Why is ITV's iPlayer so crap?

parish

parish

Member
Anyone know? Seems to be as bad now as when I first used it a few years ago.

It uses Flash or Java so doesn't work on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.
It isn't available on my Sony TV or Blu-ray player and, I imagine, won't be on the Humax TV Portal either.

Even on a PC/Mac it's terrible.

The HDR missed recording Wild At Heart last night (conflict with a repeating scheduled recording). Had to drag the MacBookPro out and find my DVI->HDMI cable then frig about behind the wall-mounted TV to connect them up.

The picture quality was awful even though it only filled about 60% of the screen.

Do you think ITV are ever going to up their game? Has anyone at ITV ever seen/used the BBC iPlayer, which isn't perfect but is light-years ahead of ITV's, or are ITV employees barred from watching BBC?
 
I do remember something about the iplayer technology being made available to itv, channel 4 and others, because it is so good, and was paid for with license payers money. That was sometime ago though... I may have to do some digging to find out more.
 
That's a shame - but I suppose the commons standard approach became overtaken with Project Canvas/YouView...... possibly that's where their development is now starting to focus.
 
ThatMartinChap said:
That's a shame - but I suppose the commons standard approach became overtaken with Project Canvas/YouView...... possibly that's where their development is now starting to focus.
Click to expand...


And guess what YouView use to deliver catch-up ITV? ITV Player!

parish said:
Anyone know? Seems to be as bad now as when I first used it a few years ago.

It uses Flash ... so doesn't work on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.
Click to expand...

That just proved how bad Apple was.
 
Mike0001 said:
That just proved how bad Apple was.
Click to expand...

You serious? Not supporting Flash on iOS devices is a good move. Whenever my browser hangs/crashes/sucks 100+% CPU then 99 times out of 100 it's the bloody Flash plug-in.

Adobe should do the decent thing and scrap it, it passed it's sell by date years ago
 
parish said:
You serious? Not supporting Flash on iOS devices is a good move. Whenever my browser hangs/crashes/sucks 100+% CPU then 99 times out of 100 it's the bloody Flash plug-in.

Adobe should do the decent thing and scrap it, it passed it's sell by date years ago
Click to expand...


Didn't they incorporate Flash into Adobe AIR? I never liked Flash anyway, but can't remember it ever crashing my browser.

Flash was banned by Apple because they wanted complete control, and Adobe wouldn't give them it. They hated Java for the same reasons, and refused to push out updates, so as to make Java seem more insecure than everything else. In reality, it was their system that was insecure.

Apple too is past its sell-by date! :p
 
Funny we should be talking about Flash. I've just gone to Adobe's website to watch a video about Premiere Elements and, as you would expect, it's uses a Flash player, but underneath it there is a link "Switch to HTML5 Beta Player"
- see, even Adobe's moving to modern technology​
:p
 
parish said:
Funny we should be talking about Flash. I've just gone to Adobe's website to watch a video about Premiere Elements and, as you would expect, it's uses a Flash player, but underneath it there is a link "Switch to HTML5 Beta Player"
- see, even Adobe's moving to modern technology​
:p
Click to expand...

I have a suspicion that the HTML5 version wraps the Flash in an HTML5 layer, though.
 
ChrisDaniels said:
Flash was banned on iOS because it's buggy and a battery hog. Steve jobs wrote an open letter about it.
Click to expand...

And you believe him? I wouldn't have bought a second-hand car from him!

Isn't it just that iOS is buggy and also a battery hog the way it runs Flash?

After all, Jobs (Edit: oops! I wrote Gates the first time!) was wrong (misleading) on many other things. Java, for instance. Also 7" tablets.
 
ChrisDaniels said:
Have you read the letter? It all makes perfect sense to me.
Anyway, Adobe have since upped their game and built in support for ios into Adobe Air http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html
Click to expand...


Yes, I have read the letter. Here is the most important point, according to Jobs:

"This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms."

Ironically, iOS has turned out to be the lowest common denominator of mobile OSes---Apple is prominently on record as saying that Android can emulate all their features---so as it turned out, he had nothing to worry about!

I agree with some of the points he made, and have a flash blocker in my copy of Chrome, which I can use to enable/disable it. Thus I see the sheer number of sites that use Flash even to display images. A staggering number! I guess these all arise from people using dumb web design programs rather than smart ones. I also guess that these sites all go wrong on iOS.

One other point was that Jobs said that Flash for video was unnecessary because H.264 could be used instead. Quite true, and yet we still see Quicktime movies online. Funny that, Apple criticizing a rival format.
 
I just had a look at players on Windows8.1 using Chrome as browser

BBC iPlayer: uses Flash
ITV Player: uses Flash
4od: uses Flash
Channel 5: uses Flash

:mad:
 
Mike0001 said:
I just had a look at players on Windows8.1 using Chrome as browser

BBC iPlayer: uses Flash
ITV Player: uses Flash
4od: uses Flash
Channel 5: uses Flash

:mad:
Click to expand...

True, but that's a poor example as you wouldn't want to watch the website versions of these on a mobile device - Android and Windows as well as iOS - , you'd use the dedicated app .
 
parish said:
True, but that's a poor example as you wouldn't want to watch the website versions of these on a mobile device - Android and Windows as well as iOS - , you'd use the dedicated app .
Click to expand...

Possibly, but I was just illustrating that Flash still appears to be alive and well.. It is hardly surprising that they are serving Flash on mobiles too. I reckon a load of Apps just run a website in a restricted browser window anyway.

Anyway, the ITV Player App runs fine for me, I just tried it on my phone, on a version of Android that Flash no longer supports. Perhaps the thread title needs amending?

ITV Player also works on my Samsung TV, and on Freesat on my Humax Foxsat HDR. On YouView too.
 
Flash is still the standard on desktops because it's more secure from a broadcaster point of view.
It's harder for the av joe to rip the video stream from a flash file than it is an HTML one.
Different technologies suit different devices, and it's cheaper to employ developers to build in flash rather than html5.

Btw, QuickTime uses h.264.
 
ChrisDaniels said:
Btw, QuickTime uses h.264.
Click to expand...

As well as 48 other codecs, within a proprietary wrapper. And you have to purchase a Pro license to download videos.

So why is ITV Player not working on iOS if it works on Android?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top