to actually viewing Catch-Up content. 10% of that 13% we can trace to errors, and the remaining 3% can be attributed to users not wanting to continue. These are very good numbers compared with the old, Windows Media Player Catch-Up player, which had a view-to-load ratio of just 56%.
* Considers the last 6 days vs. the same days of the week last week.
Look out here soon for more updates on the service, and announcements about what’s on the way later in the year.
Comments
April 8, 2009
Glad to hear that the new service is doing so well, I can now watch all your great content without having to dig out the old vista laptop which I hate so much
Keep up the good work
April 8, 2009
Thanks again for your support, Brandon. Much appreciated.
April 9, 2009
Hi,
The ‘patch’ doesnt seem to have made a difference for the problem I’m suffering I’m afraid – I’m guessing I’m suffering from the 10 % percent of the errors you mentioned about the view-to-load ratio
I just replied back to the catchup-support email asking me to check my ip address and it seems my ISP is ‘bethere’ (not ‘be’ as I thought earlier.)
Anyway – if theres anyway I can help you to investigate the problem – please contact me – I’m hoping you’ll resolve this before the vital episodes of Smallville expire !
Thanks.
Matt_C.
April 9, 2009
@matt_c
I am also a Be* /bethere user and I have had problems with the new catch-up service.
On one of my machines (a PPC Powerbook running OS 10.5 and flash 9.0.124) my modem/bebox/Thompson Speedtouch appears to reset itself after watching for a minute or two. I should note that I am able to begin playing the video – it is only after a minute or so that playback (and all internet connectivity) stops.
Be* are aware of the issue and have commented that they saw a similar problem when the iPlayer was first launched which was fixed with a modem firmware update. Not sure if they are talking to Channel 4 at the moment though…
Strangely playback is fine on other machines in my house. Is your experience similar to mine or do you get no playback at all?
April 10, 2009
I used to be able to watch programmes on the old catch-up fine, it was as good as watching it on TV, I just came back from holiday and wanted to catch up on desperate housewives and now I cant because the new service is unviewable for me, it skips making it impossible to watch
April 10, 2009
hey i am having a similar issue where my internet router reboots itself after a few minutes of watching a program. im using safari on an imac and my internet is with BT, using a BT homehub to pick up wireless signal. all internet connectivity stops for a couple of minutes.
is this quite a common issue and will it be solved as its very very frustrating. it cuts off right when im getting into a program
any advice would be very much appreciated
April 10, 2009
Hi,
I’ve been eagerly waiting for the mac version… at last it arrives but what’s this… service not available in Republic of Ireland??? Come on! The 4OD service is available here… why not the catch up service???
April 11, 2009
Hi Mel
That sounds more like an issue with your BT home hub than it does the service here. Have you got any other computers you can try as it may also be your iMac causing the problem
April 11, 2009
Hi there – I’m having the same issue with my internet cutting out (also using Be*, with an iBook and Firefox browser).
To make sure it wasn’t just that the ISP being patchy over the last 24 hours, I’ve just watched a programme on iPlayer – it worked perfectly. But trying to watch something on 4OD before and after and the wireless keeps cutting out around every two or three minutes. This was the same last night when I first started trying to watch the programme. I suppose I should go and plug the internet in to my computer and see if that works, but I’m comfortable here!
April 11, 2009
Hi Brandon,
nope… it’s a licensing issue:
About 4oD Catch-Up
Can I watch 4oD Catch-Up in another country?
Rights agreements mean that our 4oD Catch-Up service is only available in the UK. Even if you are a citizen of the UK you cannot access the service from abroad.
Doesn’t make much sense… I can watch channel four, e4 content on tv every day without issue so it doesn’t make much sense that I can’t do so online.
April 11, 2009
hey brandon,
just tried the service on two other machines.
first on my desktop pc which is directly connected to the home hub, service worked fine.
Then tried it on a pc laptop which is connected to the hub wirelessly and it also worked fine so seems it is a problem with the imac. surely it shouldn’t be having issues as 4od is now meant to work on macs? hmm its very annoying.
Any other suggestions?
thanks
mel
April 11, 2009
Mel: I too am having the same problem on both iMac and mac mini w. homehub. It sucks, but i’m going to check the bt homehub boards if there are any updates out — this happened before with the iPlayer.
April 11, 2009
Thanks for getting 4OD catchup finally on the Mac. Still really looking forward to the full 4OD service, but this is a good start and has been working flawlessly on full screen on my 24″ iMac running 10.5.6 in Safari. Good stuff
April 12, 2009
Hi Richard, sorry wasn’t addressing your issue, was addressing mels.I have no solution to the ROI issue, all you can do is contact channel 4
Mel, seems to be an issue with the imac and homebub? What mac do you have?
Have you tried plugging it directly into the homehub?
April 12, 2009
Hey, I’m having the same problem as Mel. I’ve got a 6 month old Macbook, and Aol Wireless Broadband.
My Mac/internet works fine with iPlayer and other online streaming, but the wireless and internet cuts out after a few minutes of watching 4oD.
The thing is, it’s not just a problem with my signal at home, I’ve attempted to used 4oD at my parents who have a BT Homehub and the same thing happens. I’m stumped! Any ideas?
April 12, 2009
Brandon – i tried this and didn’t work, still cuts out after 1 minute exactly. It’s a shame really.
April 12, 2009
Having problems also. watching on a G4 mac, with latest OSX but getting problem with errors. Videos just freeze and stop playing. Thanks 4oD but still some work to do.
Mark
April 12, 2009
Unistalled flash and installed again in safari. Seems to be all good know. Thanks 4oD!!!
April 12, 2009
Same problem as Jen and others – O2 broadband (only tried on wireless so far, but i don’t have to plug in for anything else…), Macbook pro running 10.5.6 and safari / firefox. Thanks for all the hard work – sure it will be great when it’s all sorted – for the moment though i’m finding it too frustrating to have to watch the ad and try to find the last place i got up to before it killed my connection, over and over again…
April 13, 2009
Hi, I’m having the same problem with my Macbook (new last summer) and my BT home hub. Just tried to watch The Hospital twice and it starts off perfect then my internet cuts off about 5 or 10 minutes in, it’s really annoying is there anything I can do?
My hub and internet connection are in perfect working order apart from this.
April 13, 2009
Such a strange issue, will investigate it further
April 13, 2009
Watching the IT Crowd via a MAC Mini, and a Bthomehub.
The router rebooted 5 times during a single episode….not good. Whilst you may consider this is bthomehub issue, it seems iPlayer and ITV catchup do not have this problem.
Looks like the Beeb had the same issue and was resolved by an adobe fix, maybe a clue.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/28/bt_router_bbc_iplayer_bug/comments/
April 13, 2009
hey quick note to all having issues with programs cutting out.
try installing the latest version of flash player. i did it just to try it out and it actually worked!
dont know what was initially causing the internet to get cut off but all seems to be sorted now.
April 14, 2009
@all who are having issues with routers etc ‘cutting out’ when watching 4oD Catch Up programmes.
We’ve had a few reports of success reinstalling Flash (see above). We hope that that does resolve the router-specific issues; however for your very specific concerns about hardware and such, we ask that you use the support form in the Help section to let us know.
We obviously lack the resources to investigate every user’s hardware configuration; but a first port of call should be the ISP providers’ support forums, if they have any, to see if there are other users with similar issues.
April 14, 2009
I used to be able to watch Catch Up using my Dell Mini 9 full screen with a very good experience. I have just sat through an hour of juddering, stopped video. The audio continues and the picture just freezes for a minute or two then carries on again. I have just checked using my Toshiba X200 and find that the downlaod seems fine. I am disappointed that the new way of delivering the service seems to fail netbook users – surely one of the points of a netbook is to watch streaming video! And previously Catch Up worked fine on it! Why break something that worked?
April 14, 2009
I use an iMac 24′ intel on wireless BT Homehub and was having the freeze and loss/reboot of broadband problem that many on this thread have reported. I, too, have found that the issue is resolved (fingers crossed) by updating to the latest version of Adobe Flash.
If when you try to install, you find you are requested to quit Dashboarb Client, make sure you close all the widgets in dashboard by clicking the cross-hairs in the bottom left of screen when Dashboards is open and clicking the subsequent cross-hairs just in case one of them uses flash.
April 15, 2009
My net also cuts out about 5mins into any programme. IT SUCKS!
I have a BT home hub and i see other people have had problems with this too.
Hmm
April 15, 2009
Hi
I was really pleased Mac users could finally access 4od…but I am having the same probs as others. My connection keeps dropping (BT). Can use the BBC iplayer no problem, but I can only watch a few minutes of a programme on 4od and my connection drops. Tried on Firefox and Safari, stil no joy. Please can you help?
April 15, 2009
Hi there, I downloaded the most up-to-date version of Flash last night. Instead of cutting out every few minutes, it cut out twice in a 40-minute programme, so it was an improvement.
Also had an issue with juddery video though.
I’m really glad you’ve made the service available for Macs, look forward to these issues being ironed out.
April 15, 2009
Hi, Am having the same problem as everyone else, after every 3 mins of playback my modem freezes and then reboots after a while, I am with o2 using their wireless modem with my new macbook and a Power mac g4 (with ethernet plugged in).
Have looked at o2 forums but with no joy, this doesn’t happen with the bbcs i-player so I can’t see why it would even be a fault with o2 or the modem.
Am going to try downloading flash now, but I don’t seem to have any version on my computer already so perhaps this is why!?
April 15, 2009
Same issue as many
Cutting out on Mac Safari every few mins
Just to clear up BT issue I am running on O2 Broadband and it is still happening – only on 4od so i don’t think the Homehub is at fault
April 15, 2009
Too those still saying it doesn’t work and have a BT connection, have you done the recommended an upgraded to the latest version of flash? That version should be 10,0,12,36 or higher
April 16, 2009
Experiencing the same problem as others, it’s the oddest thing. I’m a Mac user, and if I try watching anything on 4od my BT connection drops and then I hear a ‘click’ sound coming from the BT wireless hub. Systematically, every 5 minutes. Just watched an hour of the Apprentice at BBC iPlayer and connection was stable throughout. Please fix whatever is causing it. I will save you the trouble of making another montage promo “We’re sorry [again], Mac users”
April 17, 2009
Having exactly these same internet connectivity issues others are talking about where net cuts off after a few mins of watching… Mac OS X wireless to router, which is connected to O2 Home Broadband. I believe O2 run off BeThere’s network, which others have described as having the same problems?
I don’t get these problems with any other web sites, including other on demand TV services.
April 17, 2009
Mac user with O2 broadband -regarding 5 min cut out
Update – I have installed the latest version of flash 10 and the problem has not reoccurred so far (although I have only watched a 30 min episode)
Hope it is working for everyone else
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