There are far too many things between point A and point B on the interwebs to easily figure out where a problem might lie. In the last few months, I started having problems with Netflix loading on my Samsung blu-ray player. At first, it was just connecting; I would receive a notice that “Netflix cannot not get an internet connection at this time”, in spite of having a solid, wired connection. A few retries and I would connect.
Then, as I began exploring the deeper recesses of Netflix’ online library, titles would take an awful long time to load. Lately, these films stop repeatedly, and I get the “rebuffering” slider. Sometimes, it outright doesn’t connect and says the film isn’t available. Other times I have to watch a film that looks like it was encoded for an old-fashioned low-bandwidth ISDN line – absolutely horrific.
This kept happening when I was trying to watch Starbuck. I was disconnected at least four times during viewing. And nearly all of the film looked like it was encoded for a 480 screen at 15 fps. Calls to RCN and line tests showed that I was receiving 50 mbps download speed, which is at least 3 times faster than needed for clean, streaming HD.
While watching another obscure title today, the same thing kept happening. When it was over, I decided to play an episode of Breaking Bad. It loaded almost immediately, and the picture was full HD/Blu-ray quality with no loss. I was stunned. I went back to the film – and it still looked like ass and kept re-buffering.
My only conclusion is that the Netflix cloud is somehow optimized for the most popular titles. This is not unlike the video store, which would buy 40 copies of a blockbuster movie, but only one copy of an old classic. But in this case, its Netflix cloud servers. The titles that are expected to receive the most play must get better distribution for clean streaming, whereas these smaller titles are probably relegated to a single distribution point to save space.
What does that mean? To someone like myself who wants to see the library of old classics, foreign, and obscure titles that make up most of the Netflix film archive, it means that we will continue to be treated as second rate citizens, getting lesser service for the same price point. If you want to see some of the films I have reviewed, chances are you will have to deal with low-bandwidth encoding and drop-outs as Netflix once again ignores its hardcore users where they have the lowest profit margin. Reminds me of the “choking” they do on their DVD titles to make sure you don’t get to rent too many in a short time period. Except now they are choking streaming customers.
If anyone else has this problem, and sees the same kind of service creep happening, please chime in. I’d love to hear other voices that have noticed this.
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