Two AppleTVs in my house.  Both with sub-HD quality.  I just tweeted Netflix CS...they seem to respond quickly.  I urge everyone to do the same...I referenced this thread...

https://twitter.com/Netflixhelps

Quality is so bad. SD from 1990. I just got my Apple TV 3 or so weeks ago so this is all I know. You guys didn't experience this until recently?

Everyone contributing to this thread should submit feedback so there is more awareness.

Has anyone seen anything on lifehacker or gizmodo or any other sites about this? Exposure there sometimes gets attention.

I'll do my part. Please, everybody submit some kind of feedback. This is really an unacceptable issue.

I tweeted to them last week about but got no response.

Lukazoid wrote:

 

. . . It is 7:00pm here in Minneapolis (why are there so many Minneapolis people having problems?). . . .

I'm in Minneapolis, too. I can only offer an opinion, but I think Comcast is part of the problem here. Probably because of their feud with Netflix on not accepting Open Connect. Performance is very time dependent here in Minneapolis, with service much worse in the evening prime viewing hours.

Whatever problems the Netflix/Comcast relationship have are giving us, in effect, a throttled Netflix feed, particularly at prime time. Even though my Comcast feed is 70 down and 10 up, measured by SpeedTest. Something about the Netlix app working with Apple TV software just can't handle the throttled feed. So, here in our cold city, I think there is plenty of room for improvement among Comcast, Netflix, and Apple.

Here's hoping Netflix can resolve their problems with Comcast and fix their ATV app. And Apple can help make that work. Again, only my opinion based on what I read here and see in my own home. I wish someone could give us the actual facts about this.

I don't think it's Comcast, or any ISP, for that matter.  There are test you can run to see if your bandwidth is being throttled.  Go to http://www.measurementlab.net/tests and try either the NDT test or the Glasnost test.

After this morning of getting a full SuperHD 5800 kbps stream on my ATV3 in the wee hours...I tried again at lunch time and got a 720x480 SD quality picture.  Then again during primetime...back down to the bottom rung again.

Agree with the past few posters.  Tweet NF CS (cite this thread) and raise it to any outlets you can think of.

I tweeted to them twice and they responded promptly to both! They gave me the usual things to try which I confirmed was not the issue and had already been tried. They then said oh okay, well can you call us please? I don't have time right now, but if anyone wants to call on my behalf, reference @mpt45 on twitter and this thread.. perhaps we can make some headway!

Markus Wernig wrote:

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

And yet such things happen. Hence my willingness to assign tentative blame to either party.  Netflix does these clients for a living and they have more than one iOS client.  It's not like they're small time developers.

skywlkrsnd wrote:

 

I don't think it's Comcast, or any ISP, for that matter.  There are test you can run to see if your bandwidth is being throttled.  Go to http://www.measurementlab.net/tests and try either the NDT test or the Glasnost test.

You may be right, but frankly we don't know. See this long thread from the Comcast site I provided earlier. It takes browsing through it to see that Comcast's "throttling" could just be providing an inferior path to Netflix while their Netflix Open Connect rejection continues. The thread starts some weeks ago, but is up to date to now.

See: http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Basic-Internet-Connectivity-And/Is-Comcast-blocking -Netflix/m-p/1885277...

You can see there is great unhappiness about Comcast as well. We don't know how much this applies to other ISP's. But it's clear Comcast-supplied Netflix via Apple TV is certainly a problem here in Minneapolis. Somehow the Netflix app working with Apple TV, as well as my iPad Air, has a problem dealing with the situation.

Just a +1 here... My iPhone 5 streams Netflix to Apple TV 2 with a beautiful HD picture. The same movie played on the same wifi network directly from the Apple TV 2 looks terrible. This has been going on for a month or more.

I reported that last night I watched an hour program that stayed at high resolution throughout and wondered if it was a fluke. It was a fluke. Back to the same old problem tonght. Watching the Example Short 23.976 right now with a bitrate of 235 kpbs and resolution of 320x240.

We'll I can confirm that my appletv 3 is still absolutely garbage when I test the sample short, it can't even hold 640x480

But my ps3 streams 1080p no problems at 5800kbps so nothing has changed.

I just streamed the Example Short on my ATV - horrible. 560kbs. Switched to an Airplay stream via iPhone -- gorgeous, steady 3000kbs. It's Apple TV.

More info on a complicated problem. The poor experience here in Minneapolis (Comcast service) in prime viewing hours only confirms this problem is bigger than just Apple TV's. Problems with Netflix streaming exist far beyond the Apple issues discussed in ths forum. I provided a link to a long Comcast Discussion thread above, regarding this discontent.

Here's a very interesting excerpt from that Comcast site, by someone who seems to know what he's talking about. I don't doubt that some on this site may disagree with this, but it provides interesting ideas. It would be good to learn what you think.

12-10-2013 04:04 PM

I'm in the Bay Area, and through some friends of friends I was able to get some info regarding the poor streaming rates. As far as the Bay Area is concerned, Netflix is fully aware of the poor experience, but there is nothing they can do. During peak hours, network connectivity between Comcast and the Netflix providers are extremely limited. I was shared some numbers where rates dropped by over 50% or more during peak. This is a common pattern and has been like this for at least 6 mo, possibly longer.

The bottleneck is on Comcast's side, and they have no plans to augment connectivity to handle the increased traffic. This impacts some devices more than others. Devices capable of parallel streaming, like the PS3 and newer smart TVs, will perform much better than Xbox, Apple TV, or even the website. I can't speak to other areas that Comcast serves, but it certainly sounds like Comcast is aware, but mostly unwilling to share that information to its customers, opting instead to place the blame on Netflix.

Any Comcast problem is separate.  This issues spans all ISPs.

I'm getting the same thing here. I asked if this was a known issue on their @Netflixhelps Twitter account, and they said it wasn't. https://twitter.com/Netflixhelps/status/411150789659598848

I'm not sure if this is an Apple TV issue, or a Netflix app within the Apple TV issue. But it's definitely something.

Latest reply after I linked this thread -- https://twitter.com/Netflixhelps/status/411152916909932545