Same issue here since Christmas, another O2/Be user as well.

Connection speed: 18mb down, 2Mb up, low ping time.

Device connected via ethernet. Every other service works fine. I tried changing my DNS settings to a none Be server to see if the CDN provided me with a different stream, but didn't have any joy.

Only purchased the device because of its iPlayer abilities.

Message was edited by: Accelebrate

I updated to new firmware 2 days ago.

I-player HD still completely unplayable due to buffering every 5 mins.

SD played some programmes ok (2 episodes of Outcasts) but Hustle stopped to buffer for 30 secs literally every minute and a half (I timed it lol).

I then turned the quality of I-player from high to standard (done in settings). Then Hustle played ok but obviously with a very poor picture. This shouldn't be necessary as I have a 12.5 mb download on my broadband.

The point is, as everyone else has said, that up to Christmas I-player played perfectly HD,SD without any problems whatsoever; now it has major problems and there is no acceptance from Sony that there is anything wrong.

In fact Sony has told a few people that there are no problems with the S370 (read previous posts). So are Sony aware of the I-player problem? Well....YES! :

                                                                 A previous poster has sent sony customer services a link to this forum (shouldn't have been necessary as this is a Sony forum and I guess it has Sony administrators reading it to check that nothing untoward is being written on it)

                                                                 The sony representative on these forums called Catmambo said on page 1 of these posts that he wanted to hear technical details so that Sony could could investigate the problem. He now has 6 pages of details but hasn't contributed to this forum since asking for details on page 1.

This problem isn't going to go away - unlike Sony customers who will go away and find rival companies whose products work as advertised.

I have the same problem with my BDP-S370. It's connected by ethernet (wired) to an o2wirelessbox. I can normally get about 9Mbps download speed.

The problem is there at all times of day and evening but seems to be OK very late at night (after say 1am) although I've only tried this a couple of times. Which makes me think it coudl be somthing to do with demand.

I have no problem watching iplayer in HD on my Mac off the same router (via wireless) and broadband.

Well my personal conclusion is that I've been suckered in to buying a Sony product once more, and I am thoroughly regretting it and I'm angry at myself because I should have know better. Their customer support always has been appaling and I was a fool for believing that this might have changed.

I understand that fixing problems can take a while in a big corporation, with lots of QA etc. but after two months they don't even acknowledge that there is a problem.

I'm just glad I got a Panasonic TV and not a Sony one (it was between the two), and I made that choice precisely because of the sort of thing we can witness here. Looks like I was completely right.

Does anybody know about a nice little streaming box that does iPlayer HD? Maybe even a Bluray player? Decent DNLA support would be a bonus, especially if the user interface can deal with more than a handful albums, unlike Sony's. Then I can dump this Sony junk for good. I honestly don't think they will ever fix this issue. Why would they. They've got our money already.

Message was edited by: Piksieben

I think you're right.

My BDP-S370 iplayer was unusable all through January and the first part of February.

Same buffering that everyone else is experiencing, even on SD streams.

Just under two weeks ago I swapped from O2/Be to BT Infinity and iPlayer on the S370 is now playing perfectly.

I haven't watched an awful lot (kind of got out of the way of using it because it had been so awful) but in the time since I changed to BT I've watched at least five or six streams, some HD and none have so much as buffered once.

I suppose it's possible that the issue is still there on the Sony player, it's just that the extra head room with the Infinity connection hides it. That doesn't seem likely though.

Maybe the buffering will return but my experience so far is definitely pointing to o2 being the problem.

Excellent, I hope you get somewhere with O2.

Oddly, I downloaded a ~1GB Linux distribution using BitTorrent on my home connection last night as I assumed that if anything would be traffic shaped P2P software would probably be top of the list. But it came down at a fairly constant 1.2MB/s.

I've noticed that iPlayer on my Sony box never maxes out my connection, it downloads in short bursts, even when buffering, but the bursts don't peak at my connections max speed. Oddly when buffering it doesn't seem to actually be transferring data most of the time, it'll sit there waiting to continue playing but my router will be transferring barely anything until it spikes again.

I wonder if O2 are maybe shaping individual unusual connections if they transfer over a specific limit? Hence why it plays fine for the first half of a show and then buffers every minute, maybe up to say 150mb bandwidth is unlimited, then after that point shaping is applied. Going back to the menu and playing again solves the issue because a new connection is made? Torrents maybe aren't affected because they connect to so many different sources that even if one becomes shaped there are many waiting to take over.

I'm just guessing, but it sounds vaguely plausible.

Message was edited by: Accelebrate

Hi all,

Just an update, we're looking into this with O2 over the next week or so, hopefully with the assistance of some of the posters on the thread. Its not clear where the issues lies and so we may well have to involve the BBC as well. So I would respectfully ask people to hang tight for the next 10 days or so, whilst we work to better understand the issue.

Many thanks