Netflix Problems

I did a reset as some have advised.

Restarted and played same movie again. Netflix still stutters, sputters and stops on AppleTV2 and v.4.2.1

Double checked my DL speed - 30Mb tonight when it was stuttering.

Anybody know if Apple is doing anything about this?

That would explain why I was able to watch 6 hours of Monty Python Documentaries. I started watching about 8pm Pacific on Saturday night. As the hours grew later, I had less and less pausing of the AppleTV.

I would gladly trade instant streaming for a "30 minute head start" to cache the download before I started to watch.

No headway. Apple engineering said it's not their problem. Netflix supposedly "escalated" the issue for me, but I haven't heard anything back. My ISP is fine. Nobody will own this issue. Like Markbober, I suspect it's an issue with the Netflix app software on the apple tv. I've just dealt with it. It seems to happen the most in the evening, but I never get HD resolution or DD5.1.

A denial of service attack? That makes little sense. It the routers firewall was thinking the Netflix stream was an attack of some sort why doesn't it impact any other device in my house? My desktop, laptop, iPhone and Wii all stream Netflix without issue. The only time I've had any problems is with the Apple TV. And when I plug my laptop into the Ethernet cable from my Apple TV, no problems at all. The issue s clearly with the implementation of Netflix on the Apple Tv. Whether it's Apple's fault or Netflix's, I don't care as long as some one owns up and fixes it. I don't see how this could possibly be a router firewall issue.

I have fios 15/5 service, and have the issues with only some programming. Occurs with both airport extreme and fios router, both units 15 feet from the appletv. The last title this happened with is Bunny and the Bull at 9pm EST. Lag pause happened 4x within 2 minutes, so we stopped the show. That movie works fine on iPad, PS3, and iPhone.

Interestingly, the lags also happened with other British shows... I wonder if it depends on the network or distributor.

Good luck. Hopefully it works better for you than it did for me. My Apple TV is hardwired and I still have buffering/pausing issues with Netfilx. It has gotten better over the past month or so. Not sure if Netflix changed something on their end, but its not happening every night like it used to. I personally believe it has to do with how the app handles network congestion and slow-downs. Rather than dynamically degrade the picture it pauses and buffers data until the picture quality can get back to "Apple standards". I think Neflix developed the app, but Apple probably gave directions to maintain a certain level of picture quality.

I thoroughly enjoy the Apple TV, its a great little device for everything else it does which makes the Netflix issues that much more frustrating.

Reset, restored both wirless and wired, no fix. Can watch on mac and ipad but no atv. went from cable into house right to atv to eliminate everything else, still nothing. can log in, get ot selection, tv shoes get stopped right in there tracks, movies get the spinwheel of death, which leads me to think it is a server/rate issue between the app and the server. Guessing though....

Ah, crud. I'm having this problem too. Ever since the last few updates to ATV2 iOS, I've been having all sorts of Netflix issues. Movies pause a lot. I'm currently watching Lost, and I get pauses at least twice per episode. I occasionally get audio dropouts as well, but a reboot may have solved that one (?).

My Apple TV is wired into my Airport Extreme router rather than being wireless.

I'm starting to wonder if there's a "best" version of the OS to run rather than the current latest version. All I need from my Apple TV is streaming iTunes from my Mac and Netflix. That's it.

I am guessing this is a NetFlix issue, but it's changes with time. It may have to do with their servers, but other factors may be a play at various times. I have had weeks of almost flawless service, and then I may return to unexpected pauses in streaming. Recently I also had interruptions with an error message that required going back to the Netflix menu and restarting playback.

Even though Netflix was running very sluggish on my ATV2, it did continue work after the update. Finally though my Netflix login on their website from Safari is working again. This was definately a Netflix problem in my case.

Hi, was having this exact problem with APPLETV. I contacted NETFLIX and reported the problem of being cut off every few seconds. I did not have an issue when I got on again to watch a movie. good luck

I believe you are right my friend. Its an Apple issue. I even have this problem watching tv shows purchased from Apple on ATV. Restart, update, and the problem goes away.....for a while.

This has been an issue for quite some time. Curious that it has not been solved yet.

Perhaps they just have not found the real problem yet.

Fingers crossed for the mother of all updates.

Laurence:

1. Netflix content in a browser uses a different sever to Netflix on ATV (or there is local network cache?)

This is true. Netflix confirmed this to me. They use different servers to support computer and mobile downloading (as opposed to TV).

Hello Barry Levine,

I just tried this on my AppleTV. I just used manual network settings and used your OpenDNS IP address instead of my home router's for DNS server. It seems to work really well, but the test will be tonight when the whole planet is using netflix. I will let you know, but thanks, this might just be the answer! 😁

I do not have an ATV2; this is on my Macs and clients' Macs. I use ATT (Uverse) and some discussions I've read on the web indicate that mucking about with the DNS in the Uverse router doesn't work (although I haven't tried it).

Using the OpenDNS servers also resolved a goDaddy eMail issue where, periodically, Apple Mail would fail to connect to their POP server ("timeout").