Netflix Problems

Here is the link from Netflix to apply for a subscription credit if you tried to stream a show during the recent outage (which unfortunately happened shortly after Apple released an AppleTV update, leading some people to think it was an issue with the update)
http://www.netflix.com/mgConfirm?lnktrk=EMP&g=B04E892E666AB2FD7BE8ADA657BCC5CF0A C0315E&lkid=link1Credit

I finally got to the root of my problem. It was the router- Linksys WRT310N.

I got my ATV2 for my birthday back in October. From the first day, Netflix was unusable. Constant buffering (every minute or so, would take 15-20seconds, then play, then repeat buffering...) I tried many things, including tweaking the settings on my router, to no avail. I tried Netflix on several devices, all were fine except for the ATV2.

I have 20Mbps Comcast internet, didn't think this was the issue.

PS3- I could see that it would buffer to High/HD almost immediately, stay there, and never stutter. Flawless.
Wii- same deal.
IPod Touch & iPhone- worked fine.
iMac (wired connection)- zero problems with Netflix.

Last month, I happened to be watching a video on Youtube on my work laptop, which has a wireless N card, consistently shows 130mbps wireless connection. It kept stuttering, and I've long experienced slow email sync, but I thought that was my company's VPN. I ran speedtest.net, got 1.0mbps download. Gee, that's odd. I ran it on my wife's 5 year old Dell, 12mbps via wireless G. My first gen Touch showed 8mbps. The download test on the ATV2 had ALWAYS taken FOREVER, but always said "successful."
Then it hit me- the wireless-N devices were being speed limited to 1.0mbps by the router. I had a friend bring his laptop over, same speedtest result. I did a hard reset and reboot on the router- BAM! 15mbps on my laptop, just like that.
I went upstairs and re-ran the ATV2 download test, and it finished in <30sec. It had taken 4-5 minutes previously. Went to Netflix, found an HD movie, and played. It buffered in <15 seconds, and played FLAWLESSLY.

I feel like a dunce for not figuring this out earlier, and not doing a restore default on the router sooner. Two Genius bar appts, too, and it worked great in the store each time.

I never did figure out why the Linksys was speed-limiting the N devices only. I decided to really go through the settings, upgraded the firmware to the latest, and all was great for 3 days. Then, it started randomly rebooting and kill my internet connection (also killing my Ooma VOIP phone), and multiple resets/restores haven't helped. I surrendered, and bought an Airport Extreme earlier today.

So, I've moved from a VERY frustrated ATV owner, to a really content one. Now I can use ALL the features it came with. I'm contemplating buying two more, now that I've gotten it to work.

Very interesting.

I too have an Airport Extreme and a Comcast 20Ghz/sec download signal, but still experience buffering delays/interruptions...more with some Netflix films than others. Since the 4.2 upgrade I am also experiencing moments when the video and audio are out of sync. I've worded with Apple Care Senior Advisors quite a lot since we got our ATV2 late last year. They provide far and away better tech support than I used to experience before we moved to Macs.

Nevertheless, we are still striking out.

But I am still patiently holding out for a fix...but my patience is beginning to wear thin.

I've just learned about Update 4.2.1? I decided to defer it until I learned more. Does it include a Netflix fix?

I currently have 4.2 and have seen some improvement in the buffering delays we had been experiencing, but as stated in my previous post were still experiencing them.

Having the same problems. Netflix doesn't seem to be able to help. Apple went as far as replacing my ATV2 and I'm still having the same issues. No problems on my computers - Netflix says I'm getting 20mbs on those, but 0.5 on the ATV2. I've tried resets, using wired ilo of wireless, messing with my Extreme router settings, calling my isp. Nothing helps. Apple and Netflix need to get together and figure this out. One of my main reasons for purchasing an ATV2 was for Netflix.

I even rented an HD movie from iTunes and it streamed immediately and flawlessly. The problem is only with Netflix. ARG!

Problem with Netflix has been constant the past several of weeks. When I watched a movie on iTunes (the night Netflix servers were out) I experienced no problems whatsoever. Once Netflix was restored the buffering problems only got more worse. I have checked with my sip (Cox) and they state that I am getting a decent signal coming from my router. My ATV is hard wired via cat 5 cable.

Lots of problems streaming Netflix through my Apple TV. Looks like Apple do not buffer enough. Frequent stop and starts when watching movies. I have much less problems with my Samsung Blu Ray player - 8GB buffer. It's hard to tell where the problem is, I have Cable but not sure where the bandwidth problem resides. Is it the Apple TV, Wireless network (n), internet bandwidth or Netflix themselves.

Are there anyways to resolve this issue? because it is sometimes just unwatchable!

Tried 2 cable modems, 2 routers, no router, many DNS entries, and even 2 Apple TVs, Netflix still pauses a lot making it not usable.

The new Apple TV software update release this week DID NOT FIX THE ISSUE.

Apple please fix the issue. I put a network sniffer on my network, the issue seems to happen when the network connection to Netflix is delayed or slowed, your Netflix software CANT NOT handle it and the buffering is not enough to handle it so it pauses to catch up.
When I say connection slowed I am not talking about my area network, it is the connection to the Netflix servers that is slowed, the network out side of my ISP.

I then did the network sniff using my Xbox 360 and Samsung Netflix Blue ray, BOTH could handle any network performance issues.

I have the top tier 25 mbps Cable modem speed. Your Apple PPV movie software does NOT have this buffering issue, thus this is something you can fix via a software update. To fix it please update the buffering setting on the Netflix app.

Apple please fix this with your next update. You now have thousands of postings saying people have this issue. You now know how to fix it.

The cable person just left the house. He checked everything: router, modem, cat 5 connection from cable box, everything. His considered opinion was that I did not have an abnormal amount of equipment, and my modem and router were working fine. I was willing to upgrade; but, he said it was unnecessary. I also have watched PPV through ATV and there were no problems of any kind. That has not been the case with Netflix streaming. BTW the streaming via You Tube works well too.

Here's another annoyed ATV / Netflix user. I've had my ATV for about a month. I have not watched 1 movie without some number of intertuptions. Either the stream freezes or the spinning gear appears.

Is there anyone that streams Netflix via ATV that IS NOT experiencing this issue?

Very un-Apple-like.

Greg Begay wrote:
Here's another annoyed ATV / Netflix user. I've had my ATV for about a month. I have not watched 1 movie without some number of intertuptions. Either the stream freezes or the spinning gear appears.

Is there anyone that streams Netflix via ATV that IS NOT experiencing this issue?

Very un-Apple-like.

I think the issues users are having come from multiple causes and have no single solution. I was having issues with my Comcast service. The speed tests would go from 20 mbps to 4 mbps. Users need to understand that the tests are burst rates and not sustained streaming rates. It turned out that the cable run to the modem was causing db loss enough that would cause the modem to reset. In addition, the modem was a version 2 that would have difficulty with handling the 20 mbps they upgraded my service to. The tech repaired the line and replaced the modem and now I get 30/5 with the burst speed tests. I'm watching Gosford Park in HD and DD 5.1 as I'm writing this. The cable modem is connected to an Airport Extreme (2009 version) and the ATV2 is wireless. For those that use only the ISP provided modem that has a built-in switch, it is my opinion that none of these can support the required throughput with WEP or WPA2 turned on. There just isn't enough horsepower. My Airport Extreme does all of the heavy lifting, so all the cable modem has to do is respond to the Internet requests from the AE. The AE DOES NOT do stateful packet inspection and instead only has a NAT firewall. Other routers that do IMHO do not have the horsepower to keep the data rates from declining.

Netflix is also part of the problem, as they don't have the capacity to handle all the requests during peak hours. Also your ISP (cable is worse) will have issues during peak usage hours. On a cable network such as Comcast, the burst test results are down after school and on into the evening hours.

ISPs can also perform traffic shaping by limiting throughput on the TCP/IP ports used by Netflix, or by loading slower routes to Netflix first in their DNS. There are many ways to do this, and of course they will deny that it isn't happening (remember Comcast vs. Torrent users).

Bottom line, the Netflix ATV2 issue has opened a can of worms. Users wanting their problems fixed will try solutions found here and keep adding changes to the previous ones that didn't work. My vote is that users go back to the standard settings for all of their equipment and ISP, then test one change at a time. Those who changed their DNS settings to Google or OpenDNS should be asking their ISP why they have to not use the ISP DNS to correct streaming issues (hint hint).

Good luck to all, including Netflix (adding bandwidth as fast as they can to catch up with the explosion of ATV2 and other device sales). Peace out!

My apple tv 2nd generation updated to 4.2.1 a couple of days ago, and since then Netflix doesn't work correctly. Basically it will play a movie, then just stop, you have to exit and resume the movie for it to continue.

It's not a network problem. When this occurs, I can continue to smoothly watch the same movie on the iPad.

It's really looks like a bug in 4.2.1.

Started happening immediately after the update.

My guess is the average time to failure is about 10 _ 15 minutes.... ie. There's a good chance that within 10 ~ 15 minutes of watching something it will just stop.

Exit, select the same movie, choose resume and it works.

Strongly recommend avoiding 4.2.1 until they fix it.

Michaelworks wrote:
...

I think the issues users are having come from multiple causes and have no single solution. I was having issues with my Comcast service. The speed tests would go from 20 mbps to 4 mbps. Users need to understand that the tests are burst rates and not sustained streaming rates. It turned out that the cable run to the modem was causing db loss enough that would cause the modem to reset. In addition, the modem was a version 2 that would have difficulty with handling the 20 mbps they upgraded my service to. The tech repaired the line and replaced the modem and now I get 30/5 with the burst speed tests. I'm watching Gosford Park in HD and DD 5.1 as I'm writing this. The cable modem is connected to an Airport Extreme (2009 version) and the ATV2 is wireless. For those that use only the ISP provided modem that has a built-in switch, it is my opinion that none of these can support the required throughput with WEP or WPA2 turned on. There just isn't enough horsepower. My Airport Extreme does all of the heavy lifting, so all the cable modem has to do is respond to the Internet requests from the AE. The AE DOES NOT do stateful packet inspection and instead only has a NAT firewall. Other routers that do IMHO do not have the horsepower to keep the data rates from declining.

...
Good luck to all, including Netflix (adding bandwidth as fast as they can to catch up with the explosion of ATV2 and other device sales). Peace out!

I've got a Qwest DSL modem connected to Airport Extreme via ethernet. I'm trying to figure out how to bridge the modem and let the AEBS handle PPPoE and DHCP. Let the AEBS do the "heavy lifting". Every other change I've tried has not been successful.

I don't get why others have reported no issues streaming Netflix with their playstation 3, TIVO, net connected bluray players, etc.

I too was having problems streaming netflix on my appletv 2nd generation. Everyother device I had it worked fine, no pausing or freezing. I deleted my instant que to about 3 movies and it works fine now. AppleTv wanted me to buy apple care or pay for their assistance, netflix told me to reboot everything, still didn't work. For me deleting my instance que worked. No more freezing during movie playback. Try it!!!!

Netflix recommends that you have an internet connection of at least 3.0mb. You can get away with 1.5mb, but that is your problem.