BBC News - BBC and Sky catch-up apps experience iOS fault

17 April 2014 Last updated at 07:32 ET By Leo KelionTechnology desk editor

The BBC and Sky's video-on-demand TV services are both experiencing problems on iPhones and iPads.

The fault appears to be limited to iPlayer, Sky Go and Now TV on Apple's iOS platform and began last night.

Neither organisation was able to provide a full explanation at this time.

However, the director of Now TV suggested that altering a device's date setting would act as a temporary workaround.

"It's a Sky-wide issue, so it's both our app and Sky Go," Gidon Katz told the BBC.

"It appears to be related to a date configuration. So, if you reset your iOS device to yesterday's date it would work.

This could indicate that the issue is linked to an expired digital certificate.

However, changing the data setting can cause other problems. For example the owner becomes unable to access Apple's App Store.

It also fails to fix streams in either the iPlayer app or via the service's website.

A message on the BBC's website said: "We are aware of reports from users encountering an 'Insufficient Bandwidth' error message when attempting to play programmes through the iPad app. This is currently under investigation and we will update this FAQ when we obtain further information."

A spokesman for the corporation noted that shows could still be downloaded, rather than streamed, but was unable to provide more details.

Game of Thrones

This is the second technical fault that Now TV has experienced this month.

Sky's subscription service - which targets people who do not subscribe to its satellite TV channels - crashed during the first episode of the latest Game Of Thrones season.

Mr Katz said this was caused by a separate problem created by the challenge of servicing a large audience watching the same content simultaneously.

"Last Monday was exacerbated by the fact that we had a football match on at the same time," he explained.

"The sheer demand means we have to keep on improving our processes.

"This is technically challenging.

"If you have large numbers of people watching Liverpool-Man City concurrently and Game of Thrones at the same time it's obviously going to put a much larger strain on our technical capability than people dipping in and out of [Netflix's] House of Cards, Orange is the New Black or any of those series."

The HBO Go app also crashed while showing the same Game of Thrones episode to US audiences.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27062516