Streams fail during ad breaks
If live TV programmes on Freely play fine but the stream fails specifically during ad breaks (you see a black screen, a “can’t connect” error, then it recovers when the programme resumes), this usually points to something on your network blocking ad-serving domains rather than a general connectivity issue.
On Freely and apps like ITVX, programme content and adverts are delivered from different servers. If you have a DNS-based ad blocker on your network or your ISP’s content filtering is active, the ad servers can be blocked while programme streams play fine.
Things to check
- DNS-based ad-blocking. Pi-hole, AdGuard, NextDNS, or similar on your home network. Try whitelisting the streaming ad domains, or disabling the ad blocker temporarily to confirm.
- ISP content filtering. Virgin Media Web Safe, Sky Broadband Shield, BT Web Protect, and similar. Try turning these off temporarily.
- Custom DNS on your router. If you’ve changed the DNS servers to something other than your ISP’s defaults, try switching them back to confirm.
Once you’ve identified the cause, you can re-enable ad-blocking with the relevant streaming domains whitelisted so other services aren’t affected.
For broader connection checks, see Network troubleshooting steps.