Netflix will not play most HD movies with 2.5 or 3.0 downstream connections. PS3 has no problems and is the only alternative to watching Netflix until Apple pumps out a fix. If any of you have any other ideas of why this all of a sudden happened right after the upgrade please inform us. Can't use AppleTV anymore to watch movies as they cut out every few seconds.
I see your point. I just got an Apple TV 3 and am trying to stream Netflix over a 3 meg DSL connection. The video quality is poor, and when I loaded the Example Short video, I discovered that it begins its stream at 1050 kbps but quickly downgrades to 560 kilobits per second and stays there. There is no reason for it to be streaming at such a low bitrate when there is nothing else using the Internet connection (confirmed with my DD-WRT router).
I can easily watch 2350 kilobit streams on my computer. Looks like I am sending the ATV3 back and keeping my ATV1. I've bought many Apple products in the last decade and this one is the only one I've been so disappointed with that I returned it.
There are 3 quality settings for your netflix account. To adjust these, log into the main Netflix website under your account and adjust your settings there.
I'm using the "best" video quality setting. The problem(s) appear to be that the ATV3 buffer size is too small and its adaptive streaming algorithm is way too conservative in selecting a bitrate.
My DVD player does not have adaptive streaming (and the example short video encodes which it plays do not display the bitrate), but based on the apparent video quality, it appears to play the 1750 kilobit streams.
Plug your ATV into your router over ethernet. If you got interference between it and your accesspoint, it doesn't matter how fast your ISP is.
It was already plugged in via ethernet. I was hoping the adaptive bitrate streaming would enable me to watch 2350 kbps streams.
I got an RMA from Apple and am sending this POS back.
Buffer size has apparently been cut in the latest AppleTV system upgrade
