Platforms Supported

In order to access this subscription product you will need Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or above on the following PC operating systems, Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. Other browsers on these PC operating systems (eg Netscape, Opera, Galleon etc) will provide a less than satisfactory experience and are not supported.

We also support Macintosh PCs running Mac OS X operating systems. Unfortunately we are not able to support earlier versions of Mac operating systems.

You will also need Windows Media Player 9 in order to be able to access this subscription product. If you do not already have Windows Media Player 9 you will be able to download here

Content plays but pauses frequently with message, "Buffering"

The player is most likely experiencing network congestion. This means that there is not enough available space on the network to stream the selected file from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to your computer.

There are many reasons why this can occur, but generally this will be caused either by congestion (too many users sharing ISP resources) or because the stream being played is bigger than your home Internet connection can manage.

Windows Media Player buffers several seconds of data before starting to play the stream, and when network congestion occurs will use the data in the buffer until the stream is restored. If the contents of the buffer are used up before this happens, the video will pause and Media Player will re-buffer before playing again. This cycle will continue until network conditions improve.

There are a number of things you can do to ensure that this effect is minimised:
1. For 56k users, it can occasionally help to drop the connection and redial.
2. For all users, ensure that the bandwidth of the stream you are trying to view is less than the bandwidth of your Internet connection.
3. Make sure that there are no other applications or Internet Explorer instances that might be using up your bandwidth.
4. Increase the size of the Media Player buffer (see How do I increase the size of the buffer in Windows Media Player?).

How can I change the buffering in Windows Media Player?

Windows Media Player is designed to self-adjust, according to your connection status, and we would recommend that you use the default settings as follows:

1. Click on the Tools menu and select Options.
2. Click on the Performance tab.
3. In the Connection Speed section, select Detect my connection speed.
4a. Under Network Buffering, select Use default buffering and click OK. This will enable Windows Media Player to adjust itself according to your connection and offer the best possible performance. You can manually adjust the amount of data in the buffer by doing the following:
4b. Under Network Buffering, select Buffer, and enter the changed value.

MAC Users

To confirm, the MAC platform we support:-
Operating System: MAC OSX (10)
Player: Windows Media 9 for MAC
We dont support versions lower than this.

Premium TV use Windows Media Player 10 for all Video and Audio served from our systems. Earlier versions of Windows Media Player May work with some content but this is not guaranteed. To download Windows Media Player 10 for your operating system please click here

The video appears to be playing but I am seeing is a blank screen with sound

The video uses the latest video codec and this may not be present on your system. To ensure you have it download the latest version of Windows Media Player from here, if you continue to have problems with this download the latest codec with the Windows Media Resource Kit.