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.

[Lou]

As it turns out, the real culprit in this slowdown is likely one of the major internet trunk owners, like Time Warner. They are possibly throttling streaming data. When checking internet speed, the data packets are small, and won't show this throttling down effect.

In other words, the cable providers lie when they claim their speeds, as they twist data rates to suit their purposes. They likely want to force smaller companies like Netflx out, so they can either take their place, and charge higher prices, or simply force Netflix customers to pay a bandwidth charge for streaming content.

So, at this point, start rattling the cages of those clowns, as well as politicians, to represent our contracts. It doesn't seem to be Netflixs' problem after all.

[BK]

Based on what information did you come to this conclusion?

[Millertime]

I considered the possibility that it's my ISP, but the fact is that when I download large files to my PC I get 800-840 mb speeds at any hour of any day. Time Warner advertises 8.5mbit internet and I truly can get that if the transmitting server is able to deliver as well. This is when downloading 4-8gb files that can take an hour or more as well, the download speeds stay consistant during these times.

I don't think it's an ISP throttling issue or an ISP issue of any kind.

[Deric Kettel]

I did some more testing last night, I am working with my local ISP in providing ping tests and speed tests to them (They should be paying me) :) Anyway, around 5:30 pm Pacific time I tried to watch a movie on the X-Box and had one bar, so I ran to the laptop to check the speed and it had dropped to 4 mb a couple of times, and then up to 8. I watched another movie around 10:30 pm and I had 4 bars, and it was really clear. I hope this gets better as the two week freebie ends. So for me it seems that between 5:00 and 10:00 pm every nigh, the signal is low. But its kind of random. In that time period, I can connect several times and sometimes I get 1 bar and sometimes, but rarely I get a 2 or 3 bars. But never 4 until after 10 and really closer to 11:00. So it has to have something to do with the draw on the Netflix site. But then again I don't pretend to know much. ;)

[Deric Kettel]

Oh and when I called Netflix directly, the first thing the lady asked was "do you have a 5mb connection to the X-Box? Well I have a 10 mb and built in overhead to 12 mb connection. But if its dropping to 4 or 2 or even 250kb then its gonna buffer and try to compensate for the slow down. This is all new and I'm sure they are working on it...............lets hope ;)

[ColdOne]

Ignore the typical speed tests. Try downloading various large files (~500 MB) from other sites and monitor the throughput to see if you're consistently getting that 10 MB from anywhere.

[Deric Kettel]

You never get 10 mb speed when down loading, there are several factors that limit your download speed. Just because your download speed is say for me 10 mb it depends on how fast the end product will allow you to down load. I have never been higher than 500mbps when downloading anything. I would love to get a 10 mb download, but this isn't 1982 and we are not on Fantasy Island;)

[Bill]

If they cant fix the bandwidth issue it would be nice if they would give us some advanced option in the NXE player to manually set the stream speed rather than relying on autodetection. I for one would rather start a film and hit pause til the buffer fills than watch youtube on a cell phone quality video.

[BK]

They have this in the Roku box and it has been working great. This slowdown has been effecting Roku (of and on for me even when XBOX quality is consistently awful) and there's a secret menu where you can set the quality you want to force it to use (assuming you have a proper connection as most of us do).

[Bill]

thats exactly what i was thinking. It will be interesting to see how they handle Tivo traffic. Normally with tivo you have to download the entire file before you can watch it. Wonder if they will stream or allow download?

[Tig]

what secret menu? How do you get to it?

[Bill]

its a bit like an old super nintendo game hack but here it is...

via google:

There is an undocumented way to lock in a given bit stream.

Using the remote, hit Home Home Home Home Home Rewind Rewind Rewind FastForward FastForward (that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds, 2 FastForwards), keypresses about 1/2 second apart. You may have to try several times and the trick is to make the keypresses spaced out far enough. (Remember, the last two are <<< Rewind and Fast Forward >>>, which are on the bottom row of buttons, not the < and > keys to the side of the select button.) This will take you into debug mode. On this screen you would see something like this:

Code:


NETFLIX bit rate override

Select a stream speed below to override the automatic stream
selection. This setting will remain in effect until you reboot the box.

enable playback debugging []
automatic []
2.2 Mbps []
1.6 Mbps []
1.0 Mbps []
0.5 Mbps []
back[]




You can select the bit stream that you desire. The bit rates correspond to picture quality of 4 dots (2.2Mbps) down to 1 dot (0.5 Mbps).

As I said, the "debug mode" keystrokes are not documented, neither is this screen. That means it might change in the future and, if a microcode upgrade is loaded (which forces a reboot of the box), you may have to go back to this screen and set the mode again.

The good news is that the worst damage you can do on this screen can be undone by rebooting the box.