I used to get 1080 or 720 from Netflix but now it barley holds 420. I’ve seen this for awhile but wanted to make sure it wasn’t my internet connection that was the problem. I tested with Vudu app on the same box and I’m able to steam movies there at 1080 with no hesitation. I also tried netflix on my PC on wireless connection right next to western digital box and I get 1080 on the PC so I’m confident it’s not a network issue on my side. I am connected with hdmi in auto mode on a 1080 240 htz samsung tv.
Forgot to add I’ve been on my account on Netflix and I have tried setting streaming mode to auto mode and hd mode with the same result.
Rollback the firmware then.
I use Netflix regularily and haven’t encountered any issues with Netflix before or after the update with my 3 players.
well gee i like the dts fix so are you asking me to choose between them when both should work?
I’m having no problems with 1080p netflix videos on this version… Are you in the US, or one of the other NetFlix territories?
Im in the chicago area
curooius to know if this is the same or similar issue to what I am seeing with my newly purchased WDTV Play device… I can’t get it to stream in HD — whereas my bluray player (which is on the same WIFI next to it) streams Netflix in HD without issue… is this a firmware issue pehaps?
see my thread on this http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-TV-Play-Discussions/Netflix-not-coming-thru-in-HD-on-my-WDTV-play-why-not/td-p/652391
I have been having the same issue for you. it happened right after charismas for me. the good old days i watched 720 all the time. now 288 most while 420 is a speacial moment now. i have called netflix with mixed results, first person told me they detected my comcast connection being up and down. it turned out that was not the case. after about the 3rd call to netflix i learned something interesting.
Some devices have different streams. the wd player and ruku etc… uses a lower compressed video stream ( looks better on tv ) and devices like blurey players etc… uses a higher compressed lower overhead video feed. the resolution is way better but you can see the difference in textures and such.
my personal opinion since everyone is playing the blame game, is netflix got hammered during the Christmas season. they cant keep up with the lower compressed feeds so things just default to 288p. i came to this conclusion because if i wake up at 4 in the morning and turn on my wd… behold 720p then latter in the day 288p with buffering.
i just wanted someone to tell me “we are working on it” and i will be fine, but no one seems to want to take ownership of anything.
I have been battling similar issue for some time.
I used to be able to conistently get 1080P streaming on Netflix on my WDTV via Comcast hard wired Ethernet connection. For example, I watched several seasons of Breaking Bad in 1080p without one glitch or stutter. More recently, I watched Walking Dead with mostly good results (720p - 1080p). Still more recently, I watched Orange is the New Black averaging around 480p.
Now, if I try watching anything during evening hours, I am lucky to get 480p and more commonly get 288 - 380 lines of resolution.
(For anyone who does not know, while watching Netflix on the WDTV press the Options button on your remote and in the upper left you will see a player timer and an indicator showing you the current resolution of the Netflix stream.)
If I try watching the same show or movie during day time hours on Netflix, I get flawless 1080p performance. It is during the prime time peak evening hours when performance slows to crawl.
These results are consistent across all my devices (even though only WDTV directly shows the resolution, my eye can distinguish on the others when I am at sub-DVD, DVD (480) or HD levels) – i.e. iPad Netflix app, Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV Netflix client, Vizio TV Netflix client all show same pattern as WDTV.
However, I have tested my Comcast Internet speed during the day and at night (at http://speedtest.comcast.net) and at all times my performance is around 28 Mbps – more than sufficient for Netflix streaming at 1080p. In fact, in the evening when I cannot get better than 480p performance from Netflix I AM able to get perfect 1080p streaming from both Vudu and Amazon.
Over the holidays, I made several calls to both Netflix and Comcast. Both companies pointed their finger at the other.
Netflix has checked everything with my client settings and all is good. They say problem is not at their end.
Comcast says that they don’t throttle Netflix and problem is not at their end. the phone agent played pretty dumb about the issue and said it was the first time she had heard the complaint and later suggested that Netflix cannot keep up with Comcast’s highest speeds (higher service level than where mine is) when I asked if upping my service would help problem.
My take is that whether advertent and inadvertent Comcast IS throttling Netflix trafic in the evening. With Net Nuetrality just overruled by US Courts, such throttling is no longer even illegal for Comcast to do.
The final argument which won me over that Comcast is mostly to blame is the thread below on Comcast forums where you will find scores of people complaining of same pattern: Netflix streaming crawling while other services are fine.
Hope this helps and wondering if others have seen same.
Seeing the same thing on Charter, right down to the previous good performance with Breaking Bad (although Netflix tops out at 720p with Charter)
Right now I’m leaning towards Netflix being overwhelmed with all the new media devices received over Christmas.
I started noticing degraded Netflix performance using the SMP on our Mediacom connection maybe about a month or a bit longer ago. Definitely before the firmware update. I have been meaning to call Mediacom and file a complaint, but no real way to know who is causing it. It is definitely getting annoying however. Perhaps this is a mass plot by ISPs to try to force money out of Netflix. Certainly not having any other obvious speed issues with connection. Or perhaps this is Netflix fault.
Very similar complaints in threads on the Roku Forum, and people there discussing if it happened since the last update of netflix on that box. Says to me that that this is on the Netfix or ISP end, and not your SMP.
-P
Yeah Comcast could be doing this without anyone knowing. seems shady if they were purposefully slowing down a competitor’s product.
Well the culprit has to be either the device (or firmware), the ISP, or Netflix.
In this thread alone we’ve seen the problem reported across multiple versions of WD players and firmwares. People in here report it on the SMP. I have it on my Hub. It was just said that people on the Roku forum are up in arms about the problem. That all lends itself to eliminating a particular device as the culprit.
People here have reported seeing it before and after the firmware upgrade on the SMP. My Hub hasn’t gotten any firmware upgrade since I got 720p on a consist basis last year. That, and the Roku folks complaints lends itself to eliminating firmware upgrades, or lack thereof, as the culprit.
People here have reported that the problem exists on multiple ISP’s, lotta Comcasts, I use Charter myself. All have the problem. I suppose you could imagine a conspriacy among all the ISP’s, but until there’s more to it than “Y’know,I bet they’re all …” I’m inclined to remain skeptical. So that lends itself to eliminating the ISP’s as the problem.
Soooo, in my opinion, that leaves Netflix.
If you google and sleuth a bit, you’ll see this issue has been going on since last summer and has gotten progressively worse.
While I can understand the logic behind “happening on multiple ISPs therefore it must be Netflix”, I don’t agree.
Netflix now accounts for about 1/3 of all internet traffic and has about 75% of the video streaming segment. Netflix’s growth/domination is hurting ISPs in 2 ways. The ISPs don’t want to be just a pipe, they want you paying for their streaming service (FIOS has Redbook, Comcast, Xfinity TV etc etc) and they are getting killed by Netflix. To add insult to injury their networks are getting killed with all the Netflix growth. It would kind of stink if you owned a business to have to spend money to support a competitor. There is an unbelievable amount of money at stake here.
Bottom line is that I believe the ISPs are doing the absolute minimum in terms of paying for / maintaining their peering / CDN agreements. That is why just some people are seeing this and really does depend where you are. They are perfectly happy to run their ports at full capacity which is when people will see lower bitrates and buffering. Netflix offered up Open Connect last year as their solution to this issue, but so far none of the big US ISPs have implemented it. Again why help a competitor?
http://gigaom.com/2013/06/17/having-problems-with-your-netflix-you-can-blame-verizon/
http://gigaom.com/2013/06/17/time-warner-cable-no-we-dont-throttle-youtube-its-all-about-peering/
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