Q: Netflix quality HORRID after update

Was told last night that Netflix worked fine around 7:30pm PST when the kids were watching something. Tried the Test Short last around 11:00pm PST and it started at 3000Kbps and quickly ramped up and held at 5800Kbps for the 5 or so minutes that I tested it. This was a pleasant surprise. Tried again this morning and it did the same. Perhaps something has changed for the positive. Will be checking again this evening with fingers crossed!

DanH wrote:

 

Markus,

 

Excellent info -- thank you. But there is an additonal possibility: if the problem is an incompatibility between the Netflix app and the operating system, it would probably require a cooperative effort between Apple and Netflix to fix it, even if the actual code changes are done by Netflix.

I think there is very little developers can actually change with these Apple TV apps. The UI is pretty much set in stone. All apps look and behave alike. But I am sure developers have control over streaming quality (as is mentioned in this article) and over how the app interacts with their own streaming servers - and with all the changes that Netflix made behind the scenes recently, that seems to be the most likely explanation for the problems all of us are having.

An incompatibily between a single Apple TV app and the Apple TV operating system seems highly unlikely.

I have not tested the Netflix app with this new update yet. Maybe the big problems are indeed fixed.

After quickly ramping up at the start, the test clip played at 5800 the whole time for me just now. We will see how it goes, as I have seen it do this before at non-prime-time hours since the problems began, only to revert to crap resolutions at the hours I really want to use it. I'll check it out tonight.

I too am getting better data rates and PQ this morning. Will check again tonight during primetime.

Matthew Brownstein wrote:

 

Was told last night that Netflix worked fine around 7:30pm PST when the kids were watching something. Tried the Test Short last around 11:00pm PST and it started at 3000Kbps and quickly ramped up and held at 5800Kbps for the 5 or so minutes that I tested it. This was a pleasant surprise. Tried again this morning and it did the same. Perhaps something has changed for the positive. Will be checking again this evening with fingers crossed!

You're lucky. I'm also on west coast. Tried watching at 9pm - horrible image quality after 2 seconds and it stayed bad. Just as it's been doing since Nov. 11. This new update with Bloomberg, etc. I believe wasn't released until this morning. So the change wouldn't have been what worked for you last night. Or did you see the new Bloomberg, ABC, etc. icons last night too?

Now that it is about prime viewing time here in EST (6:30 PM), I fired up my ATV2 and the Test Short is now streaming at 1050 kbps (640x480 resolution). It was consistently at 3000 kbps during the day. This isn't encouraging.

This is my fourth update here.

The first update was to say that I am having the same issue: Bad quality (235kbps on test video) on my ATV 3, Comcast at 15-10Mbps download speed, perfectly fine Netflix performance on iPad, iMac and Macbook Air.

The second update was to say that I ordered a Roku on cyber monday, despite not wanting to switch.

The third update was when I chatted with Netflix's customer support, and they suggested I cancel the service.

In this, my fourth and most riveting update, I'm going to tell you all that the Roku 2 works awesome on the same network. Nothing has changed except that I swapped out the ATV for the Roku. It is 7:00pm here in Minneapolis (why are there so many Minneapolis people having problems?), and I a getting a steady 3000kbps on the test video. (Netflix cancelled my billing, but I still have the service until the end of the billing cycle).

Definitely an Apple TV <--> Netflix issue, from what I can tell.

I'm having the same trouble everyone else is. I just watched a couple episodes of Alias and they looked gorgeous on my Chromecast and appeared to be in 1080p. On my Apple TV? Barely watchable. Less than 480p even.

No change here. Watching Lost on Netflix right now. 8:30 pm. In and out of high def.

I too live in Minneapolis and have been having the same problems. Netflix looks like crap on Apple TV at all times of day. However I can stream HD from my netflix app on my phone to Apple TV. It is clearly a issue with the netflix app on the Apple TV. This has been going on for over a month! Come on!

Also in the Minneapolis area. ATV2 streamed the example in 480 earlier today (before people got home), haven't tried the example stream on our ATV3. I get the lowest possible quality on my iPhone 5S, great quality on my iPad3, 1080p on our series 6300 Samsung TV (if you press the info button it tells you the resolution, very nice). Was going to try on this laptop but Silverlight (nope, ain't gonna do that)…

The quality on the ATV2 has almost consistently been very poor, with a few really odd exceptions when it's been good. Every other service (sans the terribad youtube) works flawlessy in max resolution. Comcast delivers very fast results on speedtest.net, easily 50Mbit/s to San Diego. The 5S seemed to work resonably (I switched it to LTE at first to see if that helped, which it did, and then it was good when I switched back. So a dead end, probably random) until I updated it and now it's unusable.

Just adding my voice to the problem.

I am also in Minneapolis and am enjoying the same horrible performance. 2 seconds of HD and then...blip! Low def mess. Looking at the Chromecast now - could sell my ATV for more than what the CC costs and be back to normal in a heartbeat!

Update. I just rebooted the Apple TV which I have done a million times over last few weeks but now it is showing Netflix perfect. So we shall see.....

Yep. Same problem. 500Kbps when watching on the Apple TV, but using my iPad and airplay to the atv, I get 4000Kbps +, full 1080p.

The issue clearly is with the appletv. We have all accounted for other variables.

So after 2 episodes of Portlandia working I was encouraged and started a movie but it is now back to the same old crappy quality. Ugh