Netflix and Silverlight Disaster
July 6, 2012 7:11 AM   Subscribe

I can't for the life of me get Netflix to stop skipping every nanosecond on my Macbook. I have tried de-installing Silverlight, re-installing it, updating it, updating my Firefox, trying it on Internet Explorer. Nothing works. I have looked up every article or thread about the issue, and no dice.

It works perfectly fine on my iPad (running on the same internet connectin), and my iPhone. But no matter what I do, it remains choppy second-by-second. So it is all fully incomprehensible. I end up closing the window and restarting Netflix, which buys me about 3 minutes of uninterrupted viewing before it all falls apart. The grey bar shows that more of the show has loaded, but the playback remains a disaster.

I, of course, am near the end of a totally addictive show, and am going nuts, and for various reasons I can't use my other devices right now.

Any ideas would help before I go insane from non-consumption of this pointless media.

Also, of course there never used to be a problem until I was forced to upgrade to yet another Silverlight version, as far as I can tell/remember.
posted by teslateslatesla to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
teslateslatesla: "on my Macbook"
teslateslatesla: "trying it on Internet Explorer"

Does not compute.

Are you running Windows? Emulation? Boot Camp? Does the Mac side work fine?
posted by mkultra at 7:15 AM on July 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


Are you trying to watch it in HD? If so, your computer might not be powerful enough to handle it. HD video demands a lot of system resources.

Or do you have anything downloading in the background, like software updates?

It sounds to me like you're having buffering issues. Buffering is when your computer downloads a chuck streaming content and plays it while it downloads the next chuck. This makes it dependent on your internet connection and how much data you can push through it at one time.
posted by royalsong at 7:43 AM on July 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


Call Netflix, they had some magic solution that involved deleting a file but I don't remember the name of the file.
posted by desjardins at 7:50 AM on July 6, 2012


I just had a similar problem on my older Lenovo Windows machine - I went to the account settings page on Netflix, and changed the video quality to "good" as opposed to "high." Solved the problem for me, but I don't know what could have possibly changed to make this an issue all of a sudden. (Oddly, my slightly newer work laptop - also Lenovo - was not having the same problem!)
posted by gorbichov at 7:57 AM on July 6, 2012


i had this problem using hardware acceleration under a flash player on a mac for a long time... this may not be relevant if netflix is not using flash, but worth a look.
posted by modernnomad at 8:32 AM on July 6, 2012


Turning off HD fixed my choppy video problem.
posted by kayram at 9:29 AM on July 6, 2012


Netflix gets really choppy on my old white Macbook, when the laptop starts to heat up. I try to position the computer so it gets plenty of air flow.
posted by rancidchickn at 12:34 PM on July 6, 2012


I have this same problem, and have found that not using full screen view fixes it. Not an ideal solution, though.
posted by Specklet at 2:22 PM on July 6, 2012


Response by poster: I meant Safari, not IE! Also, I did try watching it in non-full screen, but that hasn't worked. I lowered the video quality to just "good" and nothing helped. I also have a great internet connection, so that doesn't seem to be the problem. Sigh. Perhaps I'll call Netflix and hope that they have a solution (I have heard about having to delete a specific file which magically fixes the problem.) Thanks for the ideas.
posted by teslateslatesla at 5:56 AM on July 7, 2012


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