Problems streaming live football

fleabag

Hello,
I have a problem streaming live coverage of Champions League matches on my PC. It has been getting progressively worse until I'm at the point of tearing my hair out. I should be watching Bayern v Barcelona now but instead I'm here, desperately hoping that someone can help me out.

I have no TV so use the PC to watch the Champions League on RTE or TV3. RTE was great until a couple of months ago then it started to freeze repeatedly. It has now got to the point where I cannot watch any football due to an 'uncaught error' - or any RTE programmes for that matter.

TV3 never gave a problem - until tonight. It would freeze very infrequently but nothing too bad. Tonight however it is freezing every few seconds to the extent that at half-time, the coverage on the TV3 player was still showing 10 minutes to go. I know that some games are very heavily streamed due to numbers watching and am wondering if this is the problem. I don't know how to explain RTE packing up though if this is the case.

I am a complete dunce when it comes to computers and know there will be groans when I say I'm using Internet Explorer as the default browser. However exactly the same happens if I use Mozilla. I have 3Gb landline broadband with Eircom and never have problems watching stuff on Netflix or Youtube. I guess this is because it's not live though.

The internet has been slower than usual lately but I put it down to just one of those things. Can anybody tell me why stuff freezes when watching it live and is there anything I can do to improve things? The final is coming up soon and if things don't improve I'll be bald

If any more information is needed please let me know, I know I'm a dunce and I should know a bit more about it, but like most people, I just want to switch this thing on and for everything to work properly. It's a Dell PC and is about 5 years old if that helps! Thanks.