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BBC iPlayer = Hogware
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 16th August 2007
BBC iPlayer: Hogware suckling away at your resources.
This morning I queued four downloads, then carefully paused them with the intent of downloading later. I closed the iPlayer completely from the system tray and thought that was the end of that. Apparently not.
Instead, some hours later I caught the KService merrily uploading in the background using most of our office bandwidth. On opening the iPlayer again my entire download selection was there ready to be watched.
A bit of investigation yields the answer. It seems that, despite pausing downloads, as soon as you kill iPlayer and leave the KService running, there's nothing to tell it that your downloads are paused. So, it promptly hogs your entire connection and downloads/uploads as much as it can grab.
To kill the KService completely you have to open Task Manager and manually end the process - hardly a fitting option and something resonant of more sinister software that can invade humble Windows machines.
So, old Aunty may be greeting you with a smile and the premise of free video to your face, but it's merrily taking from behind your back. Couple this in with the fact there's still quite a lot of noise about the BBC selling out to Microsoft, as former director of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division, Erik Huggers, was given the job of controlling the future media and technology group at the BBC in May. Mr. Huggers took over from Ashley Highfield who initially spearheaded the project as the 21st most influential person in UK media industry in UK, according to the Guardian.
The BBC iPlayer is still Windows XP, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 10+ only, although after a 15,800 vote online petition criticising it back in April, the BBC has stated that it is committed to expanding into other platforms.
Do you think the BBC should scrap the iPlayer and start again? Be more up front with what it's doing? Or couldn't care less about background processes? There's still time to sign the petition if you're a UK citizen and still interested in making some noise as it closes on August the 20th. Oh, and tell us your thoughts in our forums while you're at it.
The iPlayer application paused but left open shows very little downloading, but yet the service is still uploading. Note the green arrow for outbound traffic.
Once iPlayer is killed, KService goes nuts. Zombies, anyone?
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Comments (27)
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I luckily knew it had Kontiki in it and make a note to close the services after every session of using the iPlayer but it's almost as bad as spyware, I can understand WHY they've done it but then really need to make it use no more than say, 5k/s upstream.
http://mou.me.uk/2007/05/09/kserviceexe-channel-4-and-the-stolen-bandwith/
Kimbie
What is it! :D
Der.
Neither does iPlayer :D
FvD
Also though, a lot of the reason people restrict their upload bandwidth on torrents is that the stuff they are torrenting is often of dubious legality, and the authorities will always go after the big uploaders first, so the perception is that by minimising your uploads you 'fly under the radar' and minimise the risk of a hefty fine.
With iPlayer, which is completely legal to use, this is not an issue. I have uncapped broadband and would happily allow iPlayer to utilise it freely (subject to me having control over it), but if I were the sort of person to download things illegally, I would be disinclined to allow bit-torrent free reign over my upstream bandwidth, even using PeerGuardian, for fear of attracting unwanted official attention.
If you are acknowledging you don't know (and guessed completely wrong), then why did you post? :? Idle, short, random and completely unhelpful posts are already covered well enough...
If you cant upload/download anymore then your Internet slows to a crawl, games practically stop, and everything starts timing out
I don't even think that having the service run after the program closes is the end of the world, what we do need though is the service to continue to follow your bandwidth allocations
Just because you closed the program doesn't mean you want to give it all your Internet connection, in fact your likely to close it to try and save your Internet connection
Edit:
Shame that petition is outvoted by the one
"Make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister"
what they are doing is theft...
But see what happens when a lot of people start really using the tubes (harnessing the powa of P2P)...the infrastructure suffers. Time to upgrade, as I can see a cataclysmic system crash comin' up.
TSP => Tubes Service Provider.
Doesn't matter if said torrent is 100% legal or 100% illegal, if it maxes your upload, your connection will die a painfull death, that is why people want to limit upload.
I've never even heard of people restricting upload to 'seem more legal' at all in my experience
However, a lot of PCs are left on a lot of the time not doing much, and I wager that if iPlayer was good with allowing other apps priority access to bandwidth, users with uncapped connections would be quite happy to let it have pretty free reign over their surplus bandwidth.
I am not prepared to keep ending the kservice process every time I want to stop watching tv. I much prefer watching sports matches on sopcast. Although it is peer to peer program, atleast it closes when you close the program.
Just hit ctrl+shift+escape and check if Kservice is running.
1000kbps stream preview
Turns out it was running. Cheeky bums at BBC/4OD.
I don't think it would have bothered me so much if they had clearly explained how it worked from the outset.
I prefer to use Foobar2000 for my music listening pleasure.