4oD help - technical

[Kirk Bevins]

I am trying to watch Countdown on 4oD and the new window comes up when I click on the episode but it goes from "ready" to "connecting" to "ready" and then the window closes itself. Other people can access it fine so why can't I? The technical support people suggested I cleared my browsing history or something which I've done and I still can't watch new episodes. Oddly, I can watch episodes over a week ago fine - the window pops up and it kicks in. Anybody know what's going on? I have to keep downloading the episodes at the minute which takes over an hour and is boring.

[Jon O'Neill]

The solution to your problem is to click download, go and play darts for an hour, then come back and watch it.

[Kirk Bevins]

The solution to your problem is to click download, go and play darts for an hour, then come back and watch it.

I can't. I'm off out at 7 to play darts for 4 hours, come home at 11pm and then have to watch it then before bed. I'm then up early for work - I usually watch it between 5:30 and 6:15 which is ideal. I knew I couldn't rely on a sensible answer from you..

[Kirk Bevins]

In fact it's been downloading for exactly 1 hour now and it's only done 10%, grrrr. Don't tell me I'm gonna have to wait 10 hours

[JimBentley]

Christ. How fast is your connection supposed to be?

[Charlie Reams]

We ran a test last night and Kirk's connection was pretty slow, but not that slow. Sounds more likely that the router has some ports blocked and the torrenting algorithm is punishing you for not uploading. I will translate this technobabble into some useful advice for you later, but I thought I'd put that out there to see if anyone technical minded agrees with me.

[Kirk Bevins]

Come back from darts 5 hours later and only 61% has downloaded. I hate computers.

[Dinos Sfyris]

I was having the same problem the other day viewing Charlie's Friday game ie : READY, CONNECTING, READY, WINDOW CLOSES. Now I know my computer's a total crap, but this was on Emma's laptop which is da technological shex. Ergo from my layman's perspective I assume it was a problem with 4od?

[Nick Wainwright]

I just use channel4.com/catchup and can watch it straight away.

[Kirk Bevins]

Nice one Nick, I'll remember that in future! I got home in time to watch today's episode on channel 4 + 1. I've just tried the 4oD link and it's working again now. Yippee!

[Chris Corby]

We ran a test last night and Kirk's connection was pretty slow

My God, what was the test?

[Howard Somerset]

First two times I tried downloading from 4oD they were quick. But since then, unacceptably slow. I now use stream instead. Quality is not quite so good, but speed is no problem at all. The programme is usually available for viewing withing about a minute of sending the streaming request.

Only snag is that with streaming you get mandatory advertisements before the programme starts, and between parts 1 and part 2. With download, there are no adverts.

[KeithAllen]

Save up for a DVD recorder!!