Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Netflix Throttling Instant Video Streaming

Posted by kdawson on from the bandwidth-available-but-not-to-you dept.

rsk writes "For the last few weeks I've been experiencing terrible streaming video performance from Netflix on both my Xbox 360 and PC. While my Xbox 360 would at least stream at a lower resolution, my PC cannot seem to avoid 2-hr. buffering times before playback even started. I smelled shenanigans and started digging. With some help finding the debug menu for the streaming video player, I set out to figure out why playback was so slow. It seems that Netflix is significantly throttling Watch Instantly users (on the PC) down to an unusable cap — in my case, 48 kbps — on a per-connection basis."

10 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Clearwire by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 2, Funny

    It seems that Netflix is significantly throttling Watch Instantly users down to an unusable cap â" in my case, 48 kbps

    That's about the cumulative bandwidth Clearwire gives me on some days.

    (on the PC)

    They must have partnered with Apple.

  2. Makes sense to me. by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 5, Funny

    Netflix. Silverlight. And a series of tubes.

    Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got...an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

    They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

  3. Happened to me as well. by Filbertish · · Score: 2, Funny

    I had streaming issues through Xbox Live tonight. I thought it was just me.

  4. What happened: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    FYI there was a misconfiguration in the Netflix service (I'm a Netflix admin). The throttling was SUPPOSED to be 480 kpbs, which we think should be sufficient. It's already fixed.

    1. Re:What happened: by VGPowerlord · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why not 640kbps? After all, 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    2. Re:What happened: by powerspike · · Score: 3, Funny

      Of course, it saves a heap of time and money on all of that testing and revision crap

  5. Re:BitTorrent by pieisgood · · Score: 3, Funny

    Arrrrrrrr Life's grand ain't it?

    --
    Eat sleep die
  6. Re:Hrm. by danwesnor · · Score: 4, Funny

    So you're the one hogging "Delta Farce"!!

  7. Re:Not Netflix fault. by orkybash · · Score: 2, Funny

    Slashdot? Fact checking? You must be new here.

  8. Re:OP needs to get his speed convertion right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    48 kbps == 480 kbps

    -Verizon