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.

[moviefan21]

Some movies look blury but others look clean? I always get a fast start. my internet speed is 20MB

[Rob]

I sarted having the same problem 2 days ago. I have a 360 and between midnight and noon (CST), I have no problems. I get 4 bars and HD streams. After about noon, I'm lucky to get 2 bars and it's not worth it AT ALL. Every bandwidth test I perform comes back great and I can download normal files in a flash.

I live in cental Texas and am at the mercy of Time Warner (apartment limitations). It wouldn't surprise me to learn that they intentionally limit Netflix bandwidth.

I would expect to startr hearing more about this in the coming days as more people realize how unusable this is during peak hours.

[Charles]

I had problems this morning (5AM EST) when I tried to look at one show, but 30 Rock and The Office (british version) played at 3 bars.

I still think it is certain shows/movies that are causing issues instead all available movies.

[Christopher Chichester]

I have the exact same issues your writting about to a tee. I've even upgrded my cable bandwith. I now get between 28 and 30mps consistantly. Doesnt matter when i stream Netflix on 360. same thing happens. In the day its perfect, later in the day and night its crap. Movies look blurry and well u know, crappy.

[cpro]

When Netflix first became available on Xbox 360 it was great and I had high quality video. However, today it's total crap. No matter what I try to watch it's a blurry mess unless I change display to native but then it's a tiny little box on my TV that is unwatchable. I just used this service yesterday and it was fine..but not any more. I'm also using Time Warner and stuck with it due to apartment limitations. I hope this gets fixed soon because it's a great service but in the current state is completely useless. I wonder if this is an Xbox Live issue?

[Pat]

I've been using instant viewing since the New Xbox Experience was released and had no problem until early yesterday evening. The detected video quality has been stuck at one bar for most of the past 24 hours. Like everyone else, I've run bandwidth checks through more than once source and have found no problem with my internet speed. Right now, Netflix struggles to maintain streaming even with a terrible picture. The single bar video quality is present on all computers in my network. I'm in central Texas with an 8.0 mps cable connection through Grande.

[Joel]

Im going throug grande as well. Same issue here. I'm testing out a method to see if it is a program issue right now. I deleted the update for netflix and it seems to be working fine now. Before i did this, I was not able to get more than 1 bar on any movie in my queue... Now im getting 4. I have the 8mb connection as well.

[Asz]

I signed up the day before the new 360 update went live. Initially, I was very impressed. Everything streamed very well, even HD movies streamed without a hitch. In the past 4 days however, everything has gone to hell. I'll initially begin streaming a movie or TV show (HD or not) only to have it interrupted within 60 seconds saying that my connection has slowed, then it'll play a minute longer, and so on, 3 or more times. Sometimes the quality change is negligable, other times it looks like I flew through a time machine and started watching streaming videos from '99. I've also noticed that the initial buffer time has increased by 4x. I'm not sure what the problem is, but it needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

[Andrew]

I've noticed that I get much better quality via the Silverlight player on my Mac than via my Xbox 360. What is the deal here? This makes no sense.

[Understudy]

I had the opportunity to try out the new Xbox dashboard early with Netflix - those first few days saw almost perfect streaming day or night. As soon as the dashboard went live for everyone, things changed. I haven't really paid very close attention to different scenarios, but day/night seems to be the biggest factor. Tonight was the first time we got a warning that the connection was too slow to stream at all.

The way I have my connection configured made me think that maybe having my PC on and working was slowing things down (don't ask me to explain, I barely understand how I made it work); however seconds after getting the poor Netflix quality, I played games on Xbox Live without any lag.

Following these clearly scientific methods, I have decided that the issue is on the Netflix side. I honestly am more nervous when a new launch like this sees no glitches, so I'll be happy to give it some time. Being a Netflix member since 2001, I don't think I've ever been disappointed by the service without a pretty prompt response to the good.

[Bill]

I am having the same problems here as everyone else. One bar and horrible quality on a 20mb/10mb cable modem service. Have tried replacing ethernet cable, changing DNS, putting Xbox360 in DMZ, power cycle modem and router. I am a network engineer and have tried every trick I know of to boost performance. For the first few days after launch got 4-5 bars consistently...now its unwatchable. Viewing from the desktop Mac seems to work fine though.

do any Netflix employees read this forum, if so it would be nice to hear that this is a temporary problem due to the load from NXE.

[Bill]

Did a traceroute to the streaming servers and got some evidence that its not on my ISP side...

traceroute 68.142.79.70
traceroute to 68.142.79.70 (68.142.79.70), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2) 1.269 ms 0.571 ms 0.453 ms
2 10.116.128.1 (10.116.128.1) 8.513 ms 7.445 ms 8.257 ms
3 cs662596-57.bham.rr.com (66.25.96.57) 7.894 ms 8.109 ms 13.269 ms
4 so7-0-1.tampfledc-rtr4.tampflrdc.rr.com (65.32.8.29) 50.052 ms 51.886 ms 52.057 ms
5 ge-2-1-0.cr0.dfw10.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.106) 73.045 ms 73.104 ms 70.638 ms
6 ae-1-0.pr0.dfw10.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.179) 72.847 ms 71.647 ms 71.661 ms
7 tge8-1.fr3.dal.llnw.net (68.142.120.225) 70.460 ms 70.506 ms tge7-2.fr3.dal.llnw.net (208.111.158.81) 81.617 ms
8 tge1-2.fr3.phx2.llnw.net (69.28.171.129) 100.916 ms 98.183 ms 99.968 ms
9 tge1-1.fr3.phx1.llnw.net (69.28.171.97) 101.943 ms 104.676 ms 103.586 ms
10 tge1-2.fr3.lax.llnw.net (69.28.171.82) 120.640 ms 114.108 ms 112.174 ms
11 ve6.fr4.lax.llnw.net (69.28.171.206) 112.688 ms 116.234 ms 116.108 ms
12 cdn-68-142-79-70.lax.llnw.net (68.142.79.70) 120.996 ms 112.333 ms 136.523 ms
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After hop 12 it just dies.