ITV Player, the broadcaster's catch-up TV service, crashed last night after thousands of users went online to watch the first episode of the new series of Downton Abbey.

Viewers hoping to catch up on the return of the acclaimed period drama after it aired on ITV1 at 9pm last night to nearly 9m viewers were left disappointed after ITV Player only showed three adverts on a loop instead of the programme.

Later, an apology was posted on the site saying that ITV was experiencing "technical difficulties" and could not offer the show at the time. The problems were thought to have lasted for at least another two hours after the apology was released.

An ITV spokesman said in a statement: "We are investigating and apologise to those who were unable to use the service during this time."

Frustrated viewers used Twitter to complain about the crash, but the ITV Player official Twitter account failed to respond.

Jonathan Wood, the director of marketing and business development for digital media at Interxion, said that ITV's sluggish response to the problems showed that broadcasters still view online TV as a secondary priority.

"Due to its rapid growth, online broadcasting is still seen as a poor relation by some broadcast providers, relative to traditional broadcasting," he said.

"Yet viewers expect to be able to watch their favourite programmes whenever they want, with minimal latency or downtime.

"A crash like that experienced by ITV Player viewers during Downton Abbey last night results in bad press and lost viewers and advertising revenue. Given the speed at which consumers can find out (and complain) about downtime thanks to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, it's surprising that online broadcasting isn't a top priority for all providers."

Wood called on all broadcasters to upgrade their online TV infrastructure to always ensure an "excellent viewer experience".

"Broadcasters need to ensure that their streaming platform is hosted in a highly secure, highly resilient environment with multiple routes to the audience and that capacity can be scaled up to meet peaks in demand," he said.

"While consumers will probably never be aware of its existence within the content delivery supply chain, data centres lie at the heart of fast, efficient streaming and, ultimately, an excellent viewer experience."

ITV Player, which also struggled to cope with demand during the 2010 World Cup, recently expanded on to other platforms, including Android smartphones and Apple's iPhone and iPad.

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