Netflix lays out official response to bandwidth capping allegations

After a small but vocal amount of Netflix users got the world thinking that it was pulling a Comcast and putting caps on computer-based Watch Instantly users, the outfit's Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt has come forward to clear the air. He makes clear that Netflix's aspiration is to "deliver to everyone the best bitrate that their broadband connection can support," also noting that congestion "could affect some users, but not others, at some times, but not always." He also notes that different titles and encodes for different playback device types "may come from different CDNs or different servers at a particular CDN, so they may have different paths and different bottlenecks." We'd encourage you to hit the read link for the full explanation, but we're already seeing enraged Roku users bark back by his dodging of the so-called out-of-sync audio issue that's evidently still present. We'll go ahead and warn you, Netflix -- you can't please 'em all.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 23rd 2009 4:49PM]

major lulz at the image.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 23rd 2009 5:18PM]

Been getting out-of-sync audio on the Xbox too, only a couple of times so far.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 23rd 2009 5:23PM]

Bit Rate Override

Using the remote, hit Home Home Home Home Home Rewind Rewind Rewind FastForward FastForward (that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds, 2 FastForwards), keypresses about 1/2 second apart. You may have to try several times and the trick is to make the keypresses spaced out far enough. (Remember, the last two are >, which are on the bottom row of buttons, not the < and > keys to the side of the select button.) This will take you into debug mode. On this screen you would see something like this:

(that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds, 2 FastForwards)

NETFLIX bit rate override





Select a stream speed below to override the automatic stream
selection. This setting will remain in effect until you reboot the box.

enable playback debugging []
automatic []
2.2 Mbps []
1.6 Mbps []
1.0 Mbps []
0.5 Mbps []
back[]

THIS WORKS FOR NOW, I've felt a major slow down for the past 2 weeks and this hack come in handy

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 24th 2009 9:46AM]

That override is great unless you're streaming HD. Netflix encodes their HD content at 2.6Mbps. Unfortunately 2.2Mbps ain't going to get it.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 24th 2009 11:59AM]

Maybe I'm running a newer version of the software than you (version 2.0 build 2430), but these are my options in the hidden menu:

automatic [ ]
3.5 Mbps [ ]
2.5 Mbps [ ]
2.0 Mbps [ ]
1.5 Mbps [ ]
1.2 Mbps [ ]
1.0 Mbps [ ]
0.6 Mbps [ ]
0.3 Mbps [ ]
play main profile streams [ ]
disable playback debugging [ ]
back [ ]

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 24th 2009 12:37AM]

The same exact movie loads infinitely slower for me on my PC vs. the 360. I don't know if this "different servers" explanation is bs or not but they definitely don't perform the same. On the other hand every once in a while the 360 has a hard time getting full quality and will repeatedly stop to load throughout the movie. The problem is it's ALWAYS like that on the PC.