Anyone else having this netflix streaming video problem?

[tim turks]

I recently renewed my netflix account to use the video on demand feature. What I have been experiencing however is watching movies on line the stop playing followed by a message telling me my internet connection has slowed or stopped and netflix is compensating for the problem. I have been on the phone with netflix tech support only to be told they are aware there is a problem and their engineering department in California is looking into it. The problem is some people like myself who have high speed dsl (avg 1.5 mbs) find out their download speed from netflix is about 60% slower for some reason. Using the shift button and right clicking on the video that's playing I am able to view a status screen which shows me the movie is downloading at about 300kbs? I have watched streaming movies on my computer before from plenty of different sites without any interuptions so what is going on here at netflix?

[Samantha]

ok, i clicked on play and it only buffers to 35% then stops and says its unwatchable at this time. still no pics showing or other parts of their pages. it worked fine 4 days ago???

[Mike]

So it just took two and a half hours to watch a one and a half hour movie. I was constantly interrupted with the "your connection has slowed...." message.

Every time I got the message, I opened another browser and ran a speed test. 8M down and 1 M up...yeah, my connection is fine.
I finally called tech support and they told me that it was the movie and not my connection. They said that everyone who watches that movie will have the same problem.

So I asked them how can I tell which movies I can watch without this problem and they said that information is not available on the web site...summary... it's a crap shoot.

[Knaldskalle]

What movie was it?

[Carl]

I haven't watched anything instantly from Netflix in a while. I just did the other night (7:30pm pacific) and experienced the whole "your connection has slowed" paused movie thing and it is telling me it will take 20 mins to buffer. I tried the next night around the same time and same thing. From when I last used the service (6 months ago or so), there seems to have been some serious degradation of service. Could be many reasons, but one of the most potentially obvious is that they have simply oversold their capacity.

[Spindaddydad]

one of the most potentially obvious is that they have simply oversold their capacity
But what if others are able to access with no problems? It could be that you are trying to use during peak internet time. Who is your service provider?

[CarcinogenX]

Grrr….this is becoming annoying. I’ve had Netflix for many months and never encountered any problems until recently. I have a steady 7+mb connection but once I go to Netflix, it’s like 1995 and I’m back on AOL dial-up. A couple weeks ago only certain movies would play and others would be stuck in buffering purgatory but for the last couple days I have not been able to watch more than a couple minutes of a film. The quality has gone to crap too. I’m on the high setting but the movie quality looks like it’s coming from one of those satellite phones.
I don’t care what anyone says about my computer or connection, I know its Netflix. I can stream on all the network’s websites in HD and Hulu with no problem. I was gaming online for hours today while streaming music and never missed a beat but a minute later I cannot even get a movie to buffer on Netflix. I’m a total bandwidth whore, I download tons of huge files and am glad I have such a fast, great connection but recently even getting the Netflix website to load has been a chore. It’s pretty easy to isolate Netflix as the culprit. They have obviously got a problem.

[Knaldskalle]

I just watched two movies tonight (prime time, West coast) on Instant Watch without the slightest problem.

It's quite clear that Netflix has a problem.

[CarcinogenX]

I just watched two movies tonight (prime time, West coast) on Instant Watch without the slightest problem.

I remember when I could do that too.

It's a neat additional feature of Netflix and I wish I knew what the issue was, it would be nice to get it corrected.

[Knaldskalle]

I've never had a problem with Instant Watch. Just watched another move in prime time (9-11 pm PST) without the slightest hitch.

[John Smith]

Totally man.
We've been working are way through Law and Order SVU via streaming. No issues whatsoever until about a week ago in the middle of season 6. Now we cant watch anything without getting slowed connection messages. We have a steady 24mbit down stream and no other issues like you said. Come to think of it this all started on the 10th of Feb when Netflix announced it had reached the 10 million customer mark. hmmmmmm.
This is getting silly. I'm on the verge of calling tech support but from what I've read that hasn't been much help for others, and lets face it...who ever WANTS to call tech support.

[G Ambrose]

I was having almost identical issues with the streaming video and ATT DSL, where it would stop about every 10 minutes on average. I use a media center PC (MCE 2005) connected to a wired router. I could watch the LAN network activity in the XP task manager totally stop shortly after a movie started. Then the buffer would run out and the browser would just sit at the netflix warning page about the connection being too slow and the connection would not resume until I hit refresh in the browser (see picture below).
I called netflix tech support who told me that had not heard of the connection totlally stopping as I described, and they suggested that I call ATT to see what they could do.
I looked into my router log, and saw that my DSL modem was re-newing its IP address lease every 600 seconds (DHCP Client: [WAN]Receive Ack from 192.168.0.1,Lease time=600).
It was a siemans speedstream brand of DSL modem which has this as a default setting. In its configuration (typically at http://192.168.0.1) in the advanced connection settings, I was able to change the lease time from 10 minutes to 6 hours.
(router log now says: DHCP Client: [WAN]Receive Ack from 192.168.0.1,Lease time=22200)

Now I can watch streaming video from netflix without having to referesh the browser every 10 minutes.
Hopefully this helps other DSL users.

[Maxxnme2010]

I just recently rejoined NETFLIX...to take advantage of the streaming! BAD NEWS! Whatta bunch of crap! Movies that speed up-out of synch; haven't been able to watch a single vid! And there's no one to complain to! I'm using CLEAR-wireless and it doesn;t matter if I use Firefox or IE8-all the vids crap out on me! Shame on you, NETFLIX!