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Poor Quality Video Streams has Netflix Stumped, Xbox 360 Owners Frustrated

Posted 12/05/08 at 03:30:39 PM  by Paul Lilly

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After months of anticipation, Microsoft rolled out its latest dashboard update for the Xbox 360 console on November 19th, which among other things, added support for Netflix's streaming service. The update couldn't come quick enough for Netflix subscribers with an Xbox Live Gold account, but not everyone is finding that the wait was worth it.

An unknown glitch has been wreaking havoc on the video streams causing both loss of quality and long delays before a movie is watchable. Xbox 360 owners aren't alone in their plight, as the problem first manifested itself in homes using the $99 Roku box. A Netflix spokesman said the company is working on a fix for both platforms, but that might be hard to do without having identified the culprit.

"We're doing all of the analysis we can," said Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey. "We're looking at the region, at carriers...we're working diligently to identify the problem. Unteil we have, we certainly don't want to speculate at all. Look, there's no manual to take off the shelf here. Netflix has created something new here."

Swasey also said Netflix isn't taking the complaints lightly, despite the relatively small number of complaints.

Hit the jump and tell us how your Netflix experience has been.

Image Credit: Microsoft and Netflix

COMMENTS:6
TAGS: Software, streaming, console, Xbox 360, NetFlix, hardware
COMMENTS
avatarNetflix over Xbox

Submitted by rolus on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 6:19pm

I was consistently having issues every night 1 bar of connectivity. My connection is 7mbps down and I have never had any issues.

I called Netflix and politely asked them what the issue was. They connected me to technical support. The Tech support guy was very nice and genuinely cared about my experience! I told him how during the day time I had 4 green bars and movies looked great. Then at about 6 CST the service went downhill. He checked the logfiles, for my username, and determined that the maximum upstream they could send me was 500K per second (1/2 megabyte) at night, and no issues during the day. 

 He could see where I stopped and started, and finally gave up on watching.
I thanked him for looking and decided to call my ISP (timewarner north texas) I had read rumors on the Netflix NING community board the TWC was throttling bandwidth. (However they must of only been throttling to Netflix as all other connections worked fine). So I just complained nicely that my service was running slowly.

 

I didn't expect anything would be fixed, but for the past 2 nights we have been able to watch movies in HD with full bandwidth, no issues.

 

I am not sure if complaining nicely helped,  but as of now I am keeping the service.

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avatarPhenom 9500 Asus M3A 6 gb

Submitted by kowal on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 5:38pm

Phenom 9500

Asus M3A

6 gb corsair

geforce 9800gt

windows vista/xp dual boot

 

 I have a dedicated HTPC X2-4600... radeon 4670....xp-mce 2005

I use it on 42'lcd to watch all my dvd/bluray and streaming.

I have a 3mb down 768 up dsl connection.....my netflix streaming experience has been pretty good.....sometimes a little flaky now that i switched over to the netflix silverlight software player.

I wish netflix would take some lessons from "FOX" online.....they have the HD thing spot on.....Fringe and the sarah connor chronicles.....look fanatstic and play great......they have the HD streaming down .

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avatarNo problems for me

Submitted by hiawg on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 4:30pm

I have had great luck with Netflix on my 360. I only have a CRT TV  but all movies so far have looked great and I always have 4 bars. No wireless.

Road Runner Cable
7 Mbps download
384 Kbps upload

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avatarNetflix

Submitted by Asevening on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 2:14pm

I stream all of my content over a wireless connection and I manage three if not all four bars on every video quality test meaning I have HD on every HD video and top quality on everything else.  The only time I ever notice any issues is when all of my roommates decide to play Live at the same time while I'm watching a video and I get that awesome pause telling me my connection slowed.  Usually that only happens though if more than one other person starts using the network. 

On another note, I took my 360 home to my parents this weekend for our family thanksgiving and they have a 1.5 down 384 up connection at which I never got higher than 2 bars (even wired) and never got to see anything in HD.  So far the only issues I've seen is that Netflix, on any platform, is only as good as my internet connection.

 Lincoln, NE - Time Warner Cable Business Class - 12m down 1.5m up.

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avatarI noticed this as well...

Submitted by ProtoJMB on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 1:43pm

Just this Monday my brother got his Roku box. I went over there to my mom's house and helped them hook it up. We were all excited to watch it on their big HDTV, and when we started watching Ghost Rider we were a bit disappointed with the blurryness. I know I wasn't expecting HD quality results, but it wasn't as sharp as expected. I know I had seen better watching via laptop, and even via laptop hooked to TV. I just attributed this to it being on a wireless connection, but now I see there was more at play (no pun intended). Hopefully they get the problem fixed soon!

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avatarNetfilx and 360

Submitted by xRadeon on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 8:41am

I love my netflix streaming, but here's somethings that I notice about it. 1. I don't know what's up, but some movies will play just fine, like not stoping for buffering. And then some other movies just stop all the time. I could mabye go through and test at different times during the day, maybe that's it. I'm not quite sure. 2. When you rate movies on the 360, I don't think it shows up on the website, I don't know about that one. 3. I would have to say they do need more movies, like maybe Star Wars and like Star gate SG-1, but I can see that it takes a while to get movies and such, and that it cost a lot.

Um, but I do have to say that the only way your wireless conection could effect the stream, is if you have a really slow connection, because I don't think your going to be pushing 54 Mb of data, when your internet can only max out at 4 or whatever mb/sec. Just saying. Like I have wireless to my 360 and, like I said, some movies run at full quaitly just fine.

Internet: Comcast (I think its like 6 mb/sec)

Wirelss: Linksys WRTG54; Microsoft wireless 360 g adaptor(And the quaity of connection is 70%ish)

Non-HDTV screen :(

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