One of the reasons I hate the site....but before I become too critical I wanted to see the performance other people are getting.

Most of the time it takes forever to load and start the video, and when it does it ends up pausing frequently to buffer more restarting.

I've had this problem for years on both HD and normal videos....and I have a standard cable connection here at home that is plenty fast for both Netflix HD streaming and Xbox games.

So...any tips to tweaking settings that might make youtube playback more consistent?

10/31/2009 3:53:22 PM

I'm fairly certain Time Warner either limits throughput to youtube or routes youtube connections over links with saturated bandwidth. I have had this same problem on TWC for years.

I always thought it was youtube's fault until I realized that it works better over a 320kbps EV-DO (mobile broadband) connection than it does over 10Mbps roadrunner turbo.

10/31/2009 4:07:29 PM

what does netflix use to stream?

you tube uses flash, i think, which is pretty bloated.

10/31/2009 4:40:22 PM

Netflix uses Silverlight

10/31/2009 5:13:28 PM

Youtube playback has been shit for me, but only recently. Even low-res videos are constantly stopping and buffering. I have a roadrunner connection with 20 Mbps download speed, so I'm pretty sure it's not my end, unless it's software related.

Quote :

"I'm fairly certain Time Warner either limits throughput to youtube or routes youtube connections over links with saturated bandwidth. I have had this same problem on TWC for years."

How did you hear about that? If that's true, I'm going to call them about that.

10/31/2009 5:26:43 PM

there's greasemonkey scripts for youtube.

10/31/2009 5:34:05 PM

Youtube is shit for me, too. 99% sure it's not my connection, not flash. It's either Youtube (doubtful) or TWC (highly likely).

10/31/2009 5:54:28 PM

please post an example clip on youtube and I will verify

i hardly ever go to youtube

10/31/2009 5:56:37 PM

You can really pick anything. I'm buffering every 30 seconds on any low-def video.

[Edited on October 31, 2009 at 6:10 PM. Reason : No problems with Netflix/Silverlight or any other flash player, though]

10/31/2009 6:10:22 PM

I just tried netflix video using silverlight and had no problem... You might want to try rebooting your router

10/31/2009 6:17:44 PM

depending on my browser (chrome or firefox), flash will spike my cpu to 100% on 1 or both cores on youtube...

10/31/2009 7:16:35 PM

Quote :

"I just tried netflix video using silverlight and had no problem"

Yeah, no one else in this thread has had problems with Netfilx, either.

10/31/2009 7:32:34 PM

The only thing I can figure is TWC is throttling the traffic from YouTube.

I can't imagine Google being OK with performance that shitty if it is, in fact, coming from their end.

10/31/2009 8:48:01 PM

also on TWC with business class and youtube is slow as shit

11/1/2009 1:18:08 AM

Also slow on TWC. TWC has to be screwing us.

While youtube videos are buffering I get perfect results on speed tests.

What are the current DSL deals...I'm ready to switch.

[Edited on November 1, 2009 at 1:27 AM. Reason : .]

11/1/2009 1:26:25 AM

95% of the time Youtube will work flawlessly for me, but then that 5% it will randomly stop to only do what I assume is buffering, yet it sometimes it will just stop letting me try to play it altogether

11/1/2009 2:28:34 AM

I've had this same problem for a while. I always assumed it was an issue with my wireless connection. It is really annoying. It happens to me on nba.com as well.

So any solution, what's up with this greasemonkey script?

11/1/2009 3:44:59 AM

i don't even click youtube links anymore, its completely unusable

11/1/2009 11:16:39 AM

"down for maintenance" now. youtube is a royal fuckup

11/1/2009 12:32:41 PM

wow all this talk about two throttling and it looks like it might have been youtubes fault

11/1/2009 12:44:22 PM

I'd been noticing this for a while as well and had decided it was TWC throttling it.

But it's working just fine this morning. All the ones that were giving me royal hell play just fine.

Still, fuck TWC all the same.

11/2/2009 9:25:30 AM

i've noticed the same, youtube performance started to get really sucky over the last few weeks on my roadrunner standard home connection.

11/2/2009 9:55:30 AM

performance is fine for me (on Uverse) except when youtube just completely fails -> "An error has occurred..." I get that shit all the damn time.

11/2/2009 10:03:59 AM

Yea I have the same problem. I have RoadRunner Xtreme with Turbo Boost and always have to wait for HQ videos to buffer. Generally low quality is fine, though sometimes its just stupidly slow, no other flash video sites give me that problem though...

11/2/2009 1:59:31 PM

I've wondered for a while if TWC was throttling youtube. At my old apartment I always had problems with it stopping to buffer. I rarely have problems now that I'm on AT&T DSL. Still waiting on Uverse...

11/2/2009 2:11:13 PM

Yeah i noticed yesterday that all youtube videos were 'pausey' as hell, take forever to load and are basically unwatchable.

11/2/2009 8:00:20 PM

same here for me today..well, on some of them. some are fine but a lot are awful

11/2/2009 8:55:10 PM

Quote :

"Still, fuck TWC all the same."

Even if they don't throttle they sure as hell want to.

11/2/2009 9:53:23 PM

For those of you who think TWC isn't limiting bandwidth to youtube, next time you notice it sucking, try connecting through a proxy.

11/22/2009 6:52:35 PM