Kontiki Delivery Manager on iPlayer, 4oD and Sky Anytime
Wednesday, January 09, 2008

If you have come here looking more detailed information on the Kontiki delivery Manager, or instructions on how to remove Kontiki Delivery Manager, 4OD, The BBC iPlayer, or Sky Anytime, please click here!

I've mentioned a couple of times on this blog about installing the BBC iPlayer, Channel 4's 4oD and Sky's, Sky Anytime.

What I have failed to mention in these posts, is that the above software installs a Content Delivery Manager called Kontiki. It was a slip on my part, as I came across this software over a year ago when trialling the Sky Anytime service, at this time I manually had to uninstall the software, using the then limited information that there was on the software.

Kontiki, is a service that was founded in 2000, and later acquired by VeriSign in March 2006.

It works using P2P technology, however what the BBC, Channel 4, and Sky fail to tell users is that this piece of software is a processor heavy, and bandwidth intensive service, which remains running even after you have closed the program you are running (I.e. 4oD).

What I find even worse with this piece of software is that even after the removal of your software (I.e. 4oD) the Kontiki software remains on your hard drive, and remains operational. I was more shocked, by how much use the Kontiki service was actually making on my network connections.

Not long ago, I started using a service called OpenDNS, which also logs all my network requests. I started using the OpenDNS service in January of this year (2008). I installed, and uninstalled the Sky Anytime service on my computer in December, due to issues I have mentioned previously you are only able to run either the BBC iPlayer, 4oD or the Sky Anytime service at anyone time, and have only one service installed at any onetime.

What shocked me, was that when reviewing my usage logs, and network connections the highest volume of network connections were being made, via the Kontiki service to Sky's, Sky Anytime (see screen shot below)

As you will see the service has made over 1000 requests to the Sky service, this is more requests than I have made on any other website, even sites such as Google where all my mail, blogging tools, RSS reader, search etc are conducted, so it is not light on the network.

Now this wouldn't be as much of an issue, if it wasn't for the fact that there is no button or switch to turn this software off, and that is comes with no "uninstall" file, and removal of it doesn't happen automatically, as mentioned before with the removal of your service (I.e. 4oD). To remove the software successfully, you either need to remove it manually, which is the method I employed last time I installed in, or being able to find a piece of software called KClean.exe which you can not find on either Sky's website, nor Channel 4's or for that matter the Kontiki website, or under the Verisign knowledge base.

The link I have provided above, is a download from the BBC website, which I am happy to say is still hosting the file, if you find this link dead or un-usable I have uploaded the software and you are welcome to download from here (however as with any download, especially a blog, please ensure you run a virus check and or spyware check), I feel the need on this occasion to keep an additional download link, as Kontiki and the service providers do not seem all too willing to hand over the uninstall / clean up file.

I sent an email into Channel 4 last night, I am not going to bother with Sky as their customer service is appalling at the best of times, let alone on a technical issue such as this (I once called Sky to ask about uninstalling the Sky Anytime service, and the Indian Lady on the telephone had no idea what the software was! Ooops, lost track there, anyway's, I have emailed into Channel 4, asking for their reasons for using the horrid piece of what I would class as spyware, given the limited options available to it, and its aggressive use of bandwidth. I don't expect a response, however should I get one I will post it up here!

If you have further questions on the Kontiki service, I am happy for you to post them in the comments, and I will assist as much as I can by updating this post etc.

On a positive note to this post, I would like to commend the BBC, as their iPlayer does come with an option to turn off the Kontiki service when you close the BBC iPlayer, and they also supply the KClean.exe file, which is more than the other companies, however given that I pay for the BBC through my licence fee, I think they bloody well should!

In finishing this post, I'll add that I have now removed all software that used the Kontiki software such as the BBC iPlayer, Channel 4's 4oD and Sky Anytime (which was not even worth the effort of downloading!). In replacement, I shall be viewing content online only using the embedded video options.

Update August 18th 2008 - Corrected the Link for KClean to Sky.

Posted by Mary Blighthouse. 1:26 PM    

Labels: 4OD, BBC, BBCi, C4, KClean, Kontiki, Kontiki Delivery Manager, Sky, Sky Anytime, VeriSign

8 comments:

At 17 January 2008 09:55 Kitsune said...

Thanks very much for this - I've had major problems since downloading both bbc iplayer and 4OD and could not find out how to uninstall - the BBC have now removed kclean as well.

 

At 17 January 2008 10:10 Paul James said...

We got an email back from Channel 4, and they state that there are no problems with their software, once I get a free moment I'll post their responce.

The KClean software can be download from http://paul.damien.googlepages.com/KClean.exe if it has been removed from the BBC Website - Please ensure, if you download this file that you use good practice, and ensure you virus check etc this file before running, although I have checked the file prior to uploading, it is always best to check!

 

At 18 January 2008 20:14 Kitsune said...

Thanks, I've now used the kclean software and removed kontiki (eventually, took about 6 attempts and starting in diagnostic mode to get rid of it!) still had the 4od download folder there which I had to delete manually -found that out when I went to defrag and the files were in about 5,000 fragments!

 

At 10 February 2008 12:08 MuradJ said...

Hi - I had the same issues with 4oD and iPlayer, so I wrote this tool http://thetechnophile.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-you-use-iplayer-or-4od-to-download.html
It lets the sharing service run while you are using the front-end of 4oD or iPlayer but when you shut them down, it terminates the sharing service. It probably works with Sky, but I haven't tried it. I've had about 200 downloads so far.

 

At 04 March 2008 11:18 Don said...

That's very useful info. After a recent house move my PC isn't anywhere near an aerial socket for my DigiTV card which I would previously used for timeshifting. So I installed 4OD and BBC iPlayer, probably against my better judgement, & I noticed the Kontiki service install. Is it not possible to just stop the service from the command line (net stop kservice)? The 4OD stuff bugs me as I can't change the download location. Time to run a new aerial extension I think - DigiTV is much more flexible.

 

At 04 March 2008 11:20 Don said...

One other thing, Revo Uninstaller is supposed to help cleaning out unwanted installs. Haven't tried myself but read blogs about it.

 

At 28 February 2009 12:56 Stewart said...

There is an even easier way to get rid of the spyware that they call Kontiki.
Open Windows Task Manager, Ctrl/Alt/Del and open the tab called Processes. In there you will see a process running called Kservices. Highlight that and click on End Process. It will give you a warning about this and that but just click on OK.
You can then open your C:\ drive and in Program Files you can delete the folder Kontiki. Then in Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Deliveries you can delete the folder 4od1.
Hey Presto, ITS ALL GONE.
If you don't kill the Kservices process first it won't let you delete the Delivery Manager and no matter how many times you delete the 4od1 folder it will just keep coming back.

 

At 28 February 2009 13:04 Stewart said...

Forgot to say, 4oD is SPYWARE.

 

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