Change package? Advice please.

[#1]

Officerdribble,
I've just sent you a ticket (42692941) with some info that you may find helpful.
Adam,

[#2]

Quote from: Officerdribble

Given the apparent high speed on the first test, I thought maybe something other than line speed was cramping performance. - maybe it was because of the age of my desktop computer (ancient).

I'd bet my left nut that this is the problem. I reckon its your CPU thats holding you back as I have this very same problem with iplayer and im on fibre +pro. What I've found is I can stream anything in HD, I can download any HD content and I can watch any blu-ray film on my desktop without problem - but when it comes to iplayer HD I still get jerky streams and my cpu goes to 100%. Also (not sure how relative this will be) I've noticed when my connection hits about 3MB/s my computer effectively grinds to a halt.
So in summary IMO, the software used to deliver BBC's content is probably causing your problem by overloading your CPU. Try opening task manager when u run a HD stream to see how loaded your CPU is. If its over 90% thats most definately your problem.
Mr Riot out

[#3]

Similar to what mikeyriot says above,
check your CPU usage and also check if the Flash plugins for your browser are up to date -
this is probably why you're having better success on Windows than Linux
(Flash on Linux used to be pretty inefficient - not sure if this has changed recently)

[#4]

Thanks to A.W. from Plusnet for his PM, which I've acted on.
rod2040 and mikeyriot, yes, you have indeed identified the problem. mikeyriot, your left nut is safe. My cpu did max out.
I decided to compare downloaded HD with streaming, but I couldn't get the iPlayer downloader to install on my Linux system. In Windows, however, I got a steady 6Mb download rate which allowed me to archive a programme pretty swiftly. It seemed a little smoother in iPlayer desktop than when streaming, but the difference was so slight that it might well have been my imagination. Perhaps I was expecting too much quality-wise out of iPlayer, and I think Plusnet's first reply to my query sent me barking up the wrong tree. Further investigation showed that I was able to stream YouTube at 720p. Like mikeyriot, I now conclude therefore that everything else in HD works on my desktop (up to 720p), so I guess the anomaly is with iPlayer.
My original query was about whether there would be a discernible difference in quality between PAYG and Value. I get the impression from what others have said, that I shouldn't have problems, so I'm going for it. The one thing I haven't done is boot into Windows on the ancient desktop and try streaming iPlayer HD from there. I might try tonight. If I get an unusual result, I'll report on it because people might be interested. Otherwise, I'd say this thread has maxed out as much as my cpu. 
Thanks to everyone for the input.
Best.

[#5]

I couldn't stream iPlayer on my 2.6GHz Dell GX270 even though I have a rock solid 7150 IP profile and was on PAYG (same priorities as Pro). It maxed out my CPU.
New PC - no problems.

[#6]

Heya, not wishing to poor scorn, but the GX270's are a bit old these days.
And thanks to Marketing, the 2.66Ghz bit doesn't help anyone..... after all, there's cores, Hyperthreading, pipeline depth, interconnects, cache etc to worry about.
Whether it maxes out the CPU Would also be influenced by the graphics processing, and how much the CPU had to do, and likewise scaling, eg to fullscreen.

[#7]

Quote from: phil4

Heya, not wishing to poor scorn, but the GX270's are a bit old these days.

Why do you think I replaced it?
I had a fairly new graphics card which I bought when I went dual screen. It was just as bad normal size or full screen.

[#8]

Sorry, no idea you'd bought a new PC....

[#9]

Quote from: jelv

New PC - no problems.