Need someone with Netflix to test playback on first minute of a movie

[Ripcord83]

as of my post yesterday I haven't notice this once and I've watched almost a whole season of the show it was happening in. I'm guessing it's somthing on Netflix's end.

[nfodiz]

Well I found a fix BUT not the kind of fix I wanted. I logged into netflix.com and went to my account /manage video quality and changed it from BEST QUALITY to BETTER QUALITY and the issue is gone. Any thoughts???

[nfodiz]

Here is a network graph from the first 5 minutes or so of the stream in BEST QUALITY mode

[Strider_Nemesis]

Well, the average seems just about right for that quality. You could check if your Boxee Box behaves similarly, I guess.

EDIT: Note that pixelation should not be a symptom of your bandwidth not being enough, so there's certainly something amiss here. Have you tried contacting Netflix?

[nfodiz]

I have only flagged those videos as having video problems on their website under my user account.  I will give them a call in the morning.

[nfodiz]

After 2 calls to netflix my issue still persists. They are looking into the issue and told me I should receive and email in 24-48 hours. Here is a bandwidth chart from the same movie streamed from Netflix on a Boxee Box using the same ethernet cable. As you can see there is quite a difference in the average transmission rate.

[nfodiz]

More things I tried...

1. Different TV
2. Google and OpenDNS DNS servers
3. Picked up a brand new Live SMP at Best Buy
4. Tried another router
5. Tried another Cat5e cable
6. Tried another HDMI cable

None of these things made a difference.

Something funky going on...

[nfodiz]

It appears that the Boxee Box is limited to a 720p stream from Netflix while the Live SMP can pull a full 1080p stream. This is why Boxee can stream these movies no problem while Live SMP has issues. There is an issue somewhere with the 1080p encodes or the way the Live SMP handles the stream.

[TonyPh12345 · Accepted solution]

I think it's possibly an encode issue.

All of the titles referenced above play fine on my SMP.

Keep in mind that NetFlix has regional datacenters (Level 3 Colocation Facilities) using "Content Delivery Networks."

This means that depending on where YOU are, you may be getting different content than I do.

I have no way to prove that, but I suspect that might be a possibility...

[nfodiz]

Thanks TonyPh12345,

I think this is probably what is going on.  I have reported these movies as bad repeatedly for like 3 weeks now and it seems Netflix it too busy to take a look.