Posted on 10/22/2017 9:44:08 PM PDT by EinNYC
I am hoping that some of our techie FReepers could give me some guidance on this annoying issue. I have a Samsung "smart" TV which is a couple of years old, which I use exclusively to watch Netflix movies ( I don't watch TV and have not for at least 35 years. But I enjoy watching family fare movies). It is not the latest and greatest TV with all the cutting edge stuff. I see "1080" appear in a box when it first comes on, if that helps.
I have a cable internet modem with its own wi-fi hotspot. I use that, teamed with an Amazon Fire TV stick, to stream Netflix. Virtually every time I watch, the movie stops to buffer and I have to wait until the percents mount up to 99, then the movie starts again. Annoying! If this doesn't happen, then I get an error message necessitating unplugging the TV and Amazon dongle, waiting 10 minutes, then replugging both in. Annoying!
Since the Netflix movies play fine on my iMac, which is directly connected by cable with no intermediary needed, it seems that the Amazon Fire TV stick cannot handle the streaming. Netflix tech reps suggested I replace it with a Roku "box". I think the "box" means the Roku Premiere+ model. Is that the solution for a 1080 kind of TV? Or would the Roku stick be better than the Amazon stick and be sufficient to eliminate these annoying problems?
I thank in advance anyone who is up on their streaming tech who can bring clarity to this situation, because I am confused.
I have a MacBook Pro with HDMI out that I run to my Samsung TV HDMI in. Works great.
>> I have a cable internet modem with its own wi-fi hotspot. I use that, teamed with an Amazon Fire TV stick, to stream Netflix.
The cable provided Wifi routers pretty much suck. I have a 3 YO Netgear router that works well. It’s wired to the cable/FIOS router.
BTW, I used to deal with that buffering problem many, many years ago. Perhaps your TV has a crappy MPEG decoder. If that’s the case, drop $2k on a curved 4k OLED monitor. You may starve for a few months, but you won’t regret it. And Netflix offers 4k content for a slight subscription increase.
>> The major benefit of Ethernet is now gone.
Not sure about that.
Despite those content viewing content on their mobiles, the market will consume the best formats and bit rates available. And fiber to the home with Cat-6e/7 cable will deliver. Wifi tends to lag. Disagree?
bmp
I have a $300 Netgear Nighthawk and frankly, the wifi is sometimes crap.
I have my DLink ‘dog cams’ hooked up to ethernet, even though they can work wirelessly because half the time, they won’t load on wifi.
The Nite Owl security cams are all wired.
The TV is a 65” Sharp 3D Smart TV with both wireless and wired.
I have a Sony Blu-Ray/3D hooked to that, and I wire that.
I have Rokus and other things like it stuffed in the drawer that I don’t use since I got the Sony.
Even the DirecTV box has on demand and wireless but it’s wired up, too.
Hard wire for me.
I kinda hate wifi.
:D
I have no idea what all that means.
Everything I have is Gigabit and I’m content.
The router that your modem is attached to.
If you don’t have a router, get one.
Netgear makes really good stuff and Best Buy often has it on sale for prices comparable to Amazon.
They also price match Amazon.
The most you get out of older laptops with 802.11ac routers is 802.11n, although you get some distance boost.
In my experience, only the newest equipment will approach 1G/sec, and mostly only in the same room, or one adjoining.
The cost per megabit/sec is also not yet competitive. I have this equipment because I can write it off and I'm a gadget freak. A $400-$500 5300ac gaming router is not for most home/home office budgets, and even the "slow" 1900ac routers are pushing $200.
Finally, I would say if you do backups (I do full monthly backups and nightly differential backups of all the computers in my home and office) 1G or 10G ethernet is a better solution. Comcast routinely delivers (only) 215 Megabit/sec down, but the cable company is not my bandwidth limitation.
We have WiFi, and just bought a new vizio smart t.v. (NOT a 4k). We have a subscription to Amazon prime and netflix, both of which are built in to the tv apps, along with several other free apps. Very occasionally, Netflix has to buffer, but only very occasionally. We’re getting much, much more programming than we were with satellite, which was costing us $200/MONTH, vs $20/month for the Netflix and Amazon prime, combined. Couldn’t be happier! I only wish FOX and OAN were available for free, but for the money we’re saving, we’ll just use our tablets for those two news sites.
Really disappointed in Roku.
I have a Sharp Smart TV which has netflix built in. I have an Orbi AC network That gives me 150 mbps. The Orbi is plugged into my ancient Actentec router that’s required for FIOS. No problems streaming that way.
Before I bought the Orbi I hardwired the TV and my DVD to the range extender near the TV. Never had a problem that way. Newest toy is Chromecast which uses your phone for a controller but is attached to your WiFi network. It’s cheap and works really great. It’s also needed for Hoopla and a couple other services offered by the library. Netflix runs great through that too.
Roku is the biggest and one of the first. Firesticks are Amazon and Chromecast is Google.
What are the really good old movie channels/apps I have Hoopla, Kanopy and Pluto. Of course there’s also YouTube but a lot of content has been removed recently.
Might be a WiFi signal issue - how much distance and what is the signal strength? Your cell phone might be useful in finding out if the signal is good enough to keep from all the buffering - but it’s not odd for it to occur from time to time.
Also look at changing the channel on the router. Had one running great but after a couple of years, connecting was iffy. Turned out there were 4 times as many local wireless signals than I remembered when I set it up. Looked up how to change the channel at the manufacturer’s website and it recommended two other channels ( plus the default. ) Still didn’t fix it. I then decided to change to a channel not on their list. No connection or speed problems for years since then. Looks like most use the default channel.
We had a similar problem. We had an old, slow Comcast (cable) modem hooked to a good WiFi router. We bought a new, faster Comcast Modem with its own, supposedly fast, WiFi router built in and a “Sreaming Stick”from Roku, but not much improvement.
I hooked up our previous WiFi router to one of the new modem output plugs, and linked all of our WiFi stuff back to that router network. Now, everything works great. Only occasional problems.
Seems like our problem was the slow modem. Didn’t matter that we had a great router, or that we had a good receiver (stick), the router was not being “fed” the signal fast enough to do any good. Networks can only be as fast as the slowest part...
An amazing amount of tech information here. More than I can absorb. I will say this about Samsung TVs, for us, it did not work well. We bought a 48 inch one a year ago from Sam’s club. It stopped coming in 2 weeks. After some 10 calls for long distance home fix-it advice, all failed, we had to take it back. The nearest Samsung repairman was some 250 miles away in Chicago and they would not send one to our home. We had burned the box the TV came in. We took it back to SAM’s club and they took it back, no questions asked. We replaced it with our second LG, for us, a far better performing TV.
Routers using 802.11 G have limited bandwidth under perfect conditions. Those using 802.11 N do much better (also due to 5 Ghz bands). 802.11 AC has the most bandwidth, but expects much less power use and receiving devices need special sensitivity and discrimination to not be confused by stronger signals using N or G nearby.
It’s a delicate mess.
Since I don’t know what you’re talking about, what’s to disagree? LOL
Yep and they don't change the password either.
Wi-Fi has its bugs, one of which is lack of security. You’re better off with a LAN system.
Also, use the Netflix app that came with your TV. Why add an extra layer?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.