BBC iPlayer (V2) closing on some older TV devices – September 2016

The BBC has confirmed it won’t be supporting the old MHEG-based version of its catch-up and on-demand service beyond September 2016. The move will affect some models only two years old.

Meanwhile, customer service staff at ITV, which is the only other provider to offer a catch-up TV service on first generation Freesat boxes, have indicated there isn’t yet any information on any changes to the current line up of devices supported by the ITV Hub, including first generation Freesat devices. Support will end in September 2016.

Why the BBC is closing this version of iPlayer
We invest significant time and effort in maximising support for older TV devices and have successfully migrated many hundreds of different devices to the latest version of iPlayer for TVs.

However, unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to migrate older devices to a supportable version of iPlayer. It’s not cost efficient to maintain the implementation of delivering iPlayer to these devices, due to the backend systems and technologies (often 3rd party) on which they depend.