BBC iPlayer

[Ange]

We watch TV via a Hauppauge dongle plugged into the laptop. After a few heavy downpours our TV viewing has been zapped. We're in the process of figuring out why - whether it's the aerial, the dongle or the aerial cable. Anyway ...

 

Deprived of Dragons Den this evening (I do love that program) I decided at about 12.55am on a whim to find out what was left of my 5gb per month 3 dongle allowance. 1.77gb is left, with the changeover happening on 21st August. Dragons Den will cost me approx 600mb - 1.1gb will be ample for four days so I can treat myself. From 12.59 until 1.35 I patiently watched the varying reports of how long this was going to take as the download chugged away at dongle speed.

 

Yippee - it's 1.35 and the download is complete. I put my headphones in so I don't wake Dave and happily double click on the BBC iPlayer link. The message is "Dragons Den, Series 8, Episode 6, is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later"

 

Weep weep wail wail - I've downloaded the blasted thing and now it won't let me watch it. WHY!!!!

 

Humph.

 

Night night folks

[Giggetty]

We watch TV via a Hauppauge dongle plugged into the laptop. After a few heavy downpours our TV viewing has been zapped. We're in the process of figuring out why - whether it's the aerial, the dongle or the aerial cable. Anyway ...

 

Deprived of Dragons Den this evening (I do love that program) I decided at about 12.55am on a whim to find out what was left of my 5gb per month 3 dongle allowance. 1.77gb is left, with the changeover happening on 21st August. Dragons Den will cost me approx 600mb - 1.1gb will be ample for four days so I can treat myself. From 12.59 until 1.35 I patiently watched the varying reports of how long this was going to take as the download chugged away at dongle speed.

 

Yippee - it's 1.35 and the download is complete. I put my headphones in so I don't wake Dave and happily double click on the BBC iPlayer link. The message is "Dragons Den, Series 8, Episode 6, is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later"

 

Weep weep wail wail - I've downloaded the blasted thing and now it won't let me watch it. WHY!!!!

 

Humph.

 

Night night folks

iPlayer downloading was problematical until yesterday-there was a BBC message to that effect on Friday. The fault seemed to ahve cleared by last night. I am wacthing dan Snow with no difficulty now.

[Duchess Omnium]

Do you put your dongle outside? Mine stopped working too after a heavy downpour (even though it was in a plastic bag -- I guess the rain was so heavy it got inside). I took the SIM out -- and had to dry it off... But a couple of days later the dongle had dried out and was working fine again.

[twocvbloke]

We watch TV via a Hauppauge dongle plugged into the laptop. After a few heavy downpours our TV viewing has been zapped. We're in the process of figuring out why - whether it's the aerial, the dongle or the aerial cable. Anyway ...

 

At a guess, the aerial cable hasn't been waterproofed properly at the aerial-end, and water has gotten into the cable (presumably an open-cell core cable) and the water has gradually leached it's way down and dribbled into the Hauppage thingy, this happens a lot with poor sky installations where the installer used electrical tape on the LNB rather than self-amalgamating tape, and the tape falls off and in gets the rain, and runs down into a sky box which end up with a wet tuner and dies...

 

The only way to check is to try the TV stick on another aerial, then on another computer, and if it still isn't working, crack it open and see if there's signs of water, if there are then it's pretty much had it cos water on live electronics is bad (it's not too bad if caught early on, but leaving it wet is a bad thing)...

[Ange]

At a guess, the aerial cable hasn't been waterproofed properly at the aerial-end, and water has gotten into the cable (presumably an open-cell core cable) and the water has gradually leached it's way down and dribbled into the Hauppage thingy, this happens a lot with poor sky installations where the installer used electrical tape on the LNB rather than self-amalgamating tape, and the tape falls off and in gets the rain, and runs down into a sky box which end up with a wet tuner and dies...

 

The only way to check is to try the TV stick on another aerial, then on another computer, and if it still isn't working, crack it open and see if there's signs of water, if there are then it's pretty much had it cos water on live electronics is bad (it's not too bad if caught early on, but leaving it wet is a bad thing)...

 

I think you may be right

 

Dave tried it with a brand new aerial lead and it still didn't work, so we're planning to do what you've suggested and try it on another aerial to see if it's the dongle at fault or one of the aerial connections. We hadn't thought about water travelling down the aerial into the dongle! Hey ho - lesson learned.