Sonic.net

Lately all these video services seem pretty flaky. All of 'em except YouTube: Hulu, Disney, Apple, Amazon. I get knocked back to standard definition—and this is so much worse than I remember regular old TV ever looking—or the streams stop for tens of seconds sometimes. Really just curious if this is my personal problem or if others are noticing. It doesn't feel like there is a generic access problem since bulk downloads and stuff like that are still pretty snappy. Maybe a congestion issue specific to these video services?

My setup us: 1g fiber in Berkeley, Google Wifi, LG webOS TV.

Is this only occurring on the TV, or on other devices, as well? My immediate inclination is to believe that the TV may not be getting a good signal.

When I was using my ISP's Wi-Fi box, I had issues with the TV's that were farther from the access point. When I switched to a Google Nest mesh Wi-Fi, with a point behind each of the farthest two TVs, the issues went away. I should note that my neighbors also have the same ISP and Wi-Fi, and I'm sure signal congestion also caused problems.

Similarly, a friend had issues with her Amazon Fire TV Stick, which was only three feet away from her Wi-Fi access point. In her case, she moved the access point from below the TV to directly behind it and her issues went away.

If it's possible, try plug in your TV to your router via an Ethernet cable instead of using wifi, and see if that helps at all.

I am also predisposed to blame the wifi, but leaves unexplained why YouTube always works perfectly.

Maybe it's your TV.

jwbaker wrote:I am also predisposed to blame the wifi, but leaves unexplained why YouTube always works perfectly.

It very well could be because YouTube as a application uses a lot less bandwidth in comparison to other streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, etc.

If your TV has the capability, try running a speedtest on it in the settings to see if what speeds are reaching it currently. If the speeds are very low, then it's most likely just an issue with the WiFi signal reaching the TV as others here have suggested. However, I would suggest running a speedtest on another device, just to be sure you're able to see the full speeds on another device.

Moving your router around, testing the TV via Ethernet, or even testing streaming on another device (like a cell phone or laptop) closer to the router will help determine if the issue is the signal itself or if it's just the location of the TV.

If you suspect that the connection itself is at fault, please give our tech support team a call, so that we can troubleshoot in real-time with you and work out a solution.

Kind regards,

jwbaker wrote:...leaves unexplained why YouTube always works perfectly.

YouTube does some buffering and other tricks to show a good stream even with poor network performance. Take a look at Stats for Nerds to see if it provides any useful insight.

Just closing the loop here. I root-caused this to a sparking light switch on the other side of my house. It did not seem to affect any of my 5GHz stuff but was knocking the television's 2.4GHz radio off the air. This did not seem to affect YouTube because while I use YouTube while goofing off during the day, I never use it at night. I replaced the switch and now Hulu etc all work normally.

Like AM vs FM radio!

Wow, that’s an interesting one! How did you find the bad switch?