Netflix streaming problem

[taxicat]

Good Morning !

Have the 3G 32GB ipad.
My wifi is Clearwire.

Here's my issue.......when streaming, video and sound freeze completely for about 30-60 seconds. Or video keeps streaming and sound freezes for 30-60 sec.

The router shows 3/4 bars.

Has anybody else had this problem?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[commadore64]

No - but get SPEEDTEST app from apps store and see what your throughput is. Most likely the delay is Netflix is buffering because your connection speed is too slow

 

[DaveSt]

I get the missing audio problem from time to time. The video will look perfect but the sound just disappears. This only happens on my iPad. I personally think the Netflix app is pretty poorly written. Hopefully they are working on an update but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[commadore64]

i have been watch King Of The Hill series on Netflix on my ipad without those problems.
no problems with HULU or ABC Player either.

was fine on iOS 3.2.2 also and working on 4.2.1
{shrugs sholders}

 

[DaveSt]

One thing I have found with the iPad is that is is somewhat picky about what routers it works well with. I had a lot of Netflix issues using my Dlink DIR-655, but I purchased a refurbished Linksys E2000 ($30) and I have had no streaming problems when connected to that router. I pretty much have the E2000 as an iPad only router and that solution seems to work well for me. I force all of my legacy 802.11G devices use the Dlink.

 

[fbp]

NetFlix streaming problems

Here's my issue.......when streaming, video and sound freeze completely for about 30-60 seconds. Or video keeps streaming and sound freezes for 30-60 sec.

There are a lot of possible reasons for these kinds of problems.

I have recently looked at the same problem for an AppleTV (nice) iPAD (joy) and iPOD trouch (passion). Most of the study was on the AppleTV (quality dedicated streaming device). I'm leaving out the technical details, but you can infer from the comments that they are obvious.

1) The WI-FI can "retrain" due to interference from other units. The network may look OK, but a sniffer or spectrum analyzer will tell a different story. A hard wire to the network can address this issue.

2) Local network congestion. Running a big download can congest the local network feed. This can be potentially corrected by enabling Quality of Service (QoS) on the local router (good luck). Of course you could trim your torrents down to a single stream...

3) ISP network congestion. This is a problem in some areas. It's hard to prove and pretty much out of your control. If you get an IT person to confirm that it is a problem, the ISP can enable QoS in their equipment and / or get more WAN bandwidth.

4) WAN network congestion. This is a crapshoot... hard to prove and harder to fix. Evan a large ISP has limited ability to fix these kinds of problems. The best chance is to look for an ISP that is well connected.

5) Local equipment problems. The Apple TV has subtle firmware problems. I have seen it get confused and need an occasional reboot. It seems that they leak memory in the network layer or perhaps have basic hardware issues (flaky memory). Make sure that the unit is not hot (like smothered with stiff and on top of the toasty cable box) and has adequate cooling air. If your network has issues (like lots of bad wireless packets), look to improve the network quality (e.g. hard wire and QoS).

6) NetFlix streaming engine is overloaded. I doubted this as the engineers should design out this possibility. However, watching popular movies have problems and obscure titles don't. So, there is an argument that the servers might be overloaded with retransmissions - due to network errors. If there are enough the server can be overloaded...

So, do what you can to clean up your network (if you are savy run check the network for lots of retransmissions), make sure that your equipment is happy (e.g. cool) and avoid watching popular movies during prime time (there are lots of marvelous obscure titles).

I hope that this helps.

- Rick "Doctor it hurts when I do this. Then don't do that" ;^)

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Thanks for taking the time to provide this very comprehensive review. I know some senior people at Netflix so, if the problem persists and you believe it's a Netflix problem, I can take it straight to close on the top of the 'food chain'..

Just let me know.

Tim
Scotland