Yesterday they were battling hackers, and today there has been yet more grief for the BBC iPlayer technicians.

iPlayer downloads were out of action earlier today because of a failure in one of the system's back-end databases.

In fact, the whole system was taken offline while the problems were looked at.

Where an option would normally offer a download for each show, the iPlayer site read: "Sorry, downloads are not available".

The Beeb explained during the outtage: "Downloads are currently unavailable on BBC iPlayer. This is due to a technical failure in one of our databases that administers the peer-to-peer network supporting BBC iPlayer".

"We are working with our partners to reinstate downloads as soon as possible."

And they have but there will be intermittent problems for the rest of the day while Auntie's engineers do testing.

>> News - BBC fixes hacked iPlayer exploit
>> Via - The Register