91Èȱ¬

Shame the 91Èȱ¬ got it all so wrong. Their attempts at Geo-IP blocking are awful. By blanket banning certain IPs, all they do is frustrate the public. I'm sitting in an office in London and constantly told "not available in your area".

This from the same 91Èȱ¬ News website which seems to know (and proactively offer me different content) when I am in the UK and not. Do the two parts not talk to each other?

For a license fee payer (and staunch defender of it) that's more than galling.

Yesterday I watched (tried to watch) the match on iPlayer. However It was not so much anything to do with the 91Èȱ¬ but the internet connection I was using, which at the best of times is slow and found it was easier to simply listen to it via Radio 5 Live (also through iPlayer) which worked a treat.

However it raises the question not so much about is the Internet up to the job of streaming such amounts of data to people, but the connections from the ISP's to those people.

Only last week I had a chap from Sky turn up on my doorstep trying to sell their services and Broadband. I am fortunate that at home I have a very fast (upto 20Mbps connection) of which I actually get just over 17Mbps. He was shocked as to why anyone would want such speed - as the offer he was selling would be upto 8Mbps. I explained how much streaming of content is done in my houshold and actually was looking forward to having cable give me up to 50Mbps.

Increasingly we (my household) watch a lot of content through our house streamed or downloaded from the Internet. Be that YouTube, iTunes, See Saw, iPlayer and the likes. It gives true choice and on that choice to be on demand. Sadly though just like with Music, content providers are really not sure how to go with this and how to make money from such.

I'll enjoy the day I can have all my needs catered for through the Internet, pay a flat fee but small payments on top to rent a film, or download a music track, watch live TV in high quality and have vast choice when I want it.

iPlayer does well - hell of a lot better than ITV's streaming service and yet we all take it for granted and proves the 91Èȱ¬ can do good things and supply us with high quality, innovative services from our Licence Fee.

I first tried to load it 40 minutes into the game.

The plugin would not load although I have watch lots of stuff on the 91Èȱ¬ site.

Other people in my office already had a link so I watched it on their machine.

Hats off to the Beeb for pulling that off! 800,000 concurrent users is no small thing in video streaming. Others have tried and failed rather miserably. Well done 91Èȱ¬!

I'd be interested in finding out whether they had to pull in extra resources from their streaming/bandwidth providers, or that sort of capacity was already built in.

I live in China....really useful for me

I tried to watch online but the 91Èȱ¬ refused to let me because my phone wasn't made by apple.

@ Chris (post #6)

My phone's made by Nokia, and I've never had any trouble with 91Èȱ¬ content.

@ Chris (Post #6)

Actually, it works on all phones as newer Android based phones now can get Flash support and the iPhone has its own 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer page and same with any other phone.

I have an iPhone and trust me, its not really that much different on the iplayer than any other phone.

I'm watching the world cup on good, old-fashioned terrestrial TV, albeit digital. However, having yet to find a decent Freeview box, I use a USB TV tuner and MPlayer on my Linux Fedora 13 PC. I use 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer for catchup only. I think streaming of live TV has a long way to go yet, before it's as good as traditional TV broadcasting.

"I tried to watch online but the 91Èȱ¬ refused to let me because my phone wasn't made by apple."

Yep same situation. 91Èȱ¬ jump through the hoops for apple but no-one else.

Seconding Jordans comment @ no.1 - i cannot watch any of the 91Èȱ¬'s content on my computer at work which is ridiculous. Even worse is that sometimes it also decides to stick adverts all over the page as well - again as a license fee payer i find this unacceptable - 91Èȱ¬ find a solution!

I am not trying to defend the 91Èȱ¬, they're very capable of doing that themselves, but it's very possible that some of those accessing iPlayer at work are going through web proxy servers based outside the UK. Hence, despite being physically present in the UK, their web browser's IP address appears foreign to the 91Èȱ¬ servers.

I am in that situation too, and while I understand and don't raise issue, I've found that this applies to contacting the 91Èȱ¬ via some of their web forms. If you're outside the country or are connecting via a foreign based web proxy, your comment is tagged 'foreign', and probably gets little attention.

I didn't have any issues using [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]. Not sure how they do it, but just about all the broadcasts were there.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Strange how my post was sent to "moderation".

@Burty117 Not really. It works on a very small number of android phones which support flash. A much larger number could access the same steams as the iphone if the 91Èȱ¬ didn't put an artificial barrier in place to block access.

I don't really fancy watching matches at work, I've got work to do. However there was a room ready where people could watch the broadcast if they wanted. I must say that 91Èȱ¬ is really doing the best job, far better than ITV, which annoys me in many ways. I have to click on the links at ITV many times before anything happens. It also took me 3 days to figure out where the links to the broadcast are. The links and design of the ITV pages is a nightmare. I finally used Google to find the proper link.
My provider is BT and I must admit the service has improved recently, I had my line updated, so I have on average a 6Mb speed which seems to be very good for watching the live matches and there are not glitches when 91Èȱ¬ is broadcasting.
Well done 91Èȱ¬. Thank you.

I didn't have any issues using seetvpc (dot) com. Not sure how they do it, but just about all the broadcasts were there.

I have watched a few games on the 91Èȱ¬ site (a house full of women dictates that the TV will be used for something other than football), and have found it to be excellent.

The ITV streaming on the other hand, doesn't have updates and is constantly buffering. Quite poor.

I have to admit the 91Èȱ¬'s internet stream has been top notch. I've had very little problems with any of the streams they have had for matches broadcast by the 91Èȱ¬. It has also been incredibly straight forward to find the link in order to view the match.

It's a shame that another terrestial channel who is also showing the World Cup seems to provide a complete opposite experience when watching the matches on their website. Constant buffering, an incredible maze has to be negotiated in order to find the link just to watch the match.

All in all I would say well done 91Èȱ¬ you have provided a first class internet service for this World Cup.

All this user's posts have been removed.Why?