I had the same issue on my Windows 7 PC. I have IE11 and Chrome browsers. It was the issue regardless of the browser. The player would load up to 85%. With Chrome, I would get a message stating that I needed to allow the plugin to run. I enabled the plugins for both Adobe Flash Player and DirecTV Player. Always got the same error. With IE11, the player would stop at 85%, but the message would always be that I needed to upgrade the latest version of DirecTV Player. I had the latest player installed. I went through all of the suggestions, cleared cache, cookies, history, uninstalled flash player, reinstalled flash player, uninstalled DirecTV player, and reinstalled probably a dozen times. Went through all the forums looking for help. Did an online chat with DirecTV support this morning, which turned out to useless and more frustrating than helpful.
However, I had a break through early this afternoon, and was able to get the player to work in both IE11 and Chrome. I started by focusing on using IE11 because there were some posts that suggested that the latest player may not work on Chrome. This is what I did.
Uninstalled Adobe Flash Players (one for internet explorer-active x, the other for chrome)
Uninstalled DirecTV player
Cleared cache, cookies, history, temp files,etc.. (every option available in both browsers)
Used CCleaner to remove all broken, unused, obsolete files, etc..
Cleaned the registry as well using CCleaner.
Deleted the DIRECTV folder and all files at C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\
Deleted the DTV or DirecTV Player folder and all files at C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\
Restarted my computer
Downloaded Adobe Flash Player for Active X (did not download for Chrome)
Downloaded the latest version of DirecTV player.
To my surprise, it actually worked. I watched a show with no issues. I decided to try using Chrome just to see if it would work. First I enabled the plugins for both DirecTV player and Adobe Flash player. Then I tried to launch the DirecTV player, and I could not believe that it worked.
I think it is necessary to delete all the files associated with the player. The uninstall does not delete these files. Rebooting the computer afterwards is also necessary to reconfigure the computer. I assume there must be files left on mac computers as well. I do not have a mac, so I do not know where they would be stored. I would think deleting the same folders and files would help.