You missed "ALF".
I have my Sharp Smart TV hooked up to an Ethernet cable instead of using my WiFi.
If your Samsung is like the one I used to have, there’s an ethernet jack in the back.
Use it.
It makes *all* the difference.
use the Roku my self. if you like the real old movies there are a lot of free channels offering movies that are from the 60s and prior for free. only problem is sorting through the real bad ones. still have buffer problems everyonec in a while it usually means heavy use on the network.
I have a roku stick and experience the same problems sometimes. If I were to do it all over again I would go with the roku box.
Long ago, seems like, I bought a PS3 game console. Never use it for gaming. I just use it to run dvd movies or watch Netflix.
No buffering issues at all for me when watching Netflix.
I have a cable internet hookup. Supposed to be 5MEG dl speed, but I only get 3MEG at most. Doesn’t seem to bother the Netflix viewing at all.
I have a cat5 cord from my internet modem to the PS3, and HDMI connector from the PS3 to the TV.
No clue if that’s the best way to go about using those parts and pieces, but seems to work.
We have roku box v3. It works very well.
I replaced my router with a new 5 Meg dual band WI-FI model. About $240.
I also got a new smart Blue Ray DVD player 5 Meg model. About $140. I run my NETFLEX through the DVD player.
Now I very rarely have a buffering problem. And it is amazing quick for the initial loading.
The Ethernet cable idea is much cheaper if you can do it and would do as well or better. I can't run a Ethernet cable to my TV. Or you could buy a new smart TV that can handle the higher band width WI-FI.
Been in computers and networking for 40 years... The Samsung smart tv should come with the Netflix app built in if it’s just a couple years old. So I am assuming you’re using the firestick with Kodi and third party apps, but please don’t answer that since it’s an assumption only for the purpose of part of the answer that comes next. If so then not too much can be done. Many of those third party apps are flawed.
Barring that, use the hardwire option with CAT5 straight to the router from the TV. Now perhaps you are being intentionally bottlenecked because of your location and/or amount of streaming. You just gripe heavily to the ISP and they magically fix it. Had to do that for my brother last month.
For me, CAT5 cable is best bet to start with and cheaper than replacing hardware. If firestick is touchy, and you only use it to watch netflix, try logging in directly through the TV app to see if it’s better.
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.
bmp
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.
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.
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.
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?