watching BT Sport on a laptop

[DarrenDev]

---

@redders77 wrote:

Hi Neil,  thanks for the reply. 

Yes I sent my details to @DarrenDev back on September 1.  I think he's looking into the problem.  

---

And I replied to that message almost straight away, but I only received a reply on Saturday.

The problem we have is that many many thousands of people have no issue with the web player in their browsers, and we don't see any issues with it on any of our devices. It makes it very difficult to prioritise investigations, and then diagnose the cause for a small number of users.

What we know about your issue so far @redders77 :

* It performs really badly in your web browser on all your laptop/PC devices.

* It works perfectly in the BT Sport app on the same PC.

* It also works perfectly in a web browser on your mobile phone, using the same internet connection around the same time.

So what is it about the browsers on your PCs/laptops that doesn't like the BT Sport player?  Are you using the same browser on them all? Do you have the same plugins installed in your browsers on all of those devices?  Possibly one of them is interfering?  Or anti-virus software on the PC? Or it may even be as low level as the display drivers in use on those devices, struggling to keep up with the video decryption?

The app uses different content format and content encryption than is used in the web browser (for web browsers, we need to provide content to them in the format they support natively - they all differ).

Comparing BT Sport to other video streaming services doesn't help - we all use different video formats, with different compression levels, different track selection algorithms, and different content protection.

For anyone experiencing this issue, the next step I recommend would be to use the Edge browser (the new version from Microsoft released last year - current version number is 93), launch a new Guest profile (so that it doesn't have any extensions installed), and then try from there.  If that still fails, then check Task Manager to see if anything else is  heavily consuming CPU or GPU?  Also check anti-virus - is it intercepting all requests and scanning them?  If so, try to disable that temporarily.  It could also be worth checking for display driver updates.

[Ronniehearts]

Re  message above:

"For anyone experiencing this issue, the next step

:-I recommend would be to use the Edge browser (the new version from Microsoft released last year - current version number is 93), launch a new Guest profile (so that it doesn't have any extensions installed), and then try from there. 

I HAVE VERSION 93 AND TRIED GUEST PROFILE BUT NO DIFFERENCE

If that still fails, then check Task Manager to see if anything else is  heavily consuming CPU or GPU? - NOTHING

Also check anti-virus - is it intercepting all requests and scanning them?  If so, try to disable that temporarily. DONT HAVE INDEPENDANT ANTI VIRUS - JUST MICROSOFTS WINDOWS OWN

It could also be worth checking for display driver updates - ALL UP TO DATE

unfortunately after trying all of the above no difference - I watched BTsport on the same device using website last season with no problems - what has BT done over this season to cause problems ?

[redders77]

Ronniehearts   I am with you all the way on this, what has BT done to cause it as it was perfect last season.    It is relevant that all other media outlets are working fine on laptops because if 5 or 6vothers are working and BT is the only one failing then it is clear and obvious that the fault lies with BT.

I have managed to get a solution to this now for free by downloading the BT app from the Microsoft store, as you will see from previous posts.  It works perfectly and high quality too.  Worth a go to see some footie when games are on BT.  Let's hope they keep the app going for the season.  Hopefully they will take notice and support paying customers when they know there's a problem and they have no answer or fix for it.   Cheers.  

[Popeye13_Official]

What make of laptop are you're using?

Have you tried creating a guest account on your actual device (Not the browser) and try that? 

Something somewhere is stopping the video playback, but this is a device issue, not a BT one.

Its likely that you have something, somewhere thats causing an issue with your playback and while i get that you're at the end of your tether with it all, and the process of finding the issue can be tedious, it is worth spending a bit of time and try simple things, like turning off Windows Defender ect

[DarrenDev]

This season we've introduced content protection - this is a requirement of this year's football rights with the leagues. It makes almost no difference to the bandwidth requirements, but it increases the processing required on the client to decrypt the video. We don't have the option to turn it off - doing so, we'd lose our rights to broadcast.

I've asked the web player dev team is there's any other information we can try to obtain from your devices (with your permission/assistance). I'll let you know the answer.

[Ronniehearts]

Good to know there has been a change which has caused the problem - any happy to assist with a solution if I can.

At least I have the BT app in meantime - as long as this is not removed

[ozsat]

So I just cleared all cookies and cache in Firefox - and exited.

Reloaded Firefox and going to https://www.bt.com/sport/watch  it asked me to accept all cookies - which I did - and went thru Sign In OK.

When I select any of the live channels - after a second or two of the spinning circle - I still get "VC086:Our player requires you to make some changes to your cookie settings. Click Help below and search for VC086 for more information."

---

@NeilOwrote:

Hi, @ozsat Thanks for posting, when you log onto the online page you'll get a Cookies pop-up message. You need to click Always allow, this should fix the problem.

Thanks 
Neil

---

[Hunter2660]

I stopped using Windows Defender some time ago. Had quite a few issues downloading stuff that the software seemed to corrupt in some way (couldn't open the files). Might be worth disabling, or using other antivirus software, and see if that cures the problem

[Pedr057]

I've had similar issues trying to watch the rugby at weekends and it seems to be getting worse. I try to use Chrome on my laptop and cast it to the TV using Google chromecast. I've already tried replacing the wifi connections by adapters connected to the hub but that's very flaky as the two connections don't work well together. Next I'm going to try a Surface docking station to connect the laptop the hub and to the TV, again to eliminate wifi as the possible culprit.

 I've just phoned BT and they say my BT broadband is OK (14 MB/s FTTC)  and that BT Sport only needs 4 MB/s, but something isn't right. They suggest sending out an engineer which will cost £85 if they can't find anything wrong with the BB connection. When ASDL BB first appeared I remember much talk of 'contention ratios' so the connection got slower with more people using the internet at busier times. Is this still the case? Living at the edge of the village, furthest from the cabinet, I wonder if that explains why I get buffering at busy times?! ('end of the pipeline => lowest pressure' effect).

Most of my neighbours have switched to Gigaclear fibre and I'm tempted to do the same thereby ditching my BT BB, landline, mobile & sport. After 45 years that'll be some change giving up my BT landline. Would probably go for BT sport on Sky in that case.

[DarrenDev]

@Pedr057 casting your tab from Chrome browser is not supported. It's a highly inefficient way of trying to share video to your TV, and I'm surprised it even works.  Do you have an Android or Apple device that you could use instead?  If you cast from there, the Chromecast will directly load the video and perform much better.

Note: there are no contention ratios on BT Broadband anymore.