Technical problems have prevented many recent programmes making it onto the iPlayer, according to the BBC.

This means that viewers were unable to see the penultimate episode of Masterchef before the final was broadcast last night. Many fans of the show have been expressing their fury on the iPlayer messageboards.

"If these were problems that prevented programs from being broadcast in the first place the BBC would become a laughing stock," one wrote.

A message posted yesterday by Gareth, a member of the iPlayer team, read: "I am very sorry that Masterchef has not become available prior to tonight's final.

"We did have a number of delivery problems over the past 24 hours and unfortunately Masterchef for last night is stuck in a queue of content still waiting to go live," he continued.

Though the penultimate episode from Wednesday night is now available to watch on iPlayer, last night's final which saw judges and presenters John Torode and Gregg Wallace crown the winner has not yet appeared.

The BBC confirmed to Web User that the final episode was due to go online "very shortly" but did not give a precise time. It also said that the problem was due to a technical glitch but again declined to go into detail.

Last week, the BBC revealed the most popular shows watched on the iPlayer service, with Doctor Who topping the list. It said over 17 million programmes were watched or downloaded on demand via the iPlayer in the first seven weeks since it launched officially on Christmas Day.

The BBC also recently announced that it would release a version of the iPlayer that would allow Mac owners to download programmes to watch at their leisure at some stage in 2008.

UPDATED 29/02/2008 1450 GMT: The BBC has just confirmed that Masterchef: The Final is now available on iPlayer.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

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