This is a little geeky but BreakItDownBlog did some analysis on a strange problem he was having. When he viewed Netflix video on the 360 it was coming through without jitters or problems but once he tried viewing it on his PC it was failing catastrophically.
A little digging discovered that although the downstream was running at 7 mbps, the stream was downloading at about 52 kbps. Writer Riyad posits that this is to prevent overloading of bandwidth at Netflix and the high speed downloads on 360 are basically a quality-of-service situation where they have to supply a certain sort of experience or face eviction. I’ve noticed horrible quality PC streaming most times I’ve tried using the service.
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John Biggs
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March 16, 2009
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I’m not saying that this guy isn’t having some kind of problem, but I think he’s a little too quick to blame Netflix for it. As many comments on that site point out, it’s a big leap from saying that he’s having problems to claiming that Netflix is intentionally throttling his service.
And of course, with the power of the internet, he’s able to take one person’s problem and an incendiary title and get posted on all the major gadget blogs. Yay rumormongering.
I agree.
I’ve used Netflix streaming for months, and I’ve seen no evidence of it being throttled. The picture quality I get is as good as a DVD.
I was having a similar problem with Netflix PC streaming. Each time I streamed a movie, my video quality would be set to basic even though my connection is rated at 20 Mbps (download) and 2 Mbps (upload). I tested my connection speeds and I was getting around 12800 kbps and 3500 kbps, respectively.
I would not be shocked to hear about ISPs sniffing packets to/from speed test sites and instantly unthrottling (or even boosting the throughput) to leave their customers with the false impression that the ISP was not the bottleneck. If there was only someway of spoofing that to regain what we are actually paying for…
This is all very interesting. I only have a 3meg AT&T connection (I know, sucky but all I can get at my location) but consistently experience “good” or better connection quality indications on the NetFlix quality “meter”.
Although I’ve not measured the NetFlix throughput, out of the several dozen films I’ve streamed, I’ve only noticed stuttering and dropouts on two occasions — both on Monday nights strangely enough.
I’ve only streamed a couple of films to my PC — everything else goes to my Samsung 50″ plasma via my Samsung BDP-2500 player.
Guys,
I certainly appreciate the insight — the title may sound inflammatory, but it wasn’t decided on quickly or easily.
I’d point out that in this thread, Slashdot and Break it Down, may users have piped up “Yea, me too” and with a handful also saying “Problem doesn’t exist, I don’t see it”.
Doesn’t this sound an awful lot like the original rental throttling that Netflix got raked over the coals for until they were forced to include it in their new-user signup form explaining that throttling does occur and can happen (even though it didn’t necessarily occur to everyone?)
My qualms with this company is they advertise one service aggressively and provide another — we saw it before, we are seeing it again.
Another interesting bit, after this story went live, my buffering time on my PC is now maxed out at 7hrs even and doesn’t budge. That’s a different story, but I’d say Netflix is well aware of the story now and “paying me back” for it.
My ultimate goal is to shed light on these shenanigans and provide a way that other users of the service can come together and see what is happening.
If everyone single person came back and said “it’s just you dude, piss off”, I’d happily do it — but that has not been the case. I’ve seen as many “me too!” comments as I’ve seen “not me!”.
if people like you didn’t say anything then nothing would get done… I’m glad you did what you did
I haven’t tried streaming to a PC but the few times I’ve tried streaming to my TiVo I’ve had such poor audio quality that I couldn’t watch the movie. This is over a 20M fiber connection.
You’ll notice he’s still using the old WMV version of the player. Maybe it’s the server they’re playing WMV videos through, because I have no problem with the Silverlight player on my laptop.
My buffer time? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Instantly Plays — and I’m on my ISP’s lowest tier of broadband.
The idea that Netflix would have some motivation to drop the quality on their ONE ONLINE SERVICE is ridiculous. They sell the Roku boxes by hooking people with the level of service on their computers (as in, “Oh, I’d like to have this on my TV! There’s a handy set top box I can buy!”) so crippling that on purpose would be the dumbest thing anyone could ever do — and I don’t think Netflix is stupid.
Honestly, a crappy limelight server or his ISP throttling his connection are likely to blame — not Netflix.
I think he’s exaggerating about how many people agree with him.
On “Break it Down” 30 comments disagree with the proposed idea that Netflix is actively throttling/have no problems with Netflix streaming/think he needs more evidence/etc.
Only 6 comments outright agree with him.
(The rest were comments from him or didn’t address the issue).
On Slashdot (out of 75 of 200 comments — I don’t have the energy to waste on all of them, so I didn’t count the hidden comments or all of the abbreviated comments)
35 disagree with the proposed idea that Netflix is actively throttling/have no problems with Netflix streaming/think he needs more evidence/etc.
11 comments outright agree with him.
(The rest were comments that didn’t address the issue).
I can’t believe this guy actually thinks that since the article, Netflix is actively throttling him personally. It would make more business sense to make the guy happy so he shuts up and possible retracts his article.
Netflix download works fine for me. I know the streaming speed is dependent on the server sending the media and the links along the way, not necessarily only the bandwidth you have at the end point, i.e. your home. It make sense for Netflix or YouTube to monitor and economically balance their streaming speed, as its still rather expensive.
The day before yesterday, I was unable to play any movies. Then, yesterday, I was able to playback a couple of movies, but today I cant’ playback even one.
I checked and my bandwidth has remained the same (~5Mbps) the last three days. I never had this problem before – this has started recently.
Netflix throttles. Ask em. They were doing it to my buddies standard streaming service and when he called and went all technical a guy told him a way to “up” him to the next connection bracket making HD doable.. I don’t remember how exactly but it was very easter egg-ish.. Will email and repost if he gets back before I forget about this..
That’s actually a setting on his computer involving Windows Media Player, and not the Netflix servers themselves
Can you expand on that?
Netflix has replaced (for the most part) it’s Windows Media Player based solution with a new Silverlight player. This means more of their servers are dedicated to showing the Silverlight versions of videos (as they can also be played on Macs) than the old WMV versions that the old player uses.
People who used the old player can choose to keep it though, so Netflix may just want people to upgrade.