Tech Help

[boffo]

We've been watching a lot of Netflix Instant Download on our Xbox, which is awesome when it works. But it only works about 75% of the time. The rest of the time, it will freeze up or declare the bandwidth is too low

Comments

[rah]

In theory this setup should be fine. Replace "Xbox" with "Tivo" in this setup and you have my setup (which works fine for me), and I'm pretty sure there's more space between my router and wireless adapter than yours. And I'm using a 5+ year old router. How fast is the net connection itself? You can go to speedtest.net to figure that out.

[ext_1460]

Netflix used to have some problems with older router firmware - it's worth making sure you have the latest. I'd hesitate to replace it unless you get it somewhere with a liberal return policy and take it back if it turns out to be something else.

Does netflix instant play work 100% on PCs in your house (both wired, and laptops in the same room as the xbox)? If so, that would point toward xbox or its adapter.

Unless your DSL is extremely flaky, it shouldn't keep netflix from working, it should just cause it to downshift to lower quality sometimes.

[fdaapproved]

Have you actually run a (temporary) test with a wired connection to rule out the DSL? I've had your setup as well as a wired setup (my current one) and neither have had a problem that couldn't be traced to an ISP outage or a bandwidth problem (e.g. three computers all trying to watch Netflix streaming at once).

[dogofthefuture]

I would guess one of the last three - we have the same setup but with a TiVo, and we have a similar problem with it locking up. Trying to watch YouTube videos gives us the same problem.

Unfortunately that's not much of a solution, but at least it might help reduce the number of things to try to fix.

[dogofthefuture]

Oh, I should note that I've never had a problem using my laptop at the same distance as our TiVo is to the router, whether there were walls in the way or not, and there isn't a wall between router and TiVo. Then again, I probably wasn't pulling as much data as Netflix presumably is.

[the_missy]

We run Netflix via our cable internet on the TiVo. And most times when there's a problem, it's because of the cable service (then again, our cable service blows in dozens of ways).