Netflix Problems

craigmag143 wrote:
Michealworks,

I'm using an Airport Extreme so had apple look at any issues with how the router and ATV are communicating. To rule out communication issues, they had me bypass my router and plug the ATV directly into the modem. This did not solve the problem either.

If you're getting 5mbs, you're the first I know of. A phone call to Netflix takes a couple of minutes.

Think I have my issue fiugured out. ATV is calling for an HD or higher quality signal, and with my 2.54 internet speed, it cannot supply this to the tv. I am able to watch on the macbook pro and ipad but not the tv. So, I adjusted the picture quality under account settings and, BINGO, can watch on the tv. I do not know why I was able to watch it before, maybe the colder weather or something changed with the update.

Either way, this is what fixed it for me, if you can watch on smaller devices, try to lower your quality and give it a try.

I just got off the phone with Netflix. Very positive experience. I was only on hold for 1 minute. Tech support guy was really nice. Here's what he had me do. It worked:

Logout of your Netflix account on the ATV.

Unplug ATV.

Wait 15 secs.

Plug it back in.

Login.

Voila.

HTH!

Well, I've been working on this problem at home for two or three weeks every night. I have had the ATV2 for 14 months.

For the last couple of months, some playback is so slow that it can take an hour to watch a half hour program. I tried the google DNS trick. Found out what is the fastest DNS server and switched both my airport extreme base station (g) to that. Factory reset my appleTV. Factory reset my airport base station. Downgraded its firmware (a trick under Lion due to the loss of Rosetta support). Still plenty of stalls.

The thing is that it all worked plenty fine until last month or so, so I suspected the most recent ATV update.. It cd still be that.

However, I got a bandwidth app and have done some speed tests through the day and am stunned by the results. I have time warner cable in a rural area.

I get 15mbps download throughput at 5:30 in the morning.

At 8:00 pm when I get stalls on my appletv, I whipped out the iPhone and tested it again.

I was getting 850kbps.

I recommend that you test the speed of your wifi through the day and see if you are really getting he 100mbps they tell you that they are selling you.

I think that the matter here is that Netflix doesn't buffer by design. I recently read that in the evenings, about half the traffic on the net is Netflix. That is kind of hard to comprehend, but it gives some indication of the scale of growth they are having, and, presumably, the changes out local ISP are failing -- err, trying-- to cope with. I'll be talking to time Warner today.

I've had the Apple TV 2 since it came out and have had this problem continuously. It was so bad originally that I just used my TivoHD to watch Netflix. That works fine until you run into the 100 episode limit that Tivo has with Netflix queues (another story) so if I'm watching something like Star Trek Deep Space Nine and I want to jump around from season to season, or watch anything with more than 100 episodes out of sequence, I have to use the Apple TV but the constant stopping and starting or "netflix not available" issues have been making me crazy. Keep in mind everytime I had trouble, I ran speedtest.net and comcast.speedtest.net and all reported 50+Mbps (yes I pay for a lot of bandwidth) download speeds and very low ping times. I even ran pingtest.net to check latency and it was fine, so I know it's not a bandwith issue. And the clincher is, that anytime I run into this problem, I can switch over to Tivo and watch that episode from where it left off with no problems!!!! The Tivo and the Apple TV are both hardwired to the same router.

After reading through this thread and others, I tried all of the following:

1. setting DNS on ATV to Google - worked for a while, then problem returned.

2. setting router to use Google DNS - worked for a while, then problem returned.

3. Enabling multi-cast on router (trying to fix iPhone wifi sync issue) - worked for a while, then problem returned.

4. Log out of Netflix, then log in again - worked for a while, then problem returned.

It occured to me the only thing these all have in common was rebooting the Apple TV and that it worked for a while, then problem returned.

So now I have a routine, when I'm done watching the Apple TV, I unplug it. Then I plug it in the next time I want to use it, and since it's just rebooted, it works fine for the couple of hours I want to use it.

Simple solution. Dumb, but simple.

Message was edited by: jrgutknecht, spelling

I have spent the last year on comcast with the 20Mbps upgraded internet service with Apple TV and Netflix. I get rebuffering needed every 30 seconds or so and have been very frustrated. I have called comcast who stated that its a problem with netflix and apple. Netflix says its a problem with comcast and apple etc...

Ultimately I have found that by changing from comcast to century link as my internet provider that I have no more rebuffering problems on the Apple TV & Netflix. The whole problem was COMCAST. They are decreasing loading speed to less than 0.5mbps when I am paying for 20mbps. A speed test shows 12 to 25 mbps which should be more than enough but when downloading netflix with apple tv I only get a very low speed with comcast due to restricting the speed. Century Link with APPLE TV works amazing. I have never had a rebuffering problem since.

JohninDenver,

I would be the first to want to blame Comcast, it's so easy 😁

But in my case, anytime I have this problem, I can switch to another Netflix capable device, on the same network, on the same TV and it's fine.

The last time this happened, I was less than 3 minutes into an hour long show. Apple TV buffered a couple of times, after the third time, I stopped playback, switched over to the Tivo and loaded that show and finished watching it on the Tivo.

It could be coincidence, but since I've started rebooting the Apple TV daily, I've not had this problem and nothing else has changed. (knock on wood)

For me the issue seemed to be content-specific. I could watch some things without any problems on Netflix via ATV, but for others I kept getting Internal Error 500 or Netflix Unavailable messages; or otherwise they'd buffer every 30 seconds or so.

In the end I think the issue was resolved when I called Netflix, followed all their instructions (to no avail) and finally convinced them it was a content issue when I showed them I could play some stuff but not others. Over the next few days, I noticed the same TV series working better and better - now problems seem to be rare. So I'd recommend calling Netflix if your issue is content specific.

I don't know if this has been mentioned on this thread, but I discovered something that seems to have fixed all my netflix streaming problems. My internet is supposed to run at 15Mbs, but after running a speed test, I usually run at 10-14Mbs wirelessly. I've read that if you want to run in HD, you need at least 8Mbs, but streaming from Netflix still froze constantly, especially at night. I shouldn't be having any streaming problems, but I was. I didn't have any problems streaming Netflix when I would plug my wireless Macbook Pro directly into my HD tv. But something about AppleTV makes it harder to stream from my router. So whatever.

Here's what I did:

So if you sign into your Netflix account online and go to Your Account & Help>Settings>Manage Video Quality, I switched mine to "Good Quality (up to .3 GB per hour"). Nothing was selected before, so I assume it was playing in "Best Quality (1GB per hour, or 2.3 GB per hour for HD)" by default. Ever since I changed this setting, I haven't had a single Netflix streaming hiccup. It's not streaming in HD, but the picture still looks good, and I'd rather have a good picture with no hiccups than an HD picture with constant hiccups and freezing.

This may have been brought up before, but its not a setting I noticed till recently. It works perfectly with my setup, and I imagine it has to work for others out there. So hopefully this solves some of your problems streaming Netflix wirelessly from your Apple TV.

I was so frustrated because I had the same problem (Error 139 on my ATV2). I tried rebooting, updating firmware, refreshing network settings - none of it worked. Here is how I finally fixed the problem:

1) On a computer, go to Netflix, then click on Your Account

2) Now click on "Sign out of all devices."

This worked for me, finally, although who knows it could have been a coincidence. I didn't need to reboot ATV2 to make the change work. Hope this helps!