Streaming bandwidth issues on Netflix's side?

[Millertime]

I recently joined Netflix, mainly interested in the new ability to stream content through the Xbox 360. Over the last few days I've been using it quite a bit, and from what I've seen it appears that the quality degradation issue is on Netflix's side.

Let me explain a bit. I'm on a 6.5 mbit connection, I confirm this through www.speedtest.net and similar internet sites to see my actual bandwidth. I use the internet a lot including lots of VPN activity during business hours when I'm working from home. I check the speeds often and my returns are very consistant except on the rare occasions that my ISP is having issues.

Over the last several days I've streamed movies and TV shows at all hours of the day from 9am to 10-11pm EST. Ok... so my "working" at home isn't always really working ;) Anyway, during the day I get great connection quality of 4 bars and get HD offerings in HD through the 360. As the night moves on however, the quality degrades through several steps until it's eventually a blurry mess not worth my time.

It start around 7pm EST when I often get my first interruption and a quality adjustment, but the difference is not noticable. Over the next hour or two I will often get a few more downgrades, each time I check my internet speeds and they are consistantly at 6.5mbit. Almost every night around 9pm EST I get a downgrade so severe that the quality is horrible, and often the buffering even at that low quality takes 2 minutes. During the day my buffering for HD quality takes around 15 seconds.

I don't believe this is an ISP issue as my pings, bandwidth, and packet loss quality all remain very steady. I am personally using more bandwidth on my connection during the day with an always open VPN connection that constantly streams data from my work. And yet by 9:15 each night the quality of "my internet connection" is trash from Netflix. I believe this is an issue of bandwidth on their side, not mine.

I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed the same tendencies? The time would probably be Netflix's busiest, lining up with 6pm on the west coast and the most members accessing content. I was initially very happy with the service, but if this is what I will continue to get I don't see any use for it.

[keighron]

I have been using the Roku box to watch Netflix Instant movies at home. I have Verizon FIOS and typically got faultless service from Netflix this way. For the past 4 days I have seen much trouble with many restarts of the shows I am watching, and LOOOOOONG download times for the movie to start ( which before using FIOS, you would blink your eyes and it would be done downloading. ) I was too wondering if Netflix was having server woes due to the increased traffic, what with Roku, and now MacOS users streaming, perhaps they don't have the capacity?

It is a real drag when you are in the middle of a movie and it stops and has to retry downloading over and over again. ( while the quality drops each time )

Netflix, if its true, please upgrade your server capacity!

[Millertime]

Hopefully it's just tied to the increased traffic from them offering a free two week trial to Xbox Live users. If they don't increase their bandwidth however, these trials aren't going to gain them many new members, as this is not a great introduction.

[elving]

FWIW, I was getting 3 or 4 dots with my Roku box before the Xbox launch and have been getting 3 or 4 dots since the Xbox launch.

I think it's an oversimplification to assume there are system-wide capacity problems. Instead, there are always varying, localized capacity problems in the network itself. These may cause you to get poor bandwidth from Netflix's servers while 1. someone else using the same Netflix servers continues to receive good service and 2. you get good service from other servers.

[Bryan Cristina]

It's been utter crap for the last few days. When I first got the new Xbox dash it was ok for a couple days, the last couple nights though, even on the worst quality, a show has been interrupted at minimum 10 times for a 20 minute episode.. It was maddening.

Such promise, so useless right now. VHS quality with 10 stoppages per episode.. yeah, that's what I'm paying for.

[Andrew]

I've been having a similar problem, but it only started this afternoon. I've been able to get 4-bar and HD streams from netflix reliably since the 18th on my Xbox, but today I'm getting 1 to 2 bars.

[Millertime]

For those of you with this issue, are you on Time Warner Road Runner? With another post on here regarding the possibility of TW throttling connections to Netflix only, I wanted to see if there was a common link.

[J_Dunn]

I'm on Cox here and noticing the exact same problem from both my 360, and PCs. Shows will either have insanely low bars, and at times throw the error that it can't play the show. Hulu, CBS, and Slingbox.com however all work perfectly fine and I have zero problems pulling down HD content from NBC. So it appears to me to definitely be a Netflix problem. It also doesn't begin occurring till around 6pm CST. If I watch the shows during the middle of the day on say a Saturday or Sunday it works fine. If I try at prime-time I get all kinds of problems. While I would suspect throttling i would think it would be more consistent, and would affect the other streaming services I use.

[Andrew]

Yes, I am on Road Runner through Brighthouse in Florida. If they are throttling, it seems to only be during 'peak' hours, since I can get full HD streaming during certain parts of the day, it seems. I woke up this morning and played 30 Rock in HD, but right now (450pm EST) I am only getting 1 bar on everything, and I occasionally can't even start playback. A speed test shows I'm getting around 6.5-7.0Mbps, as expected.

[Sean]

I'm on TimeWarner Road Runner here in Dallas, TX. Over the last couple of days, during evening hours I've not been able to stream any movies even at low quality. I get the warning telling me that my connection is too slow to stream at all. I'm running a Wireless N setup with a 10Mbps connection.

I just had my wife test the connection this morning and she was able to stream a movie in full HD. I really think this is an issue on Netflix's end.

[Bill]

I can confirm this in AL as well. I get full quality during the day but from about 4pm - 1 am streaming is unwatchable. Around 2am it goes back to full speed though.

scared for when Tivo's get added to the mix. Netflix better have the bandwidth issues fixed by then.

btw. I have a friend with the same issue and he is on BellSouth DSL so I dont think its a TW/BH issue.

[J_Dunn]

Update on my problem... Right now can't watch anything. Everything I try errors out (was working fine this afternoon) and on my 360 I get a single bar then an error that "Playback for this item could not be started".

[7I2]

I have Time Warner and I watched 1 show today, looked great. Any other shows I haven't been able to watch. My connection is fine and after troubleshooting everything for about an hour i determined that the Bars on the screen have no relation to you actual internet speed. I guess its the quality(or Quantity of download time) of the connection between your XboxLive account and Netflix. I am not sure but it seems related to how much you have watched.

Anyone else out there see this?