Netflix, the image quality starts lousy and increases within a minute to full HD

[William Gaatjes]

I do not know if other people have noticed this, but i noticed when starting a movie, especially at any point not from the start, causes a lower resolution that increases slowly and finally ends at full HD after a minute or so. I notice this with every movie for some weeks now.
Anybody noticed this also ?
Do you think this is a browser issue (firefox 49.0.1) or that it is standard netflix behavior ?
Since the netflix app on my tablet only has to put out at 1280*800 i find it difficult to see the same effect there.

 

[TwiceOver]

Standard. It is their adaptive rate thing. The application determines your speed and gives you the quality corresponding to your connection. Some devices are faster than others to make that determination.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Strange thing is the subtitles are razor sharp. But in the movie, the compression shows, especially with diagonal lines in the movie that move around.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I have 16mbit adsl, that should be enough ?

Hotel Transylvania : "I do not say : blah blah blah"

 

[TwiceOver]

I have 16mbit adsl, that should be enough ?

Hotel Transylvania : "I do not say : blah blah blah"

That should be enough for quality streaming. I think a 1080 stream is like 5mbps. The subs are clear because they are just text overlayed on the video.

EDIT: My son walks around saying "I don't say blah blah blah", it's hilarious.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Thank you.

It sure is hilarious.

 

[Eug]

Not an issue with my Apple TV. Usually starts out HD. Same with my Blu-ray player.

However, I get the same low rez -> medium rez -> HD behaviour with my computers. My internet service is 25 Mbps down. Usually if my internet access is idle and I start Netflix, the switch to HD is relatively quick. However, if I have something relatively high Mbps running in the background, Netflix often takes a lot longer to settle down to HD. Makes sense though.

I get the impression though that my Win 10 Netflix app goes HD faster than my Mac with a browser, but I'm not sure if it's placebo or not.

 

[Arcadio]

Strange thing is the subtitles are razor sharp. But in the movie, the compression shows, especially with diagonal lines in the movie that move around.

Subtitles are not encoded with the video.

 

[MongGrel]

Most video streaming take a few seconds at least to synch in my experience.

Amazon Prime actually seems to synch faster than HBOGO to me.

But I'm using older Xeon chips I guess.

It is pretty much a moot point as far as I'm concerned, the picture quality usually goes up to the max in under 15 seconds here on either one.

 

[OverVolt]

Wifi speed starts off slow and increases in throughput as the router adapts to routing packet issues/interference/multiple devices/etc.

Its probably your router just lacking a bit.

I had a shitty Arris router when I moved and I ended up bridging it and using a Linksys router because of issues like that.

Overwatch would give me 20% packetloss for example because Overwatch is apparently a greedy packet ho then jumbles them all up over wifi.

I'm on 35mbps/6mbps that I pay out the nose for in the boonies and still had issues like that from a lackluster router.

A good router is important if you use alot of wireless devices.

 

[A Casual Fitz]

Who cares? Is it really that detrimental to your viewing experience?

 

[OverVolt]

Who cares? Is it really that detrimental to your viewing experience?

Its indicative of router issues if his connection is solid.

 

[A Casual Fitz]

Its indicative of router issues if his connection is solid.

Not really, Netflix tends to take a second to adjust to connection speeds.

 

[OverVolt]

Not really, Netflix tends to take a second to adjust to connection speeds.

Says the guy on a bad router =).

You'd be surprised how much more improved everything is with a proper router. Most routers weren't intended for all the devices people are hooking up on their home networks these days.

Then you throw in there the Xbox one, which has GUI lag if you have packet routing issues because it loads so much content from the internet on the fly. Then everyone has their phones on wifi. Then you have HTML 5 websites that load content on the fly as well. Its not so much data throughput as much as responsiveness and thats going to come from good packet routing protocols. And there are alot of shitty routers out there on the market.

 

[A Casual Fitz]

I guess I just don't care enough about the 2 second fuzzy picture while it adjusts.

 

[MustISO]

Netflix doesn't ever seem to do that for me but Amazon does. Amazon always take a few seconds (which is fine by me) but Netflix always seems to be sharp from the start.

 

[Matthiasa]

Yeah... though it can be forced more or less with alt+ctrl+shift+s. At least recently with that it does a quick buffer while not playing then play the entity of it whatever you are watching at whatever rate you select.

 

[smackababy]

I do not know if other people have noticed this, but i noticed when starting a movie, especially at any point not from the start, causes a lower resolution that increases slowly and finally ends at full HD after a minute or so. I notice this with every movie for some weeks now.
Anybody noticed this also ?
Do you think this is a browser issue (firefox 49.0.1) or that it is standard netflix behavior ?
Since the netflix app on my tablet only has to put out at 1280*800 i find it difficult to see the same effect there.

It has nothing to do with the browser unless Firefox implements MSE drastically different than Chrome and IE (it doesn't with the exception of the sourceBuffer garbage collection, btw). Your connection / CPU / and other factors determine the adaptive bit rate playing. There is a chance you're initially taxed hard, so it takes awhile to stabilize and go into a higher bit rate.

 

[Rifter]

my chromecast does not have this issue with netflix, neither does my ps3 while using netflix.

 

[nakedfrog]

I see this behavior watching Netflix on my PS3 as well.
I'm pretty sure I have an ethernet cable plugged into it, but it's been a good eight months since I looked back there.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Standard behavior. Happens on every device I use