Access to iplayer

SIR – Jeremy Paxman has criticised the BBC’S iplayer service for only allowing licence payers to catch up with programmes for 30 days, after which time they must pay the likes of Netflix or Amazon in order to view them (report, May 5).

There is a further inequity.

Our Sony television is only five years old. It came with the BBC iplayer software embedded. It is, however, no longer possible for us to update the software to allow us, long-time licence fee-payers, to access iplayer at all. We are told that we need to purchase a piece of hardware such as an Amazon Firestick to plug in to our television set.

Why should we have to?

Christopher Pratt

Dorking, Surrey

SIR – Tristram Fane Saunders’s claim that Keeping Faith, shown on Welsh television, is “a crime drama like no other” could well be spot on (Arts, May 3).

However, those who are hard of hearing will never know. It is only available on BBC iplayer, which, for some reason, fails to provide the subtitles so essential for a substantial section of the population.

I downloaded the first episode, but my partial deafness meant that I understood little of it – although, visually, it seemed to earn your reviewer’s praise. Tony Berry

Truro, Cornwall