I spend a lot of time on the train.  Not as much as some but more than I care for.  Anyway, when all the email is processed and I feel I can work no more I have been known to catch up on a little TV courtesy of the BBC's iPlayer.  As long as I've remembered to download something of interest in the last 7 days I can pass the time with a little light comedy or something more educational.  Or at least I could until the BBC felt the need to improve things and therefore upgraded the iPlayer Desktop.

With the new player I am now reduced to a frame rate of less than 1 per second - completely unwatchable - although the sound remains crisp and perfect.  Maybe I should stick to radio programmes - oh no, that's what I have an Ipod for!!!

This problem had bugged me for a while so this weekend I thought I should find the time to fix it - I assumed some setting had got switched somewhere and I few moments tinkering would sort it out.  Alas, no.

First, I checked that this wasn't just a problem with the Netbook not having the grunt.  Watching TV streamed on the iPlayer is fine - smooth as silk.  OK, so some problem with the disk speed? Surely not but I'd better check.  Loaded up the Sky player and watched a downloaded movie - again smooth as silk.  OK, back to the BBC.  This time I downloaded a programme in wmv format.  This option isn't available for many of the shows and there's no automatic management of the hard disk so you need to remember to manually delete the file when the DRM license has expired or your disk will fill in double quick time so it's definitely not the preferred option but here at least I could successfully watch the show (in Windows Media Player) - again smooth and very watchable.  No, the problem was definitely only with the core file format for iPlayer Desktop.

The iPlayer Desktop uses the Adobe AIR runtime, a platform which is growing quickly in popularity so if it's a problem running on my netbook it's going to be a big issue for me. 

I've downloaded a few of the showcase applications and they are not without problems but I couldn't find another example of choppy video. The first app downloaded and started to run - it didn't do anything else!  The second app link from the showcase page resulted in a 404- File Not Found error.  The third app (desktop ebay) downloaded,  installed and ran without problem.  Obviously, the eBay app doesn't include much video so the test is somewhat limited in usefulness but at least I'm not completely excluded from running AIR applications.

Anyway, my investigations continue - I don't appear to be the only one having the problem but I have yet to find any acknowledgement of a known issue at either the BBC or Adobe, in the hope that a fix might be on the way so I may have to stick to Sky Movies for my in train entertainment.