# 21-24 Mbps not enough bandwidth to stream On Demand!?!



## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

Every time I try to watch an On Demand HD movie I get a message saying my download speed isn't fast enough to stream and do I want to just download the movie for later viewing. How much bandwidth do you need to stream? I can download a movie by bit torrent in less time than it takes to download an On Demand movie. How many people even have 21 Mbps? If that ain't enough, then very few people can watch streaming On Demand.

Your thoughts, please.


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

I get about 21-24 Mbs and I rarely get that message and we use On Demand all the time. How is your receiver connected to your home network?

Mike


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## Nighthawk68 (Oct 14, 2004)

I am on a 15 meg connection and have never gotten that message. Charter is sending me a DOCSIS 3 modem any day and bumping me to 30 meg.
Every now and then I will get a message asking if I want the best quality stream or lower, but thats it. The new "Watch Now" works great.

I dont know if it matters, but all 3 of my DVR's are connected with cat5 directly to my router/switch, I dont use the CCK.


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

My speeds are around 18 and it's really a crap shoot when being able to Watch Now or download it.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

I don't know if Directv is having issues of late but over the weekend we tried to watch Zero Dark Thirty. The plan was to download it and begin watching shortly thereafter. The download was unbelievably slow, only getting to 1% after about 5-10 minutes. 

I cancelled the download/purchase and instead streamed via AppleTV with no issues.

I should add, that it wasn't a bandwidth issue on my end as the same time I was streaming the movie via AppleTV, my daughter was also streaming a movie via Vudu. I did not start her movie until after I cancelled the Directv purchase.

I have a 30 down connection.


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## 456521 (Jul 6, 2007)

I have 35 Mb/s down and up and I can rarely "Watch Now". 95% of the time I need to download the show before I can watch it. I don't know who hosts their servers, but it would work a lot better if they contracted out this part of the business to professionals. DirecTV needs to focus on their core competencies and delivering video on demand isn't one of them.


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

ok, so it's common, then. I'm finding myself using less and less of these extra "features" and just watching live tv. If I want to watch a movie I'll just bit torrent a bluray copy and put it on a flash drive. Higher quality and a faster download. Thanks.


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

mystic7 said:


> ok, so it's common, then. I'm finding myself using less and less of these extra "features" and just watching live tv. If I want to watch a movie I'll just bit torrent a bluray copy and put it on a flash drive. Higher quality and a faster download. Thanks.


...and illegal.


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## bhuber (Sep 14, 2004)

I only have 3.5mbps and watch now works fine.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

There were a couple of threads last week about this.
On Demand downloads at 7-9 Mb/s from the server.
This is enough for "most" users to watch HD "now", but not every show has a bit-rate that averages 7-9 Mb/s.
Last week I found a concert off of the audience channel that wouldn't let me "watch now", so I downloaded it and then checked its bit-rate, It averaged 14-17+ Mb/s. This matched the time it took to download at 7 Mb/s.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> On Demand downloads at 7-9 Mb/s from the server.


Only if the servers aren't overloaded or if they are working correctly, such was not the case for me on Saturday evening.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Everyone needs to be very careful about how they represent their Internet speed.

1. Your burst ("boost") speed is going to read much better than your sustained speed; perhaps 50% better.

2. Make absolutely certain that your units of measure are correctly represented. Mbps (megabits per second) is not the same as MBps (megabytes per second).

Most of the satellite downlinked HD content runs at around 5-16Mbps but it is rarely sustained at the highest rates.

The most important aspect of your experience is going to be related to the consistency of your Internet connection, not the maximum speed. Having to adjust the bitrate on the server frequently is going to result in a poor experience.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

raott said:


> Only if the servers aren't overloaded or if they are working correctly, such was not the case for me on Saturday evening.


That could be the case. :shrug:
Zero Dark 30 may have been the hot movie at the time. It may also have a high bit-rate too.


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## Xsabresx (Oct 8, 2007)

sigma1914 said:


> ...and illegal.


True but it is kind of sad when "bootlegging" is better quality/faster download than the real thing.

I have 25Mb/s down and have never been able to watch OnDemand "live". Always have to download and watch later.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

I have 12/1 mbps. It's a DOCSIS 3 modem. On May 1st they are upgrading this speed tier to 20/2. To get faster speeds I would have to bundle Cable TV and I would automatically have 30/3. Or pay an extra $50 a month to get 50/5 - no thanks.

Most of the time Watch Now works pretty good. Maybe once or twice I did have to pause it for a minute or two to allow it to catch up. Watch Now is great and reminds me back in the day when I had Comcast and used their VOD.

The only thing is when you are done watching a video it doesn't take you back to menu you were at. Your spit out at the DVR playlist, and even though you didn't download the movie, its in your playlist with the keep forever tag. When watching numerous music videos from Fuse on demand, its annoying to say the least.

Anyway DirecTV needs to just beef up the CDN. I think they partner with Limelight networks. Maybe add more peering around the country and beef up those links. The distributed nature of a professional content delivery network is how the big players like Netflix, Vudu, Amazon, YouTube, Vimeo, Vevo, Revision 3, and many many many more internet video streaming works. Prior to "watch now" speeds peaked at about 5 mbps which to me indicated that DirecTV was still using the old single server download model. Hopefully its now on a mesh topology CDN with regional cache PoP's.

Now if only they could allow me to access the VOD screens and stream off my H24. That would be SLICK!


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

sigma1914 said:


> ...and illegal.


Yeah, ok, fellow Yankee fan. Is it illegal for the music industry to charge me for 3 vinyl albums, a cassette, and a CD of the same albums because the technology changes or the vinyl wears out or the tape snaps or the CD glue comes unstuck?

If I've purchased an album 5 times I don't feel any guilt in downloading the songs for free in mp3 form. And I don't feel guilty about dl'ing a movie which in almost every case sucks these days, which also explains why I only do about 2 or 3 movies a year at most and sleep through most of them. And if they don't want me to even do that, then tell Blu Ray player manufacturers not to include USB ports on their players and TV's that are put there for the express purpose of being to play video from a source other than a BluRay disc..


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

raott said:


> Only if the servers aren't overloaded or if they are working correctly, such was not the case for me on Saturday evening.


I guess a good question might be can you watch Zero Dark Thirty now?
I just checked my "watch now" of it and had no problems. It streams down at 7+ Mb/s


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

mystic7 said:


> Yeah, ok, fellow Yankee fan. Is it illegal for the music industry to charge me for 3 vinyl albums, a cassette, and a CD of the same albums because the technology changes or the vinyl wears out or the tape snaps or the CD glue comes unstuck?
> 
> If I've purchased an album 5 times I don't feel any guilt in downloading the songs for free in mp3 form. And I don't feel guilty about dl'ing a movie which in almost every case sucks these days, which also explains why I only do about 2 or 3 movies a year at most and sleep through most of them. And if they don't want me to even do that, then tell Blu Ray player manufacturers not to include USB ports on their players and TV's that are put there for the express purpose of being to play video from a source other than a BluRay disc..


Justify stealing however you wish, it's still stealing and illegal. The USB plugs aren't for illegal copies, they're for extra storage and playing copies you made of your library...not illegal torrents. Do you work for free?


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> I guess a good question might be can you watch Zero Dark Thirty now?
> I just checked my "watch now" of it and had no problems. It streams down at 7+ Mb/s


Not sure, I'm not home. I'll check it tonight. Note, I did not do "watch now" I did the download (I assume there is a difference).


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

mystic7 said:


> Yeah, ok, fellow Yankee fan. Is it illegal for the music industry to charge me for 3 vinyl albums, a cassette, and a CD of the same albums because the technology changes or the vinyl wears out or the tape snaps or the CD glue comes unstuck?
> 
> If I've purchased an album 5 times I don't feel any guilt in downloading the songs for free in mp3 form. And I don't feel guilty about dl'ing a movie which in almost every case sucks these days, which also explains why I only do about 2 or 3 movies a year at most and sleep through most of them. And if they don't want me to even do that, then tell Blu Ray player manufacturers not to include USB ports on their players and TV's that are put there for the express purpose of being to play video from a source other than a BluRay disc..


Wow....glad you can justify it.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

Only good thing about bit torrent is when played through XBMC and HDMI, I can get DTS sound if I download the right rip.

DirecTV does have Dolby Digital but not DTS.


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## Volatility (May 22, 2010)

sigma1914 said:


> ...and illegal.


lol it cracks me up when people admit to doing illegal things on public forums.


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

I only can get 6.0 DSL from AT&T and it is a very consistent 5.7 mps. Netflix says the minimum for HD is 5.0 and it works quite well. I have only watched three or four on Demands, from D*, and each one streamed very well with no buffering at all.


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## Nighthawk68 (Oct 14, 2004)

Can the individual ISP's have an impact on the VOD content delivery?


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## 456521 (Jul 6, 2007)

harsh said:


> Everyone needs to be very careful about how they represent their Internet speed.
> 
> 1. Your burst ("boost") speed is going to read much better than your sustained speed; perhaps 50% better.
> 
> ...


These are very good points, but in my case the 35 Mb/s (not MB/s) is not any kind of burst speed. I have no idea about the consistency or latency of my connection to the server, but I know the experience is so bad that I don't even use DirecTV On Demand.

I stream the highest bitrates offered from Netflix and several podcast networks and never have this issue.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Nitehawk^ said:


> Can the individual ISP's have an impact on the VOD content delivery?


Absolutely!

Such is not to say that any problems aren't DIRECTV's fault, but the way an ISP chooses to balance their load can certainly have an impact.

If your true average bandwidth (after the first 30 second or so) drops significantly, you're a victim of "boost". Unfortunately, this is very difficult to measure as most of the bandwidth tests last 20 seconds or less.

Contrary to what the telcos used to crow about, everyone is running on shared bandwidth and if you're served by a node that is heavily loaded, you'll get degradation in speeds when you and your neighbors are collectively most active.

I ran a speed test last night to a machine that was located less than 40 miles away and the throughput was in the 4.3Mbps range on an advertised 15Mbps DSL connection. Clearly the ISP is overloading if you can't get 1/3rd your rated bandwidth.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

raott said:


> Not sure, I'm not home. I'll check it tonight. Note, I did not do "watch now" I did the download (I assume there is a difference).


The only difference that I can see is "watch now" runs a check of the download time/speed before it starts playing. If/when it fails, it give you the option to record.
If it doesn't fail, it's still recording.


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## jdspencer (Nov 8, 2003)

Since I have DVRs , I prefer to record On Demand titles and then watch later.
Nothing is worth having to watch NOW!
That's what a DVR is for.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

harsh said:


> Absolutely!
> 
> Such is not to say that any problems aren't DIRECTV's fault, but the way an ISP chooses to balance their load can certainly have an impact.
> 
> ...


Not necessarily your ISP's fault. Try doing the test to a few more distant servers located in say Seattle and California. You might find that it is just the pipe between your ISP and the server you're testing against that is the problem. Not saying that DSL can't be oversubscribed as well - if an ISP has less bandwidth to the outside world than there is demand for that bandwidth, everyone will slow down even if they aren't shared on a neighborhood basis like cable is. That is much easier to fix that an oversubscribed cable node, but it still costs real money to do and a provider trying to cut costs may not want to make the investment necessary if the beancounters don't think they'll get a return on it in the form of greater customer retention (i.e., if your local cable company sucks, your local telco has less incentive to not suck)


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## montanaxvi (Oct 2, 2008)

Time Warner Roadrunner with 30/5 and have yet to run into an issue that I can recall with anything on demand.

Youtube likes to crap out on me from time to time, but for the most part my connection is rock solid across all the various devices I utilize at home and content streaming from various providers.


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## mreposter (Jul 29, 2006)

One way to confirm the performance of your internet connection is to go to a site like http://speedtest.net/
The site tests your ping times, upload and download speeds and helps you cut through the "turbo," "ultra", etc marketing hype of your ISP to find out what you're really getting.


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

sigma1914 said:


> Justify stealing however you wish, it's still stealing and illegal. The USB plugs aren't for illegal copies, they're for extra storage and playing copies you made of your library...not illegal torrents. Do you work for free?


Actually, yes, for many years I've done work and never gotten paid for it. Care to sue my clients for me? I'm owed at least $19,000.00


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

CCarncross said:


> Wow....glad you can justify it.


I'll justify it even more if the authorities decide to show up by simply showing them that I legally own just about everything I've ever downloaded. When the music/movie companies offer free replacements for their defective CD/DVD's then I'll stop but I'm not going to buy the same product I've owned for years again. Go ahead if you want to.

btw, I've got a ton of DVD's that I paid $20 for that I watched only once because the movies sucked so bad. You want them? $10 bucks each.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> The only difference that I can see is "watch now" runs a check of the download time/speed before it starts playing. If/when it fails, it give you the option to record.
> If it doesn't fail, it's still recording.


Do you know if they are they still offering a choice of a lower quality, faster download for some PPVs. I thought maybe the "watch now" would be a streaming version of that.

I didn't get a chance to re-download the movie last night. I will try tomorrow night.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

raott said:


> Do you know if they are they still offering a choice of a lower quality, faster download for some PPVs. I thought maybe the "watch now" would be a streaming version of that.
> 
> I didn't get a chance to re-download the movie last night. I will try tomorrow night.


I haven't seen that choice here for a long time. :shrug:


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> Not necessarily your ISP's fault. Try doing the test to a few more distant servers located in say Seattle and California. You might find that it is just the pipe between your ISP and the server you're testing against that is the problem. Not saying that DSL can't be oversubscribed as well - if an ISP has less bandwidth to the outside world than there is demand for that bandwidth, everyone will slow down even if they aren't shared on a neighborhood basis like cable is. That is much easier to fix that an oversubscribed cable node, but it still costs real money to do and a provider trying to cut costs may not want to make the investment necessary if the beancounters don't think they'll get a return on it in the form of greater customer retention (i.e., if your local cable company sucks, your local telco has less incentive to not suck)


You make some good points, but I tend to put it on the ISP more. Sure when an ATM goes down it isn't the ISP's fault and everything slows down. For an ISP to have bandwidth problems "outside" seems rare, as the bandwidth is so large that it would take so many users to all be trying to max their usages.
It does come down to how well the ISP manages their network.
Cable seems to be more prone to overloading a node, as this is the least bandwidth making it easier.
I saw this yesterday with Compcrap, where one min it tested 0.8 Mb/s, and then 5.2 Mb/s, and then 3.2 Mb/s, and finally 2.4 Mb/s.
This node is way overloaded.


mreposter said:


> One way to confirm the performance of your internet connection is to go to a site like http://speedtest.net/
> The site tests your ping times, upload and download speeds and helps you cut through the "turbo," "ultra", etc marketing hype of your ISP to find out what you're really getting.


I wouldn't be so quick to say "confirm" the performance. ISPs can do some underhanded things.
I had speed problems with an old cable ISP.
The node was so over subscribed, that I could see when my neighbors went to church and came home. [no joke]
I worked with them for a long time trying to sort this out.
The first thing they did after showing the tech the speedtest results was to configure their end so speedtest ALWAYS reported full speed, yet the only time I had it was at 2 AM and 2PM could be hard just to get email.
I'm not says all ISPs are this underhanded, but that speedtest doesn't always give you the "whole story". Timing a download and comparing the size of large files will be a better "test".
The last weekend I was on this ISP, it was taking 18+ hours for SD On Demand, and DSL had just come into the area so I had it too and the same On Demand was less than an hour.
Several years later, the cable ISP finally ran another fiber to split the node.


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## mamoth (Feb 12, 2013)

I have 100 down and am having issues with VoD.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> I haven't seen that choice here for a long time. :shrug:


I don't know if it still exists. Even when it did, it was hit or miss, but I don't use their PPV enough to know if it is still around.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

mamoth said:


> I have 100 down and am having issues with VoD.


Not sure what to say, since I don't with:


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## montanaxvi (Oct 2, 2008)

mamoth said:


> I have 100 down and am having issues with VoD.


Thats pretty bad. Hard to tell exactly what could be the problem with 100 down and having problems.

99% of the time, this is what I see, and my streaming services across the various devices here at home reflect as much:


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## DawgLink (Nov 5, 2006)

Like others, I am in a 50 down line and my speeds are usually around 40....and I also have VoD issues


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

Here's the warning. There will be no more discussion of downloading torrents.

Such discussions are a violation of the DBSTalk User Agreement (*Link*).

Mike


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## 456521 (Jul 6, 2007)

Mike Bertelson said:


> Here's the warning. There will be no more discussion of downloading torrents.
> 
> Such discussions are a violation of the DBSTalk User Agreement (*Link*).
> 
> Mike


I didn't see the discussion on downloading torrents, but which section in the User Agreement does it violate? There is a restriction on posting instructions, but I didn't see anything forbidding a discussion about it. I don't care one way or the other, but I was just curious which section it violates.


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## bobnielsen (Jun 29, 2006)

My download speed is only ~4 Mbps. On Demand appears like it is letterboxed SD. I get full screen by setting the format to Cropped. Not HD but it is watchable, sort-of.


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## John Strk (Oct 16, 2009)

I don't use D* VoD service all that often since it's not that great but lately I've been catching up with Dexter episodes. The past few days the service has been pathetically SLOW. It was fine the last few weeks but something is going on now. I tried a DVR reboot and reset my modem but it was still slow the next day.

The other night I tried to download a season 4 episode and it was still at 7% after an hour. That's bad. I wonder if my comcrap internet service is starting to throttle me since I've been doing more streaming lately with both a Roku and D* Vod. Frustrated!!!!


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## am7crew (Jun 6, 2009)

I have 100meg from Charter and it pops up and tells me I don't sufficient bandwidth to stream a 30 min HD show which makes no sense.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

am7crew said:


> I have 100meg from Charter and it pops up and tells me I don't sufficient bandwidth to stream a 30 min HD show which makes no sense.


It may not be your bandwidth that's the problem. 
Can you post a sample from DSLReports.com? (Not speedtest)


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## am7crew (Jun 6, 2009)




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## Jodean (Jul 17, 2010)

completly not an internet issue on the download side, game of thrones takes about 5 hours to download form hbo on demand. ive had 100mb and not have 25 mb down here. Its all on the other end for server upload speed.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Jodean said:


> completly not an internet issue on the download side, game of thrones takes about 5 hours to download form hbo on demand. ive had 100mb and not have 25 mb down here. Its all on the other end for server upload speed.


Once again I wonder where you get this.
I read this and went to my Genie, pulled up Game Of Thrones and clicked on "watch now". It started right up and after 5 mins had 5 mins showing in my playlist.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> I guess a good question might be can you watch Zero Dark Thirty now?
> I just checked my "watch now" of it and had no problems. It streams down at 7+ Mb/s


I finally retested this. No issues. Download zipped along at a 3-4 / 1 minute ratio. Don't know what was going on that particular night. I just know it wasn't my end because I did stream two movies at the same time off Vudu right after I quit the Directv download.


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## itzme (Jan 17, 2008)

raott said:


> I finally retested this. No issues. Download zipped along at a 3-4 / 1 minute ratio. Don't know what was going on that particular night. I just know it wasn't my end because I did stream two movies at the same time off Vudu right after I quit the Directv download.


My theory is 'that particular night' was a time when the DTVs servers were throttled down to a slower speed, for whatever reason. I have the same occasional issues with Netflix. That all supports my theory that DirecTV (and Netflix) control higher or lower download speeds to us as a function of their own algorithm, which I'd think is a function of overall usage of the servers in question, by other users as well. So speed is a shot in the dark for the user.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Something changed in the last week or so. . . I've been catching up on 'Shameless' (Showtime) and had no problem with watch now. In the last couple of weeks it's been at least a 2 hour download. I just started a download, I'll post later what it really took. 15/5 here.

Edit: 41% at 30minutes, so it's a little less than 1:1. A little better than last week. Router reports 4.5-5 Mbps

Edit2: 82% at 60 minutes. Pretty linear.

Edit3: 100% at 75 minutes.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

I don't want to sound like the "great defender" of DirecTV On Demand, as I don't own stock in the company.

I read these posts/threads and have had the same problem.
Once I changed my ISP, 5-6 years ago, I haven't had one problem with On Demand.
With 6 Mb/s service HD wasn't always 1:1 and mostly 1:1.5 [for every min of program it took a min & a half].
With 12 Mb/s service HD is mostly "watch now", though I've had a few buffer messages that I clear and continue without problems.
I did find one HD program recently that I couldn't watch now, so I downloaded it and it took twice as long.
Like most, I thought it was a DirecTV problem. I checked out the bit-rate of the program and found it to be 14-16 Mb/s, so there wasn't any problem on the DirecTV side as it was coming through at 7 Mb/s.
Not having a connection faster than 11ish Mb/s, I can't tell if DirecTV ever goes any higher.

It just seems 99% of the time it isn't DirecTV that's the problem.
Sure anyone can have a server problem, so that's the 1% and maybe if the program is "hot" everyone is trying to watch it at the same time.


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## grecorj (Jan 20, 2008)

raott said:


> I finally retested this. No issues. Download zipped along at a 3-4 / 1 minute ratio. Don't know what was going on that particular night. I just know it wasn't my end because I did stream two movies at the same time off Vudu right after I quit the Directv download.


I had an issue with same movie on same night. I think it must have been issue on their end.

I am surprised this title wasn't "pre-downloaded" to my Genie -- I thought most new releases were?


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## grecorj (Jan 20, 2008)

veryoldschool said:


> I don't want to sound like the "great defender" of DirecTV On Demand, as I don't own stock in the company.
> 
> I read these posts/threads and have had the same problem.
> Once I changed my ISP, 5-6 years ago, I haven't had one problem with On Demand.
> ...


Since moving from 5mbps DSL to Cable 15mbps I have had almost zero issues as well (with all streaming services -- Netflix, Amazon, VUDU -- not just DTV).

I thought most new releases were "pre-downloaded" to your DVR?

I had tried to watch Zero Dark Thirty on same night and it took > 6 hours (at least) to DL the movie. My internet speeds were w/in expected range that night. My only conclusion is that there was issue on DTV end. Even with higher encoding rate, shouldn't take 6+ hours for 2 hour movie.


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

Jodean said:


> completly not an internet issue on the download side, game of thrones takes about 5 hours to download form hbo on demand. ive had 100mb and not have 25 mb down here. Its all on the other end for server upload speed.





veryoldschool said:


> Once again I wonder where you get this.
> I read this and went to my Genie, pulled up Game Of Thrones and clicked on "watch now". It started right up and after 5 mins had 5 mins showing in my playlist.


Just tried the most recent episode of GoT... selected Watch Now, it began loading, started playing and at 5 minutes in was at 5 minutes on the progress bar.

My very disproportionate speed tests...


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

grecorj said:


> I had tried to watch Zero Dark Thirty on same night and it took > 6 hours (at least) to DL the movie. My internet speeds were w/in expected range that night. My only conclusion is that there was issue on DTV end. Even with higher encoding rate, shouldn't take 6+ hours for 2 hour movie.


I agree and am not trying to suggest everything is perfect. Any server can get swamped.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Re: My post above "Shameless" downloaded this morning at 10:10

41% at 30minutes, so it's a little less than 1:1. A little better than last week. Router reports 4.5-5 Mbps

82% at 60 minutes. Pretty linear.

100% at 75 minutes.

Everyone needs to remember that the speedtests typically default to a nearby server (particularly speedtest.net). While you can change that location, I doubt the destination server is serving up video streams to hundreds of users.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

grecorj said:


> I had an issue with same movie on same night. I think it must have been issue on their end.
> 
> I am surprised this title wasn't "pre-downloaded" to my Genie -- I thought most new releases were?


I was surprised that this one wasn't preloaded as well. I think it had been out a couple of weeks, maybe that is why.

Anyway, I'm just going to attribute the issue to a one-off technical issue.

But I will add, if it was a server load issue, it is something that Directv needs to correct in the future. Why would I bother with Directv's PPV if I cannot count on it always working, especially when the alternatives ie Vudu, Amazon, Apple are usually $1 cheaper and, in my experience, never have issues?


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

dennisj00 said:


> Re: My post above "Shameless" downloaded this morning at 10:10
> 
> 41% at 30minutes, so it's a little less than 1:1. A little better than last week. Router reports 4.5-5 Mbps
> 
> ...


You bring up a good point.

I read your post and checked Shameless and had 1:1.

Here are a few Speedtest results:


























Not every server/location will give the same results.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

raott said:


> But I will add, if it was a server load issue, it is something that Directv needs to correct in the future. Why would I bother with Directv's PPV if I cannot count on it always working, especially when the alternatives ie Vudu, Amazon, Apple are usually $1 cheaper and, in my experience, never have issues?


What are the bit-rates of those alternatives?
"Most" streaming services scale the bit-rates [down] for streaming, which DirecTV doesn't.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Does anyone know what Directv's streaming architecture is like? Is everything streamed from their LA office or do they have a distributed system using Akamai or similar? If no one knows for sure, we could find out via people who live in various places around the country streaming something from them and checking the NAT table on their router to see where the endpoint of the connection is.

If everything goes through LA, then people on the east coast are always going to have more problems than people who live closer to LA - unless they have a mirror datacenter out east, in which case the people who live in the central US are most likely to have problems. The further you are from the server you're streaming from, the more chance there is of a problem along the path. Latency doesn't matter for streaming, but larger latency does magnify the effect of any dropped packets.

If everyone is having problems all at the same time no matter where they are located, for instance if a bunch of people all report problems streaming from Directv at 11 PM EDT this Friday, then we can conclude it is a problem on Directv's end, which they can fix by adding more servers and/or more bandwidth to the outside.

When you read about Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft continually building big datacenters in various places around the country and around the world, a lot of it is for this reason - get their content closer to the customer. Directv can't afford to do something like that, so they'd likely use a content delivery network like Akamai or Level3.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Either the planets are aligned better or something got fixed. Just started another download and with the progress bar at :03 the load is already at the first tick ~15.


Edit: Finished 1 hour download at 0:20.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

slice1900 said:


> Does anyone know what Directv's streaming architecture is like? Is everything streamed from their LA office or do they have a distributed system using Akamai or similar? If no one knows for sure, we could find out via people who live in various places around the country streaming something from them and checking the NAT table on their router to see where the endpoint of the connection is.


I'm not 100% sure about VoD, but on the iPad app using fiddler2 as a proxy to try to see how streaming works (like why does it only work wihtin the home)... the IP's it connects to belong to Limelight Networks. It's been awhile since I analyzed it so maybe if I get time I'll try again. Will have to see if I can put a proxy server in the HR24's advanced network setup.

It would make more sense for DirecTV to lease a CDN and use the distributed archetecture and expertise of a media streaming content delivery provider. Hosting everything in one or two data centers isn't just bad for speed, but redundancy as well.

It's about 1:1 download here too. That would likely be the MINIMUM requirement for VOD, but if you want any forward trick play, 2:1 would be a better start.


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## SomeRandomIdiot (Jan 7, 2009)

mystic7 said:


> Every time I try to watch an On Demand HD movie I get a message saying my download speed isn't fast enough to stream and do I want to just download the movie for later viewing. How much bandwidth do you need to stream? I can download a movie by bit torrent in less time than it takes to download an On Demand movie. How many people even have 21 Mbps? If that ain't enough, then very few people can watch streaming On Demand.
> 
> Your thoughts, please.


After your post, I plugged a HR34 into a 10Mbps cable modem backup isp connection (that does NOT exceed 10Mbps) and watched a Showtime HD OnDemand program (channel 1545) with no issues whatsoever. As thus, to answer your original question, 21-24 Mbps is plenty of bandwidth for OnDemand viewing.

Obviously, if you or a family member is running a bunch of torrents (or perhaps your neighborhood is bandwidth starved), those could be killing your speed. But regardless, that is not a problem on D*'s end.


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## SomeRandomIdiot (Jan 7, 2009)

veryoldschool said:


> Like most, I thought it was a DirecTV problem. I checked out the bit-rate of the program and found it to be 14-16 Mb/s


How does one check this without direct access to the recorded program on the hard drive moved over to a computer?


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

SomeRandomIdiot said:


> How does one check this without direct access to the recorded program on the hard drive moved over to a computer?


Setup a proxy or actually a lot of routers (or even ones loaded with dd-wrt or tomato) can graph in realtime bandwidth usage.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

SomeRandomIdiot said:


> How does one check this without direct access to the recorded program on the hard drive moved over to a computer?





cypherx said:


> Setup a proxy or actually a lot of routers (or even ones loaded with dd-wrt or tomato) can graph in realtime bandwidth usage.


This was how I did it. Monitoring port activity while either downloading and/or streaming a recording with DirecTV2PC can give a good idea of the bit-rates.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Does anyone know what Directv's streaming architecture is like? Is everything streamed from their LA office or do they have a distributed system using Akamai or similar? If no one knows for sure, we could find out via people who live in various places around the country streaming something from them and checking the NAT table on their router to see where the endpoint of the connection is.


As of last summer at least, everything was stored by DirecTV themselves.


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## SomeRandomIdiot (Jan 7, 2009)

veryoldschool said:
 

> This was how I did it. Monitoring port activity while either downloading and/or streaming a recording with DirecTV2PC can give a good idea of the bit-rates.


I know for a fact the bitrate for the majority of VOD providers is lower than what one sees on their linear distribution channels. So, for example, if Starz had a max of 14.0 Mbps on their linear distribution, the VOD has a bitrate lower than 14.0Mbps. As thus, the 14Mbps-16Mbps bitrate in the original post is somewhat of a head scratcher, which is why I asked how you were measuring it. Clearly there is some overhead being created if you are seeing 14Mbps-16Mbps on a router - as opposed to the pure stream.


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

This is what I get from both BBR and Speed test. I got the "play now" error message one time.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

SomeRandomIdiot said:


> I know for a fact the bitrate for the majority of VOD providers is lower than what one sees on their linear distribution channels. So, for example, if Starz had a max of 14.0 Mbps on their linear distribution, the VOD has a bitrate lower than 14.0Mbps. As thus, the 14Mbps-16Mbps bitrate in the original post is somewhat of a head scratcher, which is why I asked how you were measuring it. Clearly there is some overhead being created if you are seeing 14Mbps-16Mbps on a router - as opposed to the pure stream.


This was a concert off of the audience channel.
As I said, it downloaded at about 7 Mb/s, which took twice as long as the recording time. Streaming it to my PC showed both ports [from the DVR and to the PC] were very close and in the 14+ Mb/s range, with samples being about a min between updates, which tends to give a better result for MPEG-4 and the bit-rates vary so much.
I've checked some Starz programs as I'd stacked several to record and their times were faster than 1:1 for HD. These showed bit-rates in the 5 Mb/s range.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> What are the bit-rates of those alternatives?
> "Most" streaming services scale the bit-rates [down] for streaming, which DirecTV doesn't.


Don't know the bit rates and don't really care. The picture looks good and streams instantly, that is my primary concern.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

I watched curb your enthusiasm via HBOGo on Xbox 360. I didn't realize HBOGo now carries 5.1 surround sound now. When it first came out it didn't. Anyway, I think the Xbox started the playback faster then the HR24. Though the picture was pretty good, it was a little softer on Xbox compared to the HR24. Trick play is much easier to accomplish on the Xbox. So is finding content and the smooth, rich fluid graphics on the Xbox.

I can tell the Xbox is adaptive streaming. A few instances the picture softened up as if there was bandwidth degradation. However it never skipped or stopped playing at all. It's all a trade off.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

Actually my VOD isn't working now. It says there was a problem connecting to the Internet: fix now, continue later. Continue later just takes you back to live TV. Fix now takes you to the system test screen. In the playlist it just says pending download. After sometime it said "there was a problem connecting to DirecTV. Retry in progress (85) (ok).


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## akw4572 (Sep 8, 2005)

Since coming back to DTV, and being hard wired to my internet, the OD is the one thing I'm a bit disappointed in. I've got 20 mb speed, and have to plan ahead if I want to watch any OD programming.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

cypherx said:


> Actually my VOD isn't working now. It says there was a problem connecting to the Internet: fix now, continue later. Continue later just takes you back to live TV. Fix now takes you to the system test screen. In the playlist it just says pending download. After sometime it said "there was a problem connecting to DirecTV. Retry in progress (85) (ok).


 Update It fixed itself late last night.

Needless to say there are strange anomolies from time to time. Generally it works though.


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## grecorj (Jan 20, 2008)

raott said:


> Don't know the bit rates and don't really care. The picture looks good and streams instantly, that is my primary concern.


Have to agree with this. Stuff on Vudu looks very very good to my eye and streaming works w/o buffering.

There seems to be some intelligent discussion about various bitrates of the streaming services here http://www.avsforum.com/t/1414999/streaming-bitrates


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## NaperDan (Jun 9, 2009)

mystic7 said:


> Yeah, ok, fellow Yankee fan. Is it illegal for the music industry to charge me for 3 vinyl albums, a cassette, and a CD of the same albums because the technology changes or the vinyl wears out or the tape snaps or the CD glue comes unstuck?
> 
> If I've purchased an album 5 times I don't feel any guilt in downloading the songs for free in mp3 form. And I don't feel guilty about dl'ing a movie which in almost every case sucks these days, which also explains why I only do about 2 or 3 movies a year at most and sleep through most of them. And if they don't want me to even do that, then tell Blu Ray player manufacturers not to include USB ports on their players and TV's that are put there for the express purpose of being to play video from a source other than a BluRay disc..


Here in the great Midwest our library carries a huge selection of movies/music that are available for "free" (paid for by property taxes). Hypothetically, I can stick a disk in my car, it's ripped onto the HDD. Hypothetically I can then copy it (because I have paid for it through taxes) for backup in case of a HDD failure. Hypothetically, movies can be copied for later viewing, not distribution.

It's a loose interpretation of the law, but so what.


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## Volatility (May 22, 2010)

It looks like for those whom have Mediacom in the southeast, they did some updates last night during their "8pm-6:30am update" Internet was out for a while but the internet speed seems faster so hurrah.

not to shabby for 35.99 a month 



am7crew said:


>


Now that is ALOT of dwnld mb/s! That is more dwnld mb/s than the call center I work out of lol
Insane!


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

The other two companies you mentioned didn't offer anywhere near that speed and for much more than the $58 I'm paying TWC for 15 Mbps (which almost always times out at 25-30 Mbps).


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

SomeRandomIdiot said:


> After your post, I plugged a HR34 into a 10Mbps cable modem backup isp connection (that does NOT exceed 10Mbps) and watched a Showtime HD OnDemand program (channel 1545) with no issues whatsoever. As thus, to answer your original question, 21-24 Mbps is plenty of bandwidth for OnDemand viewing.
> 
> Obviously, if you or a family member is running a bunch of torrents (or perhaps your neighborhood is bandwidth starved), those could be killing your speed. But regardless, that is not a problem on D*'s end.


I don't know. Is one torrent every few months considered a lot?


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## inf0z (Oct 16, 2011)

I'm currently working with 50ish down, and 7ish up. My connection is stable, and I'm the only Internet user in the house.

Here's what I've found -

Only certain channels will have the issue. For example I couldn't do any "Watch Now" on TMC (I tried about 10 different titles) I tried about 20 different titles on various other channels (HBO, Cinemax, Starz) and those all worked. 

My "uneducated guess" is that certain channels/servers are allocated x amount of bandwidth, once that limit is reached bandwidth is throttled.


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## goinsleeper (May 23, 2012)

inf0z said:


> I'm currently working with 50ish down, and 7ish up. My connection is stable, and I'm the only Internet user in the house.
> 
> Here's what I've found -
> 
> ...


It would make sense that they would prioritize the premium networks and throttle the other. That's what I would want when paying for the premiums, to make sure they work as expected.


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## goinsleeper (May 23, 2012)

COPTERDOCTOR said:


> 2692266686.png
> 
> I have the same problem at this speed. It is not your speed but the lack of speed by Directv. They are serving millions and it shows badly. They need a boost in the amount of servers they use and the speed of their connection.


I wonder what your actual connection speed is and what it is to the servers in CA. Comcast is going to show you a great score on speedtest. I believe all/most of the servers for D* OnDemand are in CA.


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## COPTERDOCTOR (Oct 22, 2006)

This is an average speed to servers all over the country. This problem is with DTV and their lack of bandwidth, speed, capacity etc... to the millions trying to download on demand.


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## COPTERDOCTOR (Oct 22, 2006)

I did this test to a San Jose server that is not Comcast hosted from my location here just North of Atlanta. DTV has a problem that is great to have as a Business, To many Customers! !rolling


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Something I've found about "watch now" verses downloading the movie.
On one, the watch now was 720p, while the same movie was 1080i downloaded.

As many times as I try, I never find a show downloading any slower than ~ 7Mb/s.
Recently I did have some problems downloading and along the way was able to check the different resolutions mentioned above.
The problems for watching now and downloading at very slow rates, all turned out to be on my end and with the connection to my router.

"I almost wish" I could find that there was a problem on the DirecTV side, but I just haven't seen it in maybe the past 5 years or so.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Speedtest is flawed for some people with cable ISPs because a lot of them have a system (called various marketing terms like turbo mode or power boost) that prioritizes new connections over older ones. After the initial burst the speed drops, sometimes by a huge amount. Great for downloading web pages, not so great for streaming or downloading a large file. Comcast tends to use this a lot. The speedtest.net (and most other online connection tests) are so brief they get fooled.

I'll bet if you download a big file you don't get that same 115Mb/sec. You should be able to download a large file like the below in about three and a half minutes if your connection is really that fast, unless there is some problem on the internet between you and the server. Most likely you'll see the download start out with your browser reporting 14MB/sec and then you'll see that speed drop a lot.

These servers host the content for Microsoft's online store so they can handle pretty much anything you throw at them (if you're curious, this link is for a 3.1GB Windows 7 DVD; you don't pay for the software, you pay for the license key, so you can legally download this)

http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59465.iso


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## Grydlok (Mar 31, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Speedtest is flawed for some people with cable ISPs because a lot of them have a system (called various marketing terms like turbo mode or power boost) that prioritizes new connections over older ones. After the initial burst the speed drops, sometimes by a huge amount. Great for downloading web pages, not so great for streaming or downloading a large file. Comcast tends to use this a lot. The speedtest.net (and most other online connection tests) are so brief they get fooled.
> 
> I'll bet if you download a big file you don't get that same 115Mb/sec. You should be able to download a large file like the below in about three and a half minutes if your connection is really that fast, unless there is some problem on the internet between you and the server. Most likely you'll see the download start out with your browser reporting 14MB/sec and then you'll see that speed drop a lot.
> 
> ...


Nope those servers have a cap also.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

inf0z said:


> My "uneducated guess" is that certain channels/servers are allocated x amount of bandwidth, once that limit is reached bandwidth is throttled.


But the old server -> client model does not scale well in this case. They need to invest in a CDN that specializes in media streaming. A real content delivery network distributes and caches content at the network edge, and also distributes it efficiently. A CDN has the resources, thousands of Internet pop's and backbone connections and QoS that would far surpass what a single company could accomplish on their own.

The distributed and cached CDN would alleviate the distribution issue vs spending gobs of money on additional servers and bandwidth at DirecTV's data center.


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## goinsleeper (May 23, 2012)

Grydlok said:


> Nope those servers have a cap also.


+1


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## COPTERDOCTOR (Oct 22, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> Speedtest is flawed for some people with cable ISPs because a lot of them have a system (called various marketing terms like turbo mode or power boost) that prioritizes new connections over older ones. After the initial burst the speed drops, sometimes by a huge amount. Great for downloading web pages, not so great for streaming or downloading a large file. Comcast tends to use this a lot. The speedtest.net (and most other online connection tests) are so brief they get fooled.
> 
> I'll bet if you download a big file you don't get that same 115Mb/sec. You should be able to download a large file like the below in about three and a half minutes if your connection is really that fast, unless there is some problem on the internet between you and the server. Most likely you'll see the download start out with your browser reporting 14MB/sec and then you'll see that speed drop a lot.
> 
> ...


I gave the test file you offered a try this afternoon for the fun of it and timed the download to 4 minutes and 2 seconds including the file scan by Norton. Congestion, and many other factors effect download speeds. I have found using the latest Mozilla Waterfox 64 bit browser is some faster. I did use Windows 8 64 bit and the Internet explorer 32 bit browser for the timed download. I have the Comcast 105mb down/20mb up service that I am very happy with.
My orginal point to the orginal poster was that his problem with DTV on demand downloads was widespread and happened to all levels of Internet speed service. It is clearly a capacity problem with the DTV servers. I have found that when starting a "watch now" on say HBO on demand(The Sopranos) will feed just about fast enough to watch it if you delay it just a few seconds,and I think that is the target speed by DTV that they are throttling too.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

COPTERDOCTOR said:


> My orginal point to the orginal poster was that his problem with DTV on demand downloads was widespread and happened to all levels of Internet speed service. It is clearly a capacity problem with the DTV servers. I have found that when starting a "watch now" on say HBO on demand(The Sopranos) will feed just about fast enough to watch it if you delay it just a few seconds,and I think that is the target speed by DTV that they are throttling too.


There really isn't anything "clearly" about this.
I haven't had one problem that wasn't found/corrected on my end.
The target speed is "just about fast enough" to watch it in real time.
If one is expecting more, then "clearly" it won't happen that often. I have seen faster than 1:1, but it wasn't that it came faster, but that the bit-rate was lower of the program.


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## [email protected] (May 7, 2013)

Directvs VOD & watch now has nothing to do with "servers". It strictly depends on your Internet connection and how it is connected to the DTV system. 
If you are using a wifi deca you could have all sorts of problems, seeing how that is wireless!
If you use a broadband deca you more than likely never experience the "not enough bandwidth" error. Hard wired is always the best connection choice no matter what you are doing.


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## goinsleeper (May 23, 2012)

[email protected] said:


> Directvs VOD & watch now has nothing to do with "servers". It strictly depends on your Internet connection and how it is connected to the DTV system.
> If you are using a wifi deca you could have all sorts of problems, seeing how that is wireless!
> If you use a broadband deca you more than likely never experience the "not enough bandwidth" error. Hard wired is always the best connection choice no matter what you are doing.


Extremely vague...


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## goinsleeper (May 23, 2012)

I had more issues with my old wired router than my current wireless router.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

[email protected] said:


> Directvs VOD & watch now has nothing to do with "servers". It strictly depends on your Internet connection and how it is connected to the DTV system.
> If you are using a wifi deca you could have all sorts of problems, seeing how that is wireless!
> If you use a broadband deca you more than likely never experience the "not enough bandwidth" error. Hard wired is always the best connection choice no matter what you are doing.


While wireless can be a weak point if it isn't setup well, given the download speed from DirecTV, it's pretty hard to say that the WCCK is the limiting factor.


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## inf0z (Oct 16, 2011)

cypherx said:


> But the old server -> client model does not scale well in this case. They need to invest in a CDN that specializes in media streaming. A real content delivery network distributes and caches content at the network edge, and also distributes it efficiently. A CDN has the resources, thousands of Internet pop's and backbone connections and QoS that would far surpass what a single company could accomplish on their own.
> 
> The distributed and cached CDN would alleviate the distribution issue vs spending gobs of money on additional servers and bandwidth at DirecTV's data center.


I agree with this 100%. Unfortunately this will require some bit of infrastructure change to their on-demand, I don't foresee DIRECTV making this type of investment any time soon. When they start pushing live streaming more, we'll probably see this change.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Check out post #4 here: http://forums.solidsignal.com/showthread.php/1911-Hands-on-at-the-DIRECTV-Los-Angeles-Broadcast-Center-%28LABC%29

You'll get an idea of how much DirecTV has invested into OnDemand


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## 456521 (Jul 6, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> Check out post #4 here: http://forums.solidsignal.com/showthread.php/1911-Hands-on-at-the-DIRECTV-Los-Angeles-Broadcast-Center-%28LABC%29
> 
> You'll get an idea of how much DirecTV has invested into OnDemand


Unfortunately, the amount invested doesn't always translate into an efficient system.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

pdxBeav said:


> Unfortunately, the amount invested doesn't always translate into an efficient system.


This is what I don't get/understand.
It works pretty well for me, so I don't understand if others have higher expectations or what.
I pick something to watch and "watch now" almost always works, and when it doesn't I download it and can watch it after it's downloaded enough to not run out of buffer, "The worst" has been taking twice as long to download as the program is. If it's 2 hours, I wait 1 and can watch.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

veryoldschool said:


> This is what I don't get/understand.
> It works pretty well for me, so I don't understand if others have higher expectations or what.
> I pick something to watch and "watch now" almost always works, and when it doesn't I download it and can watch it after it's downloaded enough to not run out of buffer, "The worst" has been taking twice as long to download as the program is. If it's 2 hours, I wait 1 and can watch.


RIght on! I have a 20/5 FiOS connection and get constantly at least 18. and have no problems using watch now feature.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

Sounds like a peering issue. Not enough peers to the internet backbone.


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## mark40511 (Jul 18, 2008)

count me in as SLOW on demand as well. 

I've tested my ISP and nothing else is slow other than ON demand. Even hooking laptop to the very ethernet cable going into the HR24 to test that cable to see what type of speeds I'm getting and it's the same....Using Youtube on the HR24 is fast too, apps load fast.

I did a speedtest and got 21.5 mpbs down, 1.71 mpbs up..........downloaded a LARGE test file and it topped out downloading at just over 3000 kb/s. Pingtest.net showed line quality as A

No clue why it's horribly slow. It took 8 hours to download a 47 minute program from HGTV on demand.


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## goinsleeper (May 23, 2012)

I've only ever had 1 issue with the download speed and it was when a movie was just released on demand through Starz. I hate to hear other people having issues, granted i rarely get anything off regular networks. I primarily just use the premium network on demand pages.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

cypherx said:


> Sounds like a peering issue. Not enough peers to the internet backbone.


"Sounds like" is just a [maybe educated] guess.
To really get an idea of what and how DirecTV compares to other companies that are streaming based, one would need to look at the streaming rate of the playback after downloading.

U-Verse is a streaming based company, and I've been able to compare the exact same program between DirecTV SAT feed and U-Verse. U-Verse uses only 66% of the DirecTV bit-rate.
Now DirecTV OnDemand "mostly" gives the same bit-rate as with the SAT feed. The only place I've seen a difference was with a "watch now" verses the same show downloaded. The watch now was 720p resolution, while the download was 1080i.


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## goinsleeper (May 23, 2012)

It was a few years ago when used comcast's OnDemand and it was terrible. I had plenty of movies/shows that would pixelate or just stop altogether and give me some error message. If it wasn't those issues, the lip sync would slowly get worse and worse until there was a 3-4 second delay. I would imagine they've gotten better but I haven't used it recently so it would be for someone else to confirm.


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## mark40511 (Jul 18, 2008)

Whatever my problem was seems to be corrected after I went to settings and reset network to defaults, then re connected to the internet and network services and everything connected with no errors.......After doing that ........It took 44 minutes to download a 43 minute program........Compared to last night 8 hour download, that's a major improvement.


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## cypherx (Aug 27, 2010)

mark40511 said:


> Whatever my problem was seems to be corrected after I went to settings and reset network to defaults, then re connected to the internet and network services and everything connected with no errors.......After doing that ........It took 44 minutes to download a 43 minute program........Compared to last night 8 hour download, that's a major improvement.


Hmm,
That's interesting. Maybe there is a bug in the network stack or some kind of loop or memory exhaustion that a reset clears? I mean there have been flaky performance issues on PC's for years with bad drivers. Could be a bug in the network drivers in the set top?

That could also help explain why some people have problems while others do not - even on very responsive connections.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

peds48 said:


> RIght on! I have a 20/5 FiOS connection and get constantly at least 18. and have no problems using watch now feature.


Do you have a Genie? If so, try to watch Chernobyl Diaries using Watch Now. My Genie refuses to play it, even though other DVRs in the house will. No problem recording and immediately starting it though.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

HR34-700 here and it plays fine.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

dennisj00 said:


> HR34-700 here and it plays fine.


Thanks. Must be a bug on my end and am going to reboot. I just tried another movie (the Abe Lincoln Vampire one) and got the same message, yet I was able to start recording it on (highest quality) and play it immediately.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

raott said:


> Do you have a Genie? If so, try to watch Chernobyl Diaries using Watch Now.


tried it. played fine. No issues


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## samrs (May 30, 2004)

raott said:


> Do you have a Genie? If so, try to watch Chernobyl Diaries using Watch Now. My Genie refuses to play it, even though other DVRs in the house will. No problem recording and immediately starting it though.


I tried it on my HR34 also, watch now works fine.

FWIW I don't use VOD much. I didn't really expect watch now to work. I've tried a few programs since I saw this thread. Cinemax, HBO, a DirecTv training video all work fine. All come through in 720p. If I download VOD in 1080i to watch later it can sometimes take awhile.

I live in the sticks and DSL is my only option. 4mbs on a good test with a 42 ms ping. 

When we first started doing HDDVRs and internet I spent a lot of time playing with settings on my router to get everything to work just right. VOD, TV Apps, Pandora, YouTube they all just work. Now.


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

I have nothing to add to my thread. I just didn't want the last response to be from a Red Sox fan!!!  Go (1st Place!) Yanks! For a day or so anyway.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Rebooted. HR34 still claims my internet connection is "too slow" to Watch Now. Despite the fact I get 30 down. Despite the fact that I can hit record on High Quality and immediately watch the same show with no problem. Despite the fact I can hit record Lower Quality and download and about a 2-3/1 ratio and despite the fact that other DVRs in the house can Watch Now with no issues.


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

It's crazy, right?


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## inf0z (Oct 16, 2011)

[email protected] said:


> Directvs VOD & watch now has nothing to do with "servers". It strictly depends on your Internet connection and how it is connected to the DTV system.
> If you are using a wifi deca you could have all sorts of problems, seeing how that is wireless!
> If you use a broadband deca you more than likely never experience the "not enough bandwidth" error. Hard wired is always the best connection choice no matter what you are doing.


I don't think this is correct information. While it is possible to get WIFI interference which could cause issues for some users, I am experiencing the same problem on a Coax CCK. I also tested this on more than one ISP, the issue is on DIRECTV's end. Server bandwidth and delivery method have a lot to do with it when you have a large amount of internet connected customers. Software could also be at fault here.


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## mark40511 (Jul 18, 2008)

Well mine is still perfectly acceptable AFTER I reset everything. Before that, forgetaboutit!
I tried the watch now and it worked, although it buffered, but just for ten seconds, then the rest of it played all the way through.......


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

mark40511 said:


> Well mine is still perfectly acceptable AFTER I reset everything. Before that, forgetaboutit!
> I tried the watch now and it worked, although it buffered, but just for ten seconds, then the rest of it played all the way through.....


Just to be clear to others, this "reset everything" was ONLY resetting the network settings and NOT a receiver reset everything that wipes out the recordings.

I've gone through so many [local] network [re-]configurations, that restoring network defaults is all most my first step. :lol:


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> Just to be clear to others, this "reset everything" was ONLY resetting the network settings and NOT a receiver reset everything that wipes out the recordings.
> 
> I've gone through so many [local] network [re-]configurations, that restoring network defaults is all most my first step. :lol:


I resetting the network settings tonight to see if I can get my Watch Now back on my HR34.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Restoring network defaults did not work for me. HR34 still inexplicably claims my internet connection is too slow for Watch Now.


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## mark40511 (Jul 18, 2008)

I don't know. I remember back when I had a Belkin router, it did not like the directv receivers at all, I tried EVERYTHING and Youtube wouldn't work even though I had an internet connection to the receiver..........A few months ago I upgraded to a Netgear WDNR4500 and there is never an issue with my internet working with the D* receivers (until I tried on demand)..........All I did, (using the remote) was settings,network (restore defaults) the reset up network (it said "congrats, you're receiver is connected to the internet), I then went to network services, set that up and the first two times it wouldn't connect, then the third try it connected successfully........ I hear network services has nothing to do with anything, but I stil wanted to set it up and connect just to make sure.

That's all I did..............before doing this, the 43 min on demand show from HGTV took 7 to 8 hours to download...........After that, it is taking 30 to 40 minutes.

I didn't reboot the receiver because prior to doing the steps above, I had rebooted receiver anyway.

And in addition to this, the bedroom and the office receivers (an HR21 and and HR24) both do on demand just fine without me having to reconfig anything........

I wonder if it has something to do with some peoples' routers


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## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

Just a question for people with issues - have you checked your router's QOS (quality of service) settings?

This might help: http://www.howtogeek.com/75660/the-beginners-guide-to-qos-on-your-router/


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

From what I've read about QOS on home routers - even with dd-wrt or Tomato, it's pretty useless.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

dennisj00 said:


> From what I've read about QOS on home routers - even with dd-wrt or Tomato, it's pretty useless.


Yes, unfortunately that is the case. None of them implement it at all properly, so it reduces overall performance if you enable it except in very specific circumstances. The biggest problem though is that it only works on your end of the link. Typically the problem you want to solve isn't prioritizing the data you are sending (which is all the router's QoS can do) but the data you're receiving. There is limited control exercised by holding back ACKs or reducing TCP window size on the connections you want at a lower priority, but it is mostly pointless without cooperation from the other end.


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## mattnboise (Mar 8, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> Does anyone know what Directv's streaming architecture is like? Is everything streamed from their LA office or do they have a distributed system using Akamai or similar? If no one knows for sure, we could find out via people who live in various places around the country streaming something from them and checking the NAT table on their router to see where the endpoint of the connection is.
> 
> If everything goes through LA, then people on the east coast are always going to have more problems than people who live closer to LA - unless they have a mirror datacenter out east, in which case the people who live in the central US are most likely to have problems. The further you are from the server you're streaming from, the more chance there is of a problem along the path. Latency doesn't matter for streaming, but larger latency does magnify the effect of any dropped packets.
> 
> ...


From my vantage point I can see many 10G ports spread around the country and they also colocate equipment in our datacenters.
I know that they have similar setups with other Teir 1 providers.


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## mark40511 (Jul 18, 2008)

I have QOS disabled in my router settings. In fact, I think it's disabled by default.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

I've had a chance to try OnDemand while staying with a friend and found some different results.
The ISP service is 50 Mb/s, yet Cinemax has been very troublesome.
Watch Now keeps running out of buffer and going to the download [1080 verses the 720p] has taken much longer. With U-Verse it would "only" take twice as long [1 hour show took 2 hours], but with this cable service it's taking closer to 3 hours.

With all this bandwidth, and more than one DVR, I started downloading two at the same time.

To my surprise, the other DVR is downloading much faster.

Both are on the same coax network with a CCK hardwired to the router.

The HR24 only has 9 mins of recording after 26 mins, while the HR21 has 41 mins after 36 mins.

If you've got the bandwidth and more than one DVR, you might want to check to see if your slow OnDemand is the same.


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