If your TV watching is primarily provided by a streaming service (or multiple services), how often does it buffer? I’m trying to figure out if mine is typical.
In an evening of watching TV, I would on average experience buffering:
Never (This seems unlikely)
1-5 times.
6-10 times.
11-20 times.
More than 20 times. (This would be unwatchable IMO)
I have Xfinity cable internet, with an average of 80 Mbps, and stream from Netflix or Amazon. But I go with ‘Standard HD’ (1080p) - which matches the resolution of my monitor (prime watching screen). And at these settings, I never have buffering. If I was doing higher resolution, or on a mobile connection, then, maybe? But on mobile devices I’ve always pre-downloaded.
We have firesticks. So which room are you talking about? Living room is farthest from the source. What we really run into is hiccups, i.e. broken audio. If we pause a couple minutes, things often re-synch.
I haven’t tracked if there’s a difference in streaming services, but I’d say in general a 2-hour movie might pause for buffering once, and sometimes never. The TV that is some distance from the wifi router is more likely to buffer than the TV next to it.
It’s been several years since I’ve seen rebuffering on a streaming video from a major service (Netflix, Amazon, CBS, YouTube, etc). Most services use adaptive bitrate streaming now, so buffering indicates a serious network glitch, while an old style single-bitrate stream could be interrupted by a fairly short network delay. (I wrote the original streaming player for Roku, so am intimately familiar with the intricacies of handling varying network speeds in a streaming player.)
Never. When we upgraded to 1GB internet, I had them put the router directly behind the TV, and connected them via ethernet. And while our firestick is not directly connected, I think because they are so proximate it doesn’t buffer at all.
I don’t watch a lot, but when I do, I don’t ever recall waiting for it to buffer. My usage is almost all Netflix. I don’t have HBO Max. I do occasionally watch Amazon. Checking on Speedtest.net, I get 230 down.
Netflix never ever buffers for me, and it’s what I watch most. I have issues occasionally with Amazon, and with HBO Max when I had it, but those problems are more with the apps than buffering. (That is, I get error messages and hanging, and only rarely buffering.) I have a midgrade of DSL, hardwired to the TV, and 5g wifi for devices. So, on average, in an evening of watching streaming services, I experience no buffering.
Trying to watch anything in 4K? Other streams going on at the same time? Computers or phones connected to your internet and active?
Sounds like something is eating up your bandwidth.