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Anonymous User
Not applicable

PS4 NowTV App (Sky Sports) buffering on Virgin Media was fine on Vodafone

Hi,

 

<re-posted in this forum which seems a better home for it, I put this in the wrong one earlier today on this site ... sorry, new to the community forums>

 

Up until Thurs last week I was a Vodafone fixed line home broadband customer for many years. My PS4 is wired in via ethernet and I'd used Now TV with Sky Sports for literally years without any problems in that configuration i.e. no buffering, no drop outs.

 

On Thursday I moved to Virgin Media for my broadband. Nothing else changed.

 

Virgin seems to work absolutely fine for Prime, Netflix, YouTube etc - no buffering no dropping out on the PS4 (or indeed on any other devices).

 

I am using the Virgin Super Hub 3 in modem mode, with my own router.

 

However immediately I noticed after moving to Virgin that Now TV Sky sports buffers on the PS4 app - sometimes it buffers for a short period and then recovers for a prolonged period (i.e. no interruptions). Sometimes it drops out with a PL-0 error message.

 

I have not noticed NowTV sky sports dropping out on my ROKU, but to be fair I don't use it much on that TV/platform so I've probably only used it once. I will check that but it would seem very odd that it was the PS4 app that only suffered from the problem.

 

I am aware of other posts in this forum seemingly with similar issues but it doesn't seem to have come to a solution.

 

What is the general consensus - is this a NowTV problem or a Virgin Media problem? I am more inclined to believe it is a NowTV platform - perhaps the content servers are faulty or over loaded, or the network peering between NowTV and Virgin is a bottleneck (in which case they are probably arguing over who pays to upgrade the bandwidth).

 

I have tried;

 

- reinstalling the app and deleting app data

- rebuilding PS4 database from safe mode

- using google dns servers

 

None of those things have worked

 

thanks

6 REPLIES 6
Anonymous User
Not applicable

So I had a chat with Now TV support. Here's what they told me:

 

I asked what the PL-0 error code actually means;

 

Answer:

"This error usually appears when there a change in the IP address or the speed of the internet that's provided by the internet provider on your end."

 

My router says that it has had the same IP address from Virgin Media for days so it cant be the IP address changing.

 

I was also told:

 

"It happen because you have the NOW Boost and the NOW Sports service active on your account which requires an minimum internet speed of 12 MBPS and this is where there should not be any device connected to the same network."

 

I have 200Mbps from Virgin Media so unless Virgin are throttling or have insufficient bandwidth this should not be case, and it can't be my local home router because it is supporting high bandwidth streams for other providers no problem.

 

The implication is that my Virgin connection can't sustain a 12Mbps stream for NowTV.

 

They also got me to use my PS4 on my wifi hotspot from my mobile phone - amazingly this worked - the NowTV stream worked absolutely fine running off my 4G mobile phone wifi hotspot.

 

But when I moved back to Virgin again via Lan cable almost immediately it failed again.

 

Time to complain to Virgin Media I think, this shouldn't be happenning.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

By way of another update. This morning I have been running Now TV sky sports main event HD channel on both my PS4 (wired) and my ROKU box (wifi) at the same time. Both are holding the streams fine and NOT crashing out with the PL-0 message OR any buffering.

 

I can only conclude this is due to congestion/contention in virgin's network or some kind of throttling on my line as at the moment of course the network load must be very low being a wednesday morning whereas in the evening whenever I try to use it, it is broken.

RoyB
Legend

@Anonymous User 

 

You changed three things, I think; your ISP, the router, and the way you use that router.

 

Or perhaps you used the Vodaphone router as a modem, and your own router behind it?

 

But either way, a thing you should perhaps try is using the Virgin router directly, dropping your own router out of the loop. Even if you later put it back, this test may tell you if they are fighting.

 

(If you change the SSID and password on the Virgin router to match what you had on your own router, then this will save you making any changes on your WiFi devices. My ‘NETGEAR’ is actually a BT Home Hub 😛)

 

See how that goes, and report back?

Set a Payment PIN on your account so that no-one but you can buy memberships on it. Check your bank accounts monthly for any other unexpected payments to Now. That way you can at least nip them in the bud, while you and Now figure out whose fault they are.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

thanks @RoyB I came to the same conclusion re my router (a TP LINK ER605 which I had triple checked every setting on them) and therefore was forced to accept that I would have to revert the SuperHub3 back to router mode and remove my router from the equation as it was the only thing I hadn't tried.

 

To my surprise it worked using SuperHub3 in router mode and removing my router. Well, it was fine yesterday evening at least. I am going to give it a few more days before I am satisfied that it is definitely working fine. However, I am mystified why my ER605 would be absolutely fine for everything (including video streams for other providers) but was causing problems for NowTV.

 

Especially as yesterday morning it all worked fine on both my PS4 and ROKU, and then (after my previous post) then started failing again. I suspect buggy firmware on the ER 605 causing a problem under some circumstances.

RoyB
Legend

@Anonymous User 

 

Do you mind if I rewrite one of your sentences above?

 

“However, I am mystified why my ER605 would be absolutely fine for everything (including video streams for other providers) but NowTV was causing problems for it”.

 

This is just as accurate, except it make the mystery a lot less of a mystery 😛

Set a Payment PIN on your account so that no-one but you can buy memberships on it. Check your bank accounts monthly for any other unexpected payments to Now. That way you can at least nip them in the bud, while you and Now figure out whose fault they are.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

@RoyB well indeed I suppose it could be that way around although the (perhaps misleading) nowtv error message would suggest not.

 

Either way, using the virgin superhub and taking the er605 out of the picture has definitely worked. But why is a mystery.