The BBC will be stopping support, and therefore stopping an early version of the BBC iPlayer app on quite a lot of Freesat set top boxes.

This will happen in September 2016.

The Freesat models affected are those that are without the Freetime label.

If your version of iPlayer looks like this then you’re going to be affected:

The BBC says

“We invest significant time and effort in maximising support for older TV devices and have successfully migrated many hundreds of different devices to the latest version of iPlayer for TVs.

However, unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to migrate older devices to a supportable version of iPlayer. It’s not cost efficient to maintain the implementation of delivering iPlayer to these devices, due to the backend systems and technologies (often 3rd party) on which they depend.”

 

The full list of devices, provided by the BBC: 
Affected devices are mostly first generation Freesat boxes, with some older Freeview devices in the list as well:

Company	Product	Model/ Year
Bush	FSAT+500	2014
Bush	FSATHD	2014
Bush	FSAT+500	2014
Bush	BFSAT01HD	2009
Bush	7105 (320GB)	2011
Bush	7105 (500GB) model: BU11FSRHD50	2011
Echostar	HDS-600RS	2011
Ferguson	F101HDSAT	2010
Goodmans	7105 (500GB) model: GD11FSRHD50	2011
Grundig/ Goodmans	GFSDTR500HD (500 GB)	2009
Grundig/ Goodmans	Grundig GUFSAT01HD/ GFSAT200HD	2010
Grundig/ Goodmans	GFSDTR320HD (320GB)	2009
Humax	Foxsat HD	2008
Humax	Foxsat HDR (320GB/500GB/1TB)	2008
Logik	LHDFSAT11	2011
Logik	LHDFSAT11	2011
Manhattan	Plaza HD-S	2011
Manhattan	Plaza HD-S2	2013
Manhattan	Plaza HDR-S	2012
Panasonic	PAL09	2009
Panasonic	PAL10 – TX-L37G20B	2010
Panasonic	DMR-BS850/DMR-BS750/DMR-XS350	2010
Panasonic	PAL08	2008
Panasonic	DMT-XS350	2009
Sagem	DSI86HD	2009
Sagem	DTR94250S/DTR94320S/DTR94500S	2009
Samsung	SMT-S7800 (500 GB)	2011
Sony	KDL-ssV5800*	2009
Sony	KDL-ssW5810*	2009
Sony	KDL-ssLX90x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssNX81x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssNX80x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssNX71x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssNX70x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssHX90x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssHX80x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssHX70x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssEX70x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssEX71x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssEX603*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssEX605*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssEX50x*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssEX403*	2010
Sony	KDL-ssNX503*	2010
Technisat	HDFS	2009

Over the past couple of years, the BBC has been moving devices to a newer platform for the iPlayer, which has added functionality, such as HD TV, live streaming and live programme restart, which isn’t possible with the older versions on Freesat.

This could be one reason why Manhattan have phased out their Plaza HD-S2 Freesat set top box, and are expected to launch a new version mid 2016.

For people with these affected Freesat set top boxes, who want to continue to use the BBC iPlayer, then you will need to upgrade to a newer Freesat set top box, when available.