Issues on News and Sport Video & Audio Playback
We have had a few issues across the News and Sports websites (and other areas of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ website) which has affected video / audio playback, the ticker used at the top of some pages and picture galleries.
It was caused by an update to some shared libraries used across the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. The problem with these libraries was quickly rectified, but unfortunately some of the corruption caused by these changes have been cached across multiple networks and in browser caches, which has caused intermittent and continuing issues from yesterday evening to this morning.
Support teams have been working on this and we believe this has now been fixed, but apologies for any inconvenience caused. If you are still experiencing problems then let us know, but before you do, please try clearing your browser cache to see if this rectifies the issue (some details here if you are not sure how to do this - ).
John O'Donovan is Chief Technical Architect, FM&T Journalism
Comment number 1.
At 13th Jun 2009, Fairscunnert wrote:I'm afraid I have to add my voice to the many who have already expressed displeasure at the changes made to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ website. I'm another of these pesky Expats whose sole reason for making ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News my homepage was to be able to read British news. We are already well covered by numerous other news sources on 'International News'.
Seems to me you are making the same massive mistake as you have made with ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ America.
In that case instead of being a shop window for all the best of British TV, you've turned it in to a clone of a US TV Channel. We want to see new from London not news from Washington. ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ America has become a lost cause in our household, never even look anymore to see what's on. If you're not careful, the website will go the same way, fortunately we have the online Guardian, The Scotsman and others to keep us informed on UK news.
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Comment number 2.
At 13th Jun 2009, TDyl wrote:@fairscunnert
I understand what you say about ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ America, however in a recent thread on fark.com MANY of the American commentators underlined their love for and use of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News America as their provider of choice for fair and impartial news over and above their domestic programming.
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Comment number 3.
At 14th Jun 2009, seslichat wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 4.
At 15th Jun 2009, EggOnAStilt wrote:How far reaching was this? Is it the same one that took iPlayer down for many people?
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Comment number 5.
At 15th Jun 2009, Chris wrote:Assuming this is the same problem that killed iPlayer for many people on Thursday night/Friday morning ... it would have been nice to have had even a one-line acknowledgement of the problem before we all started going through the futile process of re-installing/updating Flash, posting on Forums asking friends to check 'is it working for you', etc etc etc ...
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Comment number 6.
At 15th Jun 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Fairscunnert and TranceDylan - you're off topic for this post. Here is the right place to discuss the recent changes.
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Comment number 7.
At 15th Jun 2009, jod wrote:Hi "Egg on a stilt" / "christownsend", yes, the problem was related. It was difficult to track down because the problem was caused by a combination of issues related to a shared library and changes to server configurations. Many areas of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ are dependent on shared products, and News and Sport are no different. We are actively looking at ways to avoid such dependencies from causing problems in the future.
For News and Sport, we often announce service issues on The Editors Blog ( /blogs/theeditors/2009/06/network_problem.html ) but your comments are making me think about how we might do this in the future. We like to be open about service issues when they are affecting services to avoid confusion amongst users.
Fairscunnert, this problem was not related to the changes to the site, so for clairty, this issue was not related to /blogs/theeditors/2009/06/change_to_international_pages.html or this /blogs/theeditors/2009/06/network_problem.html
Cheers,
John O'Donovan
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Comment number 8.
At 15th Jun 2009, EggOnAStilt wrote:Thank you for your reply John, I have drawn attention to it on the iPlayer messageboards for the hosts information, in the hope they too will have a look at how this was dealt with and how people were not getting this information and so were carrying out unnecessary "repairs" to their iPlayer installations.
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Comment number 9.
At 15th Jun 2009, jod wrote:The iPlayer team and message board is usually very responsive to service issues so I'm sure any confusion was an anomaly.
Any thoughts on how you would like to see such issues announced are welcome.
Cheers,
jod
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Comment number 10.
At 15th Jun 2009, EggOnAStilt wrote:The role of the messageboard was recently reviewed and is now downplayed as part of the iPlayer service. See Jonathan's blog.
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Comment number 11.
At 16th Jun 2009, Chris wrote:Hi John
Thanks for listening - it does make a difference to my day. :-)
A couple of different services I use have a simple service updates page that lists the services they provide and whether they are 'up', 'down' or somewhere in between. My MobileMe subscription from Apple, and Spotify, are the two examples that spring to mind. Spotify's page is easy to see as you don't have to log in to anything first: . If you have any colleagues with MobileMe (formerly dotmac), ask them if they can log into it for you and show you the pane that lists the service status for iDisk, email etc. It's very handy.
You want something simple enough that you're not spending all your time managing the status page instead of fixing problems, but on the other hand something that is accurate enough that when you know you're having problems, you stand some chance of deterring people from assuming they must have a problem themselves and start going through their own diagnostics.
rgds
Chris
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Comment number 12.
At 16th Jun 2009, grevilleb wrote:Your redesign to the news site is awful. I live in the UK, AOL is my 'net provider. I get a front page where links do not work and I can not even access the UK area using the bar on the left.
It is like a third world system.
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ was always my first port of call for news, but if this goes on much longer I will have to use sites like Google.
What is going on ?
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Comment number 13.
At 17th Jun 2009, jod wrote:christownsend:
Yep - this is along the lines of what I was thinking. A service status or destination page where we can let people know about "significant" service issues which would save you looking for the problem elsewhere.
We could even have a twitter feed...or maybe not :o)
OK - the ball is rolling on this...
Hi grevilleb - I think the issue you are looking for is being discussed here.
/blogs/theeditors/2009/06/changes_to_international_pages.html
Some changes have recently been made to the way different editions of the site are served; there is a particular issue with AOL we are addressing and should be fixed soon.
Cheers,
jod
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Comment number 14.
At 17th Jun 2009, EggOnAStilt wrote:The AOL issue may well be with you using AOL's version of IE, try using firefox or an unaltered version of IE. Similar thing caused a problem with iplayer
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Comment number 15.
At 20th Jun 2009, mkj1962 wrote:I'm an expat who signs in every single morning to stay in touch with the UK news and Sports in particular. If this change is supposed to be for the best, then can someone tell me why I haven't been able to properly open the sports page for the past week? Everytime I try it takes minutes and sometimes doesn't load at all.
Watever you have done, it looks like it's not working right?
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Comment number 16.
At 12th May 2010, U14460911 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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