Downloading on demand content tat contains advertisements

[gersssssey]

I've been going around in circles with this issue for the last couple of weeks and it is driving me demented!! I try to download on-demand content from Sky channels and sometimes it works but more frequently it stops halfway through with a failed network problem or no subscription message. It is very frustrating. I changed from sky + box to sky Q in the last few months and I never had this issue before. 

After checking through tons of messages here I troubleshot all the suggested solutions to no avail (updating software, ensuring content is downloaded as SD only,  reconfiguring the network etc etc etc.) I initially thought it was my wifi connection as the troubleshooting solutions provided by Sky lead you to believe that this is the main issue. However, I'm getting speeds of over 100MB to the Sky box as I can test with the Sky Q Netflix app. 

I then came across a message somewhere here suggesting that it could be due to the ads that Sky is targeting its customers within the on-demand content and it is stopping the download somehow. I've tested this theory with multiple downloads from the BBC on Demand and 4 on-demand channels that don't contain ads and lo and behold I can download all of these without any issue.

So my problem seems to be Sky's issue and I cannot contact them as I'm constantly being connected to Sky's virtual assistant which is in no way helpful. The online troubleshooting pages/virtual assistant end up asking you to call a number which then connects you to the virtual assistant again. I cannot speak to anybody about this. (i'm based in Ireland). Sky's customer service has gotten worse and worse over the last few years.  Has anyone come up with a solution to this particular problem?

[ftballman]

I can't offer a fix. I had the same issue when on 4g broadband. It was due to a changing IP address. The download makes a connection to 1 server to download the first section of ads then makes a connection to download the first part of the show.

This can then kick up the error if your IP has changed in the background. It was absolutely hit and miss for me. Some days I could only get the ad parts and sometimes it worked.

If you have a good broadband supplier with helpful support you could try and raise it with them, see if they could help if it's something related to changing IP address.

Sky won't address it, it's been going on years without any kind of fix.

If you are testing and have failed downloads it's worth deleting any remnant of those failures (including from the deleted items). Things can get unpredictable with the already failed download retrying.

I'm sorry I can't offer much more than saying I know the issue and experienced it.

[gersssssey]

Thanks so much for the reply.... Very frustrating to say the least. 

[ftballman]

You don't have to tell me. Watching the download to see if this time it might work.

I would experiment too if you have the time and patience. Try standard Def rather than Hd. It's a sacrifice in quality with the thinking being the smaller file may come down quicker and be less prone to hitting an error.

All a frustrating mess when you have the speed that's more than up to the job.