@iFans, Gather behind me.:

itunes isn't really comparable here. you would very quickly rack up a huge bill using itunes and netflix service can be had for cheap. i pay like $17 a month.

in any case, to watch itunes on your tv, you'd still have to buy the atv, which is actually twice the price.

props_nyc

@admoseremic:

Good for you, you steal. Your so cool.

iFans, Gather behind me.

My Roku used to stream at 4 dot quality (the max) all the time. I have a 20Mpbs connection and never have any issues streaming on my computer. Now, I'm lucky if I get 2 dot quality on the Roku. I have it set to force 4 dot quality now, but it takes forever for it to buffer. Seriously disappointed with Roku.

Cuschoolie1

I only have what seem to be personal issues on my xbox360 wireless. I can't watch anything before 11pm I if I want a decent signal worth a damn. :P

Turael

I've never noticed bad quality in my videos that I get from Bittorrent. . .

admoseremic

why buy a whole nother box... ?!
All bias aside, itunes is way easier, and the quality is great!

iFans, Gather behind me.

I've noticed quality problems on Xbox360.
3/4 of the way through one flick I was watching the movie quality dropped drastically.
I'm sure it's just growing pains. Overall, I'm very happy with the 360 experience.

stackedrecords

I have the Roku box and I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary... consistently.

One incident does jump to mind: whilst watching a show the signal cut out, only to rebuffer at 60% of what it had been playing at a few moments before. This went on for a few hours, but then just as suddenly returned to normal.

I thought it really odd, but haven't seen any indications of the problem return since.

jhcovert

I don't have a Roku, but I've been hitting my instant queue pretty hard lately, and every episode I've watched in the past few days, a couple minutes into it my laptop/desktop/Xbox 360 will announce a drop in connection speed and rebuffer.

OfficerMike

@ninjagin: While they need more newer movies...it's great. Streaming it to my 360 and it's worth it to me.

Darkest Daze

I'm just curious to hear gizmodian assessments of netflix streaming in general, frankly.

ninjagin

This is just one of the main reasons I'm happy to stick to my physical format

Thats Dr Bear to You

@iFans, Gather behind me.: oh iTroll calm down since when did you become the moral police?

Thats Dr Bear to You

I've been viewing a lot on my XBOX and after a minute or two at full quality it always drops down to about half. Every time. Without fail. Thought it was my internet connection but even with nobody else using my network and viewing movies at like 2 in the morning when my neighborhood should be quite it does the same thing. Still, can't beat the convenience.

YardanCabaret

Sounds like so far we've got anecdotal complaints about it on all platforms, does that sound right.

3 things to think about:
1) maybe it's not netflix, or the API you are using (web, roku, xbox 360, Blu-ray player), but your bandwidth, and the speed caping or issues related to that
2) maybe it's not netflix, and the API sucks, and is bogging down trying to decode on subpar hardware (especially on dumber boxes like the roku
3) maybe netflix really needs to think about the implications this is having on overall interweb traffic, and use more robust CDN's that distribute closer to where people are downloading/streaming

beekerstudios

I have a pretty stable, but slow connection and watch Netflix on my 360s. 3Mbps cap, I've seen the "reubuffering" dialog only two times, but quality was about that of an analog cable or broadcast program. I am very happy.

On a side not, something that might be of interest here, you can have one Netflix account connected to two 360s (possibly two bd-p2500s, two Rokus etc). Queue still works. You just enter another number (from Xbox console) into www.netflix.com/activate - it doesn't erase the first device.

Lizard_King

@props_nyc: While I agree on the itunes vs netflix front, I hook up my laptop directly to the TV via an HDMI/DVI adaptor. Its kinda clunky, but since neither the PS3 or TV does netflix streaming, that's what I gots ta do!

dssstrkl

@iFans, Gather behind me.: Good for you, you fail at homophone differentiation. You're so cool.

OfficerMike

@iFans, Gather behind me.:

*You're*

admoseremic

@Cuschoolie1: How do you force quality of the stream?

lanretedragon

hasnt changed on my roku at all except maybe 1 time a while back but started downloading something and another in my house playing a game online, etc so expected.

i love the netflix instant watch, really glad i bought it.

kickace

I have a Roku and I haven't noticed any streaming quality issues, the streams still look pretty decent. Although lately I've been trying to watch episodes of Family Ties and some of the episodes just refuse to buffer. Some of them will go 5-10 minutes and then just stop dead and never recover.

I think Netflix is getting hammered server-wise with the XBox stuff and the new players, etc. so I imagine it's going to take them some time to get more bandwidth online.

Marcelo

@OfficerMike: That's happening to me a lot, too. And what's frustrating is I go from 3 bars in HD to 4 bars in SD -- but why not put me down to 2 bars in HD? 4 bar SD is like 1/10th the quality of 2 bar HD! (Sorry for the confusing 'bar' references..)

jzulli

Picture quality hasn't been so much the problem for me as audio popping. If you really are having problems, Roku wants you to report them HERE: [forums.rokulabs.com]

They can't help if you don't tell them what your problems are. Who knows whose problem it really is though, when the blame does bounce from Netflix, to Roku, to your ISP... leaves my head spinning.

MCWHAMMER

@Thats Dr Bear to You: OK Grandpa, but what the heck are you doing on a Gadget blog if you are "into" physical stuff only?

If you tried Netflix streaming just once (You can on your PC/MAC/ROKU/LG/XBOX 360), you'd be converted. Your loss, that's all I'm saying.

MCWHAMMER

Yup, last night in fact. With a 6Mbp/s line which ran a speed test perfectly, we were only getting 1 star quality. It was so unbelievably blurry on our HDTV as to render the movie completely unwatchable. This afternoon we had 3 stars and this evening we're back to 4.

uhohzombies

@lanretedragon: You have to use the remote. And you have to do the sequence in perfect order or it won't take you to the "bit rate override screen".

1) Press the home button five times
2) Press the left arrow key three times
3) Press the right arrow key two times

Takes a few times to get the timing down. Once you get it right, you'll see a screen that lefts you choose any of the streams (2.2mbps to 0.5 mbps), keep it on automatic, and and turn on playback debugging.

Cuschoolie1

I hope this isn't a permanent issue, I just bought one of these for my girlfriend for christmas...

12-Inch Idongivafuck Sandwich

I've had no issues at all. Content streams incredibly fast and the quality is equal to DVD quality. Only on a couple occasions did I notice sound out of sync with video, and a one-click rewing and replay resolved it.

It's been absolutely flawless. I have Comcast, with average speeds of about 14 to 16 Mbps.

BeautifulAgony

@12-Inch Idongivafuck Sandwich:

Same here. Mine should arrive in the mail tomorrow and I am going to be pissed if this thing doesn't work right; especially since I got her a treo 680 last year that was a brick by valentine's.

Duncan345

its defiantly not roku, Ive been having problems with instant streaming a lot lately on both the 360 and on PC, trace routes to netflix's media servers are having a lot of packet loss.

I called netflix about it, and they blamed my ISP, which is comcast. they said that comcast is filtering netflix.

THis is highly possible since comcast sucks balls so i called comcast and the representative basically told me that he is a mere peon and that they tell him nothing there.

crimsonfury

@Cuschoolie1: It should be noted that these aren't the directional arrows (around the select button) but the REWIND and FASTFORWARD buttons to the left and right of the PLAY button. Using the directional arrows surrounding the Select button will not work.

So:
HOME x 5
Rewind x 3
Fast Forward x 2

BeautifulAgony

@Lizard_King: Netflix clearly states on their Instantplay FAQ that you can activate up to four devices simultaneously...

BeautifulAgony

@admoseremic: THANK YOU. There should be someone on full time duty making sure the proper use of "your" and "you're".

The Real 31

I have had the Roku since the first month it was released and almost got 4 quality dots until the last few weeks, where I have never had a video come up with more than two quality dots, and usually it's just one. Unwatchable.

PC has the same performance issue. Since I don't really know who's responsible, I blame both Comcast and the Netflix bandwidth being hammered by NXE & new content.

Dont Know Me? You Are Me.

@BeautifulAgony: Yup, you're totally right. Should have been more specific. Thanks for catching that!

Cuschoolie1

@OfficerMike: Comcast?

Darkest Daze

@Cuschoolie1: I love that there are cheats for this!

SpeedyGonzalas

@The Real 31: Yes, there should. If you can't use 4th grade grammar, then how can you possibly understand modern technology? Ignorance shows.

SpeedyGonzalas

I've had the Roku box since June... it's all good, working fine.

runninghorse

I've had issues with mine intermittently. At first I thought it was issues with my router or my net connection, but streaming to my PCs work flawlessly. Sometimes I get 4 dot quality, sometimes I get 1 dot, even if there is no good reason for it.

kwicherbichin

I have what seems to be the typical Comcast complaint, in that I can consistently get 7+Mbps on any other browsing / downloading, but I am getting the "your internet connection has slowed" message a couple of minutes into the program.

It has to be NetFlix and the increased usage, as this never happened back when we were on a monthly quota of watch instantly hours. It's basically made what used to be an awesome service totally unusable.

Juneau.what

I have a Roku Netflix box and used it quite a bit over Thanksgiving weekend. I watched four movies with my family over the course of four days.

During one movie, playback stopped and re-buffered, but the, er, "quality dots" on the lower right of the loading screen dropped from four to two. I stopped the movie, started it again and it re-buffered at highest quality.

I'm running it on an 802.11g wifi network connected to Verizon FiOS:

[gadgetboy.org]

My only complaint thus far is the lack of current releases and the size of the streaming library. (Then again, that's everyone's biggest complaint, right?)

gadgetboy

My Roku box has not had any problems at all. I don't think it's necessarily a Roku issue, I'm thinking it's Netflix. People that have issues are reporting bottlenecks in their tracert to the servers while people who don't have problems have no bottlenecks. I've heard just as many complaints about the exact same issues on the Xbox as with the Roku box, so it would appear that Netflix has changed something with the rollout of the Xbox availability.

BEERxTaco

@iFans, Gather behind me.: All bias aside? You're in here again comparing two completely different services. Itunes is NOT "easier", Netflix is a subscription service, something Apple never has and never will have.

You just don't know when to quit, do you?

LeanderSnookie

While I don't have a roku box, I do have an xbox 360 and netflix. I have noticed a drop in quality over the last week or so when streaming video. I used to always get quality of at least 3 "bars" but now I often only get one.

Spongehead56

From the variation in severity and platforms I would have to assume that ISP's play a much larger role than people think. Before you go and purchase one of these devices pay clos attention to the quality of your current internet service during different times of the day and when you're streaming large files. I'm pretty sure you'd find that you'd get the same results when you plugged in your Roku. If your connection sucks and you have Comcast or Charter, then good luck because you're never going to get anyone to fix it.

pepelicious

@MCWHAMMER: @MCWHAMMER: I love gadgets just as much as the next guy. But what I love even more is not having to "rent" something I can own very cheaply nowadays and use whenver I want to.

pepelicious

I have a 360 and a Roku box, and a few days after 360 streaming went live I experienced quality drops on BOTH. For about two days, maybe more, streaming would start at two bars and about 30 seconds into the stream it re-buffered on 1 bar.

Seems to have cleared up as of last night though, since I was watching shows with full 4 bar quality without any issues. My money is on this having been an issue on the Netflix side.

Pizdets

I have a Roku and haven't had any issues. Regularly get 4 dots, mostly 3. Just as before

kkuphal

I work very closely with a high-end digital broadcast facility (using uncompressed HD video, if you can believe it), so everything else out there generally looks lousy to me. However, I was at my brother's house on Thanksgiving and watched a movie on his Roku box. I was actually pleasantly surprised. The digital artifacting wasn't as bad as I would have thought it would be. The errors I saw on screen seemed to be likely related to broadband QOS issues. (Remember, even cable and fiber broadband can have intermittent hiccups.)

I think that the likely cause of these systemic quality problems (if they actually exist) is related to broadband service. Regardless of promised speed, broadband networks are often subject to frequent traffic-induced performance problems.

From my point of view as an engineer, Roku is pretty damned good for something that gives you unlimited movies for $99 in equipment and $8.99 a month.

dcjeepguy2001