The BBC frequently explores ways to improve its digital offerings, and iPlayer is critical to the way the corporation engages with its audiences. BBC iPlayer is a prominent and frequently used streaming platform offered in the UK. While it’s a fact the platform is exclusively available in the UK, you can employ a VPN service for watching BBC iPlayer from abroad.

Although BBC iPlayer is a remarkable service and has amazing content to binge on, you may sometimes encounter sluggish and blurry streaming on the service. While this may be very frustrating, there are various ways by which you can fix this iPlayer bug.

In this blog, we have also highlighted the ten ways by which you can fix a blurry BBC iPlayer stream.

10 Tips to Get Seamless Streaming on BBC iPlayer

Here are ten tips to help you get a seamless streaming experience on BBC iPlayer:

1) Alter iPlayer Streaming Preferences

In order to achieve the best possible audio and video resolution, you should first increase iPlayer’s playback effectiveness to HD. A blurred or distorted visual may result if you lower the playback options.

Please remember that selecting the High playback options may lead to more data consumption. For example, while broadcasting in HD consumes around 3GB / hour, streaming in Ultra HD (4K) consumes approximately 7GB / hour.

2) Hold on for a Minute

You may be surprised to learn that iPlayer takes at least a minute to reach its maximum streaming quality.

You should wait for at least a couple of minutes once you have selected a show to watch on iPlayer to enhance its quality. iPlayer will check your network speed and change the quality as appropriate.

Wait a moment and check if it improves the quality before attempting some other troubleshooting procedures below.

3) Deactivate VPN

Another factor contributing to iPlayer’s blurriness is VPNs.

Using a VPN adds another server to the matrix of your connectivity to iPlayer. If it isn’t a strong server, you may face issues with the video quality.

Many of the inexpensive and low-quality VPN services available have an adverse effect on bandwidth. No matter what you do, the content will remain blurred and low quality regardless if you have a strong connection or a slow VPN server.

Thus, everything you need to do is switch off your VPN when attempting to watch any iPlayer content to test if the quality problems go away.

4) Determine if Anyone Else is Using iPlayer in Your Home

Is your iPlayer typically good but sometimes unstable? Do several family members have access to streaming content on their devices at once?

If such is the case, you may find that your streaming is being slowed down by the consumption of broadband in your home.

You ought to be aware that this is the source of the issue to modify your timing or membership plan, even though we would still not advise limiting or disconnecting all of your other gadgets anytime you stream on Iplayer.

5) Move Your Internet Router

The placement of a router has a major impact on the overall operation of every wireless network. If the Wi-Fi router is situated sufficiently apart, you may not be able to utilize the maximum capability of the connection.

As a consequence, it could fail to properly transmit your signal, which would result in blurry streaming. Position the Wi-Fi as near to all of your major streaming devices as possible to ensure its full range can reach them properly and swiftly.

In order to ensure that there is no dry point within the residence, you must invest in items that can increase the network’s effective range, like a range extender. Keep in mind after 25 feet, a router’s effective range will drop drastically.

6) Update the iPlayer App

You must constantly make sure that the iPlayer application of your smartphone has the latest edition if you are using it. 

Like anyother application, iPlayer sometimes encounters bugs and errors. The blurry visual may well be because you’re using an old version of the iPlayer app.

7) Demote the Application

Occasionally, the latest versions of certain applications may feature bugs. If the blurriness began to appear after you upgraded the iPlayer application on your smartphone, then the issue is with the latest version of the application.

If so, all you need to do is reset iPlayer to the earlier version.

8) Restart Your Device

Regardless of the gadget you are using to stream iPlayer, refreshing it periodically may assist you in resolving the blurry iPlayer trouble.

Reloading the iPlayer app on your phone is just as simple as closing it and pressing the push button. Restart your system again and test to see whether you can watch high-definition content without any blurriness.

In the same way, restart your laptop after using iPlayer.com on a laptop and shutting the web browser. Refresh iPlayer.com in your preferred internet browser upon accessing it. You may need to log in to your account once more to start watching shows or films if you cleared the site’s cache before restarting.

9) Erase Cookies on Netflix Website/App

You can fix a variety of issues, including blurry streams, by clearing the iPlayer website or app cookies.

The iPlayer application won’t sign you out if you erase the cookies. Try opening the iPlayer app upon deleting your cache to test whether you’re able to enjoy films in their original resolution without any blurriness.

Try to delete the entire application’s files if deleting the cookie doesn’t work for you.

10) Utilize a Different Internet Browser

The bug might sometimes be specific to an internet browser. In this case, switching to a different internet browser can be useful.

For instance, let’s say that when using the Safari browser, you are encountering poor viewing resolution of iPlayer. If so, consider signing into the iPlayer account on Edge or Chrome and then streaming content on iPlayer.

If employing a different internet browser to stream content causes no complications, then perhaps the error must lie with the internet browser under consideration. To resolve the issue, you can upgrade your internet browser.

Also, try utilizing incognito mode to browse iPlayer.com and inspect for any quality issues.

Conclusion

You may fix BBC iPlayer’s blurry streaming video bug by upgrading the application, returning to a previous version, or erasing the site’s cookies and cache. Lately, a large number of people have been experiencing the same issue.

Hopefully, iPlayer will fix the problem with a better version that includes bug fixes.