BBC sites & Windows Media Player

[Teppic]

This might sound like a daft problem, but I cannot play video that launches in Windows Media Player from any BBC website. The player window opens but no video is played, and the status bar at the bottom simply says "Done". This is happening in both Firefox 2.0.0.1 and IE7. Both have been re-sinstalled, as has Windows Media Player 11.

Strangely, if I go to any non-BBC site and try to play video in WMP it plays fine, and it also plays OK in RealPlayer (but I don't want to use RP, because it's sh*t and strangely causes my wireless connection to drop).

Any thoughts?

[TheKeyboardDemon]

I think I read on 1 of the BBC sites that all their media content is played in Real Media, with the exception of some News content.

[Teppic]

TheKeyboardDemon said:

I think I read on 1 of the BBC sites that all their media content is played in Real Media, with the exception of some News content.

Yet under their viewing preferences there is still the option of selecting WMP, and I have no problem with WMP and the BBC sites if I use my parent's PC.

[randlemarcus]

Google RealAlternative.
I've refused to use Real products for the last five years or so, either personally or at work. Awful privacy record and the products are intrusive.

[TheKeyboardDemon]

The BBC sites that I tend to use are the CBeebies site, my 3 year daughter and I like to sing together when we're surfing the net and that's where she finds her favourite songs. On there the technical pages give this information

Edited by TheKeyboardDemon on Thursday 18th January 22:29

[FourWheelDrift]

Teppic said:

Both have been re-sinstalled, as has Windows Media Player 11.

"Well there's your problem"

I have read about some codec problems with WMP11 over WMP10. It's possible your codec that the BBC uses is not compatible with WMP11 perhaps. This is something I have found on various forums and tech help sites following a google search of my own problems with it.

Can you roll back to WMP10 to see if that works?

I've already rolled back to WMP10 after getting cretinous codec errors and even a "your system is running low on memory" pop up message when trying to play a 10mb video clip in WMP11 even though my system had over 1.5GB of memory available.

[Teppic]

FourWheelDrift said:

Teppic said:

Both have been re-sinstalled, as has Windows Media Player 11.

"Well there's your problem"

I have read about some codec problems with WMP11 over WMP10. It's possible your codec that the BBC uses is not compatible with WMP11 perhaps. This is something I have found on various forums and tech help sites following a google search of my own problems with it.

Can you roll back to WMP10 to see if that works?

I'll give it a go. However the video plays fine on my parents PC with WMP11.

[FourWheelDrift]

They might have a different codec installed that's compatible..

Just an idea


PS. there are 2 things to uninstall (to rollback) in the control panel/add remove programs list. Both the WMP11 itself and the WMP11 runtime. If that doesn't do the job you can always go back to WMP11 by asking WMP10 to check for updates again.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 18th January 23:18

[Teppic]

FourWheelDrift said:

They might have a different codec installed that's compatible..

Just an idea


PS. there are 2 things to uninstall (to rollback) in the control panel/add remove programs list. Both the WMP11 itself and the WMP11 runtime. If that doesn't do the job you can always go back to WMP11 by asking WMP10 to check for updates again.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 18th January 23:18

Thanks. It was the WMP11 Runtime that was buggering things up. All sorted now. Cheers.