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Rotara

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 28, 2008
39
0
London UK
There is a problem that is beginning to plague iPod Touch & iPhone users with increasing frequency.

When attempting to watch BBC iPlayer programmes some do not have a play icon appearing on the programme window thus not letting them play the programme, and some have the message "Error Playing Movie" appearing when the play button does eventually appear.

There is also a message that appears saying "Sorry this programme is unavailable please select another" - I think this is to do with there not being an iPhone/iPod version available at the time you wanted to watch.

Anyway going back to the main problem of not being able to watch iPlayer content: From my experience this is something that Resetting the Cookies or Clearing the Cache will NOT solve. I even did a major reset on the handset (via settings icon). Nothing worked.

The only thing that did work was to put the device into Recovery Mode and wipe the device restoring factory settings via iTunes. This puts your device back to the way it left the shop.

My advice is then NOT to restore from your backup as this might restore the problem file back to your device. Instead I would treat the device as a new iPod / iPhone. You can then re-sync your music and contacts etc to the device as if it was new. Okay you'll lose your text messages & photos on the device, but if they are that important i'd back them up to another location before performing this operation.

The whole process of restoring should take no longer than 15 minutes (depending on how much data you have to copy back to the iPod / iPhone).

This solution is a bit draconian but no-one could come up with a definitive solution to this error with iPlayer. I'm suspecting the QuickTime Player Module becomes corrupted somehow.

Once your device is restored then I'm almost 100% sure your iPod / iPhone will work again with the iPlayer programmes.

Hopefully this thread will save someone hours of anguish, the techs at the BBC refuse to acknowledge a problem despite their technical forum pages being peppered by confused iPhone users.... R
 

big_malk

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2005
557
1
Scotland
I had this issue at a train station today, I couldn't get anything to play.
When I got home it worked perfectly, no restart or anything.
 

Rotara

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 28, 2008
39
0
London UK
I had this issue at a train station today

At a train station? Were you connected via WiFi or GPRS/Edge?

If via the latter then that might explain. The bandwidth capabilities of Edge would probably not suit iPlayer playback.
 

big_malk

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2005
557
1
Scotland
It was a 'Cloud' WiFi hotspot. On their posters advertising it, they specifically mentioned using the iPlayer there.
 
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