Gingerbread Man on 2/2/2011 at 23:07
I finally got around to your other question. I've got The A-Team playing on my iPhone and Lexx playing on the PC. I could go fire up the laptop as well but don't make me do that. :(
Same account, login, two different shows on two different devices. I assume it doesn't matter how many.
the_grip on 3/2/2011 at 13:46
Thanks all and GM for the live test! :)
Another question - we are in our trial period of Netflix, and I've noticed in the morning it streams in blu-ray quality but in the evenings it really gets choppy and slow. We're frozen in the past couple of days so the kids are watching more TV than usual, and that gives me the chance to observe it all day.
Last night my wife and I watched a movie and, according to Netflix, the bandwidth on it dropped to zero at one point. It seems the evenings are really bad for Netflix.
FWIW we have a 12 Mbps DSL connection through AT&T which I think should be more than sufficient. I have no issues streaming YouTube HD to our Apple TV in the same time frame.
Anyone know of Netflix problems like this? Seems like congestion problems maybe? 12 Mbps should be more than enough for one TV when we have no other computers, consoles, etc. running. It happens on both the blu-ray and Apple TV, and a bandwidth test from my computer at the same time shows 11.5 Mbps.
EDIT: After talking to Sony support, they claim they want 10 Mbps to stream HD quality. I have no idea why our bandwidth drops off like this, but I upped our AT&T DSL to the max (24 Mbps) to see if this addresses the issue. If not, we'll dial it back and reassess.
the_grip on 4/2/2011 at 14:50
I ordered two Roku XD/S players and they came in yesterday. Great stuff... I'm about ready to bail on the cable. The setup includes the rokus in two rooms and an Apple TV/Internet Blu-Ray player in another.
The one thing I'd like to figure out is using free over the air content. I know the HDHomerun box is an option, etc., but I'm curious if anyone has ventured into this area for cheaper suggestions. The HDHomerun will apparently allow for local OTA channels as well as DVR capabilities, but it only streams to computers.
gunsmoke on 11/2/2011 at 01:33
I hear DSL is (regardless of speeds) is just shit for netflix. They were talking on a techie call-in show on the radio the other day (PC Magazine's editor's). Try to get cable or better.
the_grip on 11/2/2011 at 21:29
(
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gC6nMAI6mu8/TUHG6jsQq-I/AAAAAAAAADE/Bwe1fkAUxzA/s1600/isp_usa.png) Netflix performance by different providers - cable is the best
Cable can be faster but the problem is you share it with your neighborhood.
So far the 24Mbps with AT&T DSL works well. It does get slower in the evenings, but I'm actually reading around about a bunch of people who started complaining near the beginning of February about Netflix performance (which is about when we started or so). Apparently Netflix has some issues they are sorting through but it is of course "not our problem, it is the users" regardless of the actual bandwidth on the users' end.
All that said, Netflix is working great now. I am also using PlayOn on my main laptop to host Hulu (not the Hulu Plus) through our house. Works awesome and comes through in decent enough quality (480p I think... it looks like 720p practically on our bedroom 32" LCD).
All that said again, I will look into cable if these problems pop back up. Right now we're good.
EDIT: AT&T 24Mbps is $65/mo. plus taxes. Time Warner (cable in our area) is $43/mo. plus taxes for 20Mbps. HMMMM. Wondering if Time Warner's actual service is any good as that is all gold there... 1/3 better Netflix performance, lose a tiny piece of bandwidth that won't be noticed, and save 1/3 a month. 1 + 1 = 2? Anyone know if Time Warner is any good?
Renzatic on 11/2/2011 at 21:52
Question is, why is cable so much better than DSL for Netflix? A bit is a bit. As long as you can stream enough of them fast enough, it shouldn't be a problem, right?
the_grip on 11/2/2011 at 22:00
You would think.
However, I'm sure quite a bit of this involves what is between the connection from Netflix to the user. I can do bandwidth tests out the wazoo and show 22 - 24 Mbps but Netflix still streams SD or bad SD (at least early in the month, not so much now). They would report that I am receiving 0 Mbps at one point when I had a 12Mbps connection... yet I can see YouTube HD streams with no problem almost instantly. This only happened in the evenings... early in the morning (before 7 AM), Netflix would stream HD quality in a very short amount of startup time.
However, those issues seem to have mostly gone away, at least over the past week.
gunsmoke on 12/2/2011 at 01:42
Well, the only people I have ever heard having probs with it were on DSL. Even 3 Megabit Cable connections have more even performance than even 12 Megabit DSL in various neighborhoods and 4 different providers (2 DSL and 2 Cable).
