Streaming bandwidth issues on Netflix's side?

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.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Deric Kettel on December 8, 2008 at 6:42am: I'm supposed to be getting a 10.5 - 12 mb connection. My ISP area manager called me last night (yes on a Sunday, I love small towns) and he had me do some testing. I took a snapshot of my speed test. It don't look good. as you can see I'm down to about 30% of what I'm supposed to be getting. Grrrr

Deric; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Deric Kettel on December 8, 2008 at 6:43am: Sorry the picture isnt clean when you download it to this site.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Knaldskalle on December 8, 2008 at 10:33am: For those with problems seeing the image, right click and pick "view image", it'll then show the image full screen.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Charles on December 8, 2008 at 7:23am: What application did you use for this test?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dustin Wilson on December 8, 2008 at 9:27am: I had very mixed results over the weekend.

At times, I got the full HD on the first season of Heroes, but mostly I just got one single bar. I'm watching using the Xbox. I had a cable technician out last weekend to ensure my connection hasn't degraded. I did many speedtests as well. I always seem to stay around 12000 -15000 kb/s. I hope Netflix gets this issue fixed. I signed up for the trial as soon as the NXE went live, and it worked great then. It wasn't until about a week later that all the issues started for me.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by J_Dunn on December 8, 2008 at 12:18pm: Same here, even after the supposed "fix" nothing has improved. Except now my 360 keeps freezing when the connection slows down, and I have to reboot the box, and most shows/movies come back "could not be started".; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Stephen Ganske on December 9, 2008 at 7:38pm: I have been having this problem for the last two days as well. I have been getting the "playback for this item..." message for about a week or a little more maybe. But the freezing just started last night. I am a "two out" subscriber and I pay for Xbox Live, so I'm pumping quite a bit of monies into this monthly and it's starting to tick me off a bit. Streaming to laptop seems to be going well, but every time my Xbox freezes, I get a message on the laptop saying that my account is already watching a movie.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by SirGCal on December 19, 2008 at 6:54am: I'm seeing the same issues. The more I go over the data, the more it appears that at least for me, Time Warner is the one throttling the specific streams. I get 4 bars all the time until around 4:00 CST then boom, maybe 3, 2 or just 1... And my speed tests still come back 15-20M+ depending on location. I can tracert to the servers within 12 hops or less and always under (usually well under) 100ms... And at the same time, two people are playing CoD5 and also streaming from hulu or some other internet stream...

End result, it's just Netflix that has this issue for me (so far). And I've called them multiple times and had multiple support people escalate it. The later persons telling me finally that they are fully aware of the issue. However (this was yesterday at 8:30 CST) they're servers are not even overly heavily taxed at the moment. They do notice this problem has become more and more widespread and they are trying to find a solution. BUT that they know that TW has a 'special' issue with them.

I wish FIOS was available here... Darn Verizon for taking so long... Ugg...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by BK on January 5, 2009 at 8:23pm: TW here. I had the issue before when Netflix admitted the content provider had an issue. Since then it has worked fine. TW is not the problem.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jeremy Johnson on January 5, 2009 at 7:12pm: We've been enjoying Netflix via Xbox 360 (after selling our Roku to friends), but in the last week or so the quality has dropped again. Probably a glut of subscribers slowing things down; I've tried all the usual tricks (I'm a network guy) with little or no effect. Just got through 58% of Botched and the damn thing froze solid. All other devices playing nice but Netflix choking on no feed. Reemergence of early December probs?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ben Towle on January 6, 2009 at 10:01am: This is not a provider issue, netflix needs to wake up or they WILL lose out on a good thing. Someone else will come along and offer this service and many of us will jump ship if not resolved. During the day when there are fewer people watching netflix I get HD quality, after 6 pm EST its almost unwatchable. I have plenty of bandwidth, and even streaming HD I have never come close to maxing out my 6meg pipe so what gives?

Please netflix PLEASE work on this or at least aknowledge the issue is YOURS!; ▶ Reply to This