This sounds like a network issue – though that doesn't take away from your point.

In my case, I can Watch Instantly for an entire movie, in HD, without any trouble at all, and it does start almost instantly.

If you're getting the bone, though, that points to the limitations any bandwidth-intensive business has to contend with as they scale. A decent number of potential customers are stuck with sloppy internet. I wonder at what point Netflix's growth becomes inhibited by the shitty state of US ISPs.

More interestingly, I wonder what moves they'll make to get around those limitations. They are a crafty company.

There's really only one answer to that problem: full downloads.

I would tolerate a fair amount of DRM for that functionality. I have to compare it to Steam, where streaming a game isn't an option. Steam's convenience simply leaves no reason for complaint.

> There's really only one answer to that problem: full downloads.

I hope you're wrong.

The real answer should be world-class broadband, instead of the nonsense we're dealing with now. Full downloads are a bandaid but there's no technical reason why streaming can't work perfectly for the people who want it. Telcos are just lazy and have built-in monopolies.

In the meantime, what you're describing isn't a bad bandaid, but waiting for a whole movie to download just isn't as fun as picking then watching instantly.

I agree that adequate broadband would solve this, and so many more problems.

I don't think that will happen for years at best, and then only for urban areas. For the bulk of the population, downloads are the only long term solution.

Let's be honest though, there's no real justification in ignoring the option to download. Again I compare to Steam and their model.

IMO, the short term solution is for Netflix to let you buffer more of the movie. There is a lot to be said for instant play, but if they reserved a reasonable slice of your bandwidth to an ever larger buffer they could all but eliminate stuttering after the first few minute of a movie. I mean they already have adaptive quality based on bandwidth, so I see no reason they can't do the same thing while trying to build up a 10+ minute buffer by the middle of the movie if that's more important to people than a minor change in quality.

Right now I see at most a four minute buffer. That's one thing I would like is the ability to change. Or the ability to specify my bandwidth settings so that I could allow a HD movie or tv show to buffer at higher quality for longer if my connection wasn't good enough and then start watching when there was enough of the show buffered.

It could be a network issue - but one that has followed me through two apartments, three routers, and four computers. The only constants in the equation have been Time Warner Cable and me.

No matter what the cause, however, the fact is that streaming media is vulnerable to network issues, and downloaded media is not. It may take longer to get, but once you have it, you know you have it.

I think your point about sloppy internet is so true. American ISPs are in a sorry state overall.

Well, Time Warner Cable is a terrible network. So I think his point still stands. It might not seem like a big deal but IMO, the difference between occasional High speed internet and Actual High speed internet is huge. I am literally willing to pay several hundred a month extra to have an apartment connected to FIOS on top of what FIOS actually costs.

My favorite (and I do mean my favorite) part of Time Warner is that to connect to my servers at CWRU a 5 min walk away I have to go through an public exchange node in DC. Seriously, Time Warner you and Level3 need to get that peering thing sorted out!

I've got TWC (Milwaukee area) and only very rarely have I had a movie hiccup on Netflix. If I do, refreshing the page usually fixes it.

I watch Netflix using the 3G connection on my phone, sometimes from ridiculous locations. I rarely have issues. I've been really impressed by how reliable it is, actually, and by how effectively it handles unpredictable connections. Amazon Unbox is not as reliable, though it does provide the ability to download it to watch later from hard disk, which is a win over Netflix which has to stream.

But, it sounds like you have higher standards for your movies than I do. I'm surprised a rented DVD provides a better experience, though...the forced previews, the likelihood of scratches leading to skips and freezes and such, make DVDs less valuable to me, even without the pain of having to go get them and return them.

I wonder if that has something to do with your home network or isp? I stream HD netflix constantly through my bluray player and xbox and never have so much as a hiccup.

My girlfriend reviews two movies a day over Watch Instantly for her blog and over the past six months I don't think we've had a single issue with the streaming. For what it's worth, we stream via the PS3, and it works flawlessly.

That's funny. I haven't watched many dvds in awhile because I mostly watching streaming on Netflix. The other day I watched a brand new dvd on my roommate's dvd player. It skipped/stuttered several times during playback and I realized how nice my experience with streaming has been. My memory of watching dvds over the years is littered with such problems or worse (though there were also plenty of movies that displayed without a hitch). I have an occasional problem with Netflix, but they have been pretty far between.