iPlayer - yet AGAIN!

After many months when I gave up with it completely, because it never worked, but hardly the same error message twice, I recently had a fresh try with this, and found they'd launched a whole new interface, which was called iPlayer Downloads, instead of iPlayer Desktop, and (for the moment) seems to work better, without spewing forth error messages about Adobe Air all the time, or failing to install at all, or failing to download at all, or insisting it wasn't installed, when it was...

But, one fly still in the ointment. "Series download" seems to have disappeared, leaving only: "Favourites", which I assumed should have assumed the same function - i.e. once you've designated something a "favourite", it should collect every episode as and when it becomes available, without having to manually initiate each download.

I can't get this to work at all. Marking something a favourite doesn't seem to trigger any downloads, either immediately, or at all, even when there are undownloaded episodes clearly available. All it seems to do is make them more easily accessible from the navigation pane, but doesn't affect download behaviour at all. So it appears I must remember to manually download every individual episode of a series, and if I forget, tough!

Can this be right? Is there really no series download any more, or is "Favourites" meant to do it, but just not working properly?

This is with Chrome on Windows 7, btw.

T.

Doesn't look as if anybody either knew or cared, but just in case anyone else was also wondering, the simple answer is the feature's been withdrawn from the new software, so it's nothing I was doing wrong; it simply doesn't exist any more.

They claim it was "little used", which I find hard to believe, as it was one of the most useful features on there, meaning you never missed an episode simply by forgetting. Now you have to pick them all manually, and hope you don't overlook one.

T.

so they killed the download option ? not good for those on slow lines or using off-peak allowances etc.

It was a bit obscure when merged into the standard interface.

Yeah, they've just killed it. I'm all for the move from Adobe AIR, which, in my case, made iPlayer Desktop unusable on all but the rarest occasions. I reached the point where it would not install on Chrome at all. On IE, it would install, but then refuse to download anything. So between the two of them, I had no working solution. So definitely a positive step to ditch dependence on that.

But getting rid of Series Download is a different matter. People on slow connections or who only wanted to download off-peak were not under any obligation to use it. Though if I remember rightly, you could either set the times it was allowed to attempt download, or only put it online when you didn't mind. Remembering to turn it on a few times during your off-peak allowance, and letting the rest take care of itself was still a lot less onerous than having to manually initiate download of every single episode you want. It was great to be able to say: "All of these please", and not have to worry about remembering - except to watch them in time.

T.