Well, the ITV player may be utter rubbish, but their customer support is pretty damned quick. Here's the reply i got:

'Thank you for contacting ITV.

We are sorry you have experienced difficulties with our services.

Please be assured that we are planning significant improvements to our video player over the next few months. One of the primary reasons for this is to improve video player stability for all ITV.com users.

We understand a proportion of our users suffer from poor performance issues when viewing our content and that this may be frustrating. However we are working hard on a completely new solution to provide you with the very best programmes that the ITV Player has to offer.

ITV's video content is streamed and not downloaded, and as such your computer needs to collect (buffer) the content in order for it to play. The adverts however run off a separate server and are temporarily downloaded. Please keep in mind that other websites may use downloadable software that enables your computer to temporarily download their content. This is not what ITV use and therefore the requirements are different.

The following are a few reasons as to why you may experience problems while trying to stream our content.

If you experience any of the following:

Looping adverts

Interference

Freezing content

Parts not loading

Series of stills

Sound but no/jittery content

This may be due to your bandwidth. Keep in mind that your internet connection is shared amongst households and not individual homes, and therefore if your bandwidth drops while you are online due to heavy internet traffic in your area, this will interfere with the streaming process and result in the above symptoms.

To watch our video, you need a broadband connection with a download speed of at least 786Kbps. Your internet service provider can tell you what speed connection you have signed up for, but you may also test your current connection speed at;

http://www.speedtest.net/

Please note that your broadband width may change during the streaming of video content and may be limited by multiple computers connected to your modem or other programs running on your computer, including multiple browser pages.

Programmes such as web accelerators can interfere with streaming/buffering. These programmes can be installed onto your system without your knowledge, so please ensure that you do not have any such applications enabled on your computer. In addition Pop-up blockers, anti virus and firewall security applications can all affect video players. Please make sure that pop ups are not blocked for itv.com and that exceptions are made for ITV.com on your security software. It is also vital that you have the latest updates of your anti-virus/firewall security applications, as old versions may prevent you from streaming any content.

It is advisable that you do not have any other applications running in the background (hidden) that maybe downloading/updating software, as this can affect the streaming of the videos. Applications such as MSN Messenger or even having another web page open at the same time; can take up bandwidth which is required to ensure the smooth running of our video streaming. If there is heavy internet usage/traffic in your household/local area at the time, this can also affect the buffering speed on your system.

Thank you for your patience.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind Regards

Charlotte

ITV Customer Support '

Well, that's useful. I now know WHY it doesn't work. And i know now that there's nothing i can do about it. I have all but one of those 'symptoms' when using the player. Lets hope they improve it quickly. And 786kbps?! i tested my speed and it's 510. And my internet is pretty damn good! It must only work if you have the most amazing broadband in the world.

And don;t get me started on that list of conditions!No MSN, no internet, no other computers... basically sit still and don't breathe until it's loaded or it mught interfere.

Ah well, at least i got a reply.