Netflix

Anyone have the problem where netflix takes forever to load??? It will start to load then kick me back to the selection screen...

This has happened after the update, and I cant recall the firmware back to the original one (4.1) cause apple checks the firmware..

Suggestions?? I have dried google dns, changing the dns to my ISP and it doesnt work...

I have a 2wire modem with 1.5 mb/s down and i can stream on netflix.com and my iPhone and Wii... it just refuses to play on apple tv and its mad annoying...m

kslingo said:

I have a 2wire modem with 1.5 mb/s down and i can stream on netflix.com and my iPhone and Wii... it just refuses to play on apple tv and its mad annoying...m

Click to expand...

Are you trying to stream HD? 1.5Mb/s is fairly low bandwidth for any kind of streaming, particular HD, and particularly when there's more than one device using that bandwidth. Any chance your ISP offers greater bandwidth?

Netflix should be able to decide if my connection is able to play HD or not... Thats what it does on the computer...

Aparently this is a issue that apple needs to address in a future update...

kslingo said:

Aparently this is a issue that apple needs to address in a future update...

Click to expand...

Yes, because there is no way it could be your setup or anything....

baggss said:

Yes, because there is no way it could be your setup or anything....

Click to expand...

im not saying that It is... but it works fine on netflix on my computer and iPhone... so I have no idea what else to do I have tried...

I bought a Gen 2 ATV this afternoon. The Netflix experience seems a bit erratic thus far for me. I'll reserve judgement for now. I watched an episode of "American Dad" and noticed pixelation in the various outlines drawn to detail the characters. I noticed pulsating lighting and similar pixelation on the movie "Surrogates" with some of the background lighting, mostly tubular and linear light sources and liner shapes that were lighted.

The same shows were just fine on my MacBook Air 3,2. They were also fine on the same TV I use the ATV with when I used my Mac Mini to view them via the Mini's mini-display to VGA connection. My TV is a decent 37" LCD with resolution up to 1080i. I'm wondering if I need to adjust the resolution down to 480-something when using Netflix on it?

Anyhow, I'll mess with it more this week and see if there is some setting I need to tweak.

Perfect for me on the ATV2. I am on a 6mbps down on AT&T DSL. Are you guys using wired or wireless??

JohnCL said:

Perfect for me on the ATV2. I am on a 6mbps down on AT&T DSL. Are you guys using wired or wireless??

Click to expand...

I'm using Comcast 6MB. My ATV2 and Mini are wired to an Airport Extreme N with gigabit and my MBA is connected via Wireless N.

You have plenty of bandwidth to do Netflix without a hiccup. I know there are times that I see choppy / blurry video on my iPad, but it usually clears in a minute or two. We have the same setup, and I have my ATV wireless and have had 100% perfect results so far.

On a side note Dave, how is that new MBA working out for you? The wife loves hers!

kslingo said:

Anyone have the problem where netflix takes forever to load??? It will start to load then kick me back to the selection screen...

This has happened after the update, and I cant recall the firmware back to the original one (4.1) cause apple checks the firmware..

Suggestions?? I have dried google dns, changing the dns to my ISP and it doesnt work...

I have a 2wire modem with 1.5 mb/s down and i can stream on netflix.com and my iPhone and Wii... it just refuses to play on apple tv and its mad annoying...m

Click to expand...

I have the same problem, after a couple of seconds of loading, I get kicked back into the selection-screen. I only experience this issue when I'm connected through a EU-US VPN(3/1Mbit) If connected through a different uplink(12/5Mbit) it works just fine.

I'm able to stream on my Mac through the VPN, no problem. But after the firmware-update the AppleTV stopped. Any input?

When you couple slower internet speeds with less robust G wifi, it's going to make Netflix a little flaky.

schweb said:

When you couple slower internet speeds with less robust G wifi, it's going to make Netflix a little flaky.

Click to expand...

OK, but the ATV is not on a wireless connection(1.5m cable). And the Asus RT-N16(DD-WRT) was working just fine for a month until recently.

It seems the loading "times out" earlier now than on earlier firmware... :/

JohnCL said:

You have plenty of bandwidth to do Netflix without a hiccup. I know there are times that I see choppy / blurry video on my iPad, but it usually clears in a minute or two. We have the same setup, and I have my ATV wireless and have had 100% perfect results so far.

Click to expand...

Go figure. I'm going to try and see if the multicast rate set on the router does anything. I doubt it, but it's something to try. I did notice that the videos on the ATV don't seem to have any visual indicator of any caching ahead of what I'm watching. I could swear it caches ahead a small amount on the Mini, but I'll have to look again when I get home from work.

JohnCL said:

On a side note Dave, how is that new MBA working out for you? The wife loves hers!

Click to expand...

So far I am extremely happy with the13" MBA. I figured if I bought one they might just come out with a back lit keyboard model sooner. I may have just saved everyone a 6 month wait on that feature!

XJ-linux said:

Go figure. I'm going to try and see if the multicast rate set on the router does anything. I doubt it, but it's something to try. I did notice that the videos on the ATV don't seem to have any visual indicator of any caching ahead of what I'm watching. I could swear it caches ahead a small amount on the Mini, but I'll have to look again when I get home from work.

Click to expand...

Let me know how it works out. It is interesting to see some of the issues with this, especially using virtually the same hardware and same connection speeds. A visual would be nice, you would think that it would have to be doing some caching to work properly.

XJ-linux said:

So far I am extremely happy with the13" MBA. I figured if I bought one they might just come out with a back lit keyboard model sooner. I may have just saved everyone a 6 month wait on that feature!

Click to expand...

Ha, yeah! Like I said, the wife loves hers, but when she looks over and sees my keyboard she gets a little testy! Not sure why they left that out. I doubt it takes that much extra space. I just saw that you went all out with the Air, wow what a machine!

Netflix works like a charm for me.

Wireless G, 3 Mbs internet connection. Plays HD whenever possible.

iLars said:

OK, but the ATV is not on a wireless connection(1.5m cable). And the Asus RT-N16(DD-WRT) was working just fine for a month until recently.

It seems the loading "times out" earlier now than on earlier firmware... :/

Click to expand...

I'm still going to say it's your internet speed that's the problem, it's barely enough for streaming if you're lucky. It's actually slower than 3G wireless and that barely works with Netflix and Hulu.

I've noticed extreme pixelation as well at times on my ATV during netflix. I was watching Death to Smoochy last night on it (Great movie by the way) and the more colorfull scenes were extremly blocky but then retuned to normal once the colors retuned to more standard ranges. I can live with it and still love my ATV but it would be nice to see that picture quality improve. I have yet to rent a move from itunes on it so I don't know if it's better or not. have watched a couple youtube videos and haven't noticed the pixelation there.

I have 10Mbps speeds on average through my Comcast connection and connect my ATV to a Linksys E3000 Wireless N router on the dedicated 5Ghz channel while all my other devices share the seperate 2.4GHz connection (This router has two seperate wireless access points built into it).

-Mike

I'll just follow up to my earlier post... it seems that in my case, the culprit would appear to be the connection between me and Netflix. Everything that I stream from iTunes is fine. In fact, videos I stream from YouTube and MobileMe are excellent as well. Netflix is the only source which pixelates or chops. This seems to occur on the ATV but not on any other devices. It doesn't happen every time either - maybe 50% of the time. It's not enough to make me too angry, but I certainly hope Netflix streaming improves.

for me it will play anything in SD, which is hardly anything... HD is the culprit and there is no way to turn HD off that I know of... When playing a SD video it will play automatically... But HD it just spins and spins and then eventually kicks me back to the selection screen..

One would think that If i click on a HD video it would see that my connection isnt capable of playing HD and switch to SD automatically...

C'mon netflix FIX THIS!!!! or is it a APPLE PROBLEM???

Everyone needs to realize this is all still a relatively new technology. How about responding to the email they send out with practically every 2nd or 3rd movie you watch and let them know about your issues. Netflix seems to be pretty committed to streaming content. They are still very much into the mode of accepting feedback and seem to be continually tweaking their system.

Or

On the Netflix page, head for:
Your Account & Help
then under Instant Watching Activity hit the 'Report a Problem' button

Provide them with the issue, the device you were using, rated download speed of your internet connection and if on a computer, give them the Operating System, CPU and GPU.

Have to say, I have not experienced any issues here at the house on any of the following equipment in at least a year with Netflix streaming: iPhone 3GS, iPad, my 4 yr old MBP, Win 7 HTPC, Roku, and PS3 (don't have the ATV). I pay for a 7 mbps internet connection which tests out at 20-30 mbps on occasion.

I also watch Hulu plus, iTunes, Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow and Vudu. Pretty much without issue across the board on the devices where any of these services are available.