Episodes not working, Demand Five say problem is with Virgin Media.

[cherimoya]

Hi. I have spent two days in discussion with Demand Five's Customer Services as I cannot get the Series 4 of Hotel Inspector to play. Series 5 plays fine and I have gone through many checks and tried to watch series 4 on four different computers, disabled firewalls, updated media players, securities etc. But to no avail. I have run a Tracert which shows the problem to be at VirginMedia's end rather than Demand Five. I don't know what else to do to rectify this. Please help!

The episode I was trying to view was West Usk: http://demand.five.tv/Episode.aspx?episodeBaseName=C5138870004 which is Episode 4, series 4. It just sits on "connecting" and won't download the episode. I have tried with IE and the latest version of Firefox, I have also tried opening the link directly in Windows Media Player (control and U, then http://oas.five.tv/RealMedia/ads/adstream_sx.ads/demand.five.tv/entertainment/thehotelinspector/1665... but this isn't working either, I get the following message ""Windows Media Player cannot connect to the server. The server name might not be correct, the server might not be available, or your proxy settings might not be correct."

It is strange that the series 5 of Hotel Inspector plays fine but the earlier series (1 to 4) just sit on "connecting". Demand Five have assured me over and over again that they are able to view the earlier series and have stated that this is a problem at Virgin Media's end.

The Tracert showed timeouts:

Tracing route to http://demand.five.tv/Episode.aspx?episodeBaseName=C513887004 [
81.200.64.50]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    17 ms     5 ms    13 ms  10.129.36.1
  3    10 ms     7 ms    12 ms  glfd-cam-1a-v118.network.virginmedia.net [86.28.
21.9]
  4    27 ms     7 ms     7 ms  glfd-core-1a-ge-010-0.network.virginmedia.net [1
95.182.175.241]
  5     9 ms     6 ms    10 ms  gfd-bb-a-ge-200-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.1
05.175.85]
  6     7 ms     7 ms     8 ms  gfd-bb-b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.
172.6]
  7   158 ms    11 ms     8 ms  213.43.163.106
  8    20 ms    18 ms    23 ms  TenGigabitEthernet8-3.ar4.AMS2.gblx.net [64.213.
176.61]
  9    27 ms    22 ms    22 ms  64.214.140.138
 10    22 ms    24 ms    27 ms  81.200.66.123
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21    36 ms    23 ms    33 ms  advancedsearch.virginmedia.com [81.200.64.50]

Trace complete.

I would be grateful for any ideas. Thanks. Cheri

[Vez]

I get exactly the same problem when I try to access my website.  Virgin are no help, unfortunately.  The only solution I've found is to use a proxy browser, which uses a different route to the site.  Go to Google and type in "proxy browser".  Go to one of the many proxies and type in the address that you want.  Hope that helps.

[ThatChap]

You appear to  be using tracert to trace route to a URL - this is not allowed.  You can only trace route to a Domain Name or an IP Address.

I suspect you have used:

    tracert http://demand.five.tv/Episode.aspx?episodeBaseName=C513887004

You need to:

    tracert demand.five.tv

But this is not your problem with the service failing to access Five.tv.

You might find that the "Advanced Search" that VM have installed at the network level is occasionally rewriting slow/failed DNS queries for demand.five.tv towards their DNS Error Correction service.  Their implementation of DNS Error Correct incidentally is pretty poor due to very bad relevance.  Opt-out  of the service is my suggestion and this will improve your chances of getting what you want.  You can opt-out here: https://my.virginmedia.com/advancederrorsearch/settings

And more info here:

http://www.virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia/advancederror/

As for the URLs you were trying to get to, these are fine for me, and I unfortunatly have VM cable

[n0mn0m]

Even when opted out I still have this problem. I dont know for sure whether its that or since the revelation of CView (which virgin still haven't told me about in either mail or email form)

But I do know we have had many similar problems on a daily basis since. Not only with connection problems to specific sites, but also downloading rar files. We get de-compression errors in roughly 75% of downloaded rar files now, and no longer trust a rar files integrity.

Whatever Virgin are trying to do with advertising, or prevent bandwidth problems due to massive illegal file sharing - they have increased my usage of bandwidth because I have to download the same file three times to be sure I have an error free one. When it comes to linux distros I use secure torrents, seems to be the only way to guarantee a problem free download.

Have I complained, I am not even going there via out-sourced script readers. I know the routine and really dont fancy getting nowhere but frustrated with a three hour telephone call that leads me to the same conclusions and troubleshooting routines I have already done myself. I usually end up educating the script reader by suggesting where to look.

I can use all my gear on a neighbours different internet provider without any problems. And please dont suggest checks for my instance... sick of it. I have full confidence in my equipment and setup, and know its virgin messing this up.