Sony should not be let off the hook for this - more about that in a minute - but after reading Plakra's post, I think we can make life a lot less stressful in the meantime. He says it's all about which IP address you get from Tiscali - sounds plausible, as I once CAUSED the problem by resetting for a different reason, and probably got one of the dodgy addresses. Now if it's simply a case of changing the IP till we get a "good" one, my original process can be trimmed down significantly. As Plakra says, you just go to the Thomson Gateway homepage and turn your internet on and off (I can give step-by-step for that if there's a demand), MUCH quicker than resetting your router. He says, in the meantime simply switch your bluray off, so it picks up the new IP when you switch back on.. MUCH quicker than factory resetting it. This is now becoming a fairly quick process and not such a hassle even if you have to do it a few times.
Next is the issue of how often we have to do this. Now, my mum turns her router off all the time when she's not using the computer. Would that give her a new IP, anyone technical? If so, turning it off all the time would be playing Russian roulette a bit. I leave mine on constantly for wifi access, so my IP should in any case stay constant and the problem should not reoccur too often. I imagine the only time it would, would be when the Tiscali server goes down for a time, and then comes back on, giving a new IP (and even then, you may be lucky and get a "good" one).
So in theory, we can reduce the instances by keeping our IP constant - other than when Tiscali crashes which can't be helped - and reduce the hassle of the temp fix massively.
Now Sony has to talk to Tiscali and work out why some of their IPs are not accepting Sony's Iplayer requests properly. Apparently Tiscali has replicated the problem and are "on it" but as Tiscali customers, we all know to take that with a pinch of salt if their customer service is anything to go by. Sony needs to keep chasing it up too. And I suggest that, if this problem is not solved permanently within a reasonable time frame (the end of the month?) with an official response from Sony, we all follow the example of another member here, and one-star pan the machine on Amazon and anywhere else we can. Collectively, we all do this if the problem is still there, even if personally we haven't experienced it ourselves in a while.
If we can't get Sony to care about the diabolical problems of a few, we'll remind them that these days, the few can hinder quite a lot of sales.
