Announcement

Collapse

Fandango at Home Forum Guidelines

Fandango at Home Forum Guidelines

The Fandango at Home Forums are designed to help viewers get the most out of their Fandango at Home experience. Here, Fandango at Home customers may post information, questions, ideas, etc. on the subject of Fandango at Home and Fandango at Home -related issues (home theater, entertainment, etc). Although the primary purpose of these forums is to help Fandango at Home customers with questions and/or problems with their Fandango at Home service, there are also off-topic areas available within the Fandango at Home Forums for users to chat with like-minded people, subject to the limitations below.

Please post all comments in English. When posting a comment in the Fandango at Home Forums, please conduct yourself in a respectful and civil manner. While we respect that you may feel strongly about an issue, please leave room for discussion.

Fandango at Home Forum Guidelines

The Fandango at Home Forums are designed to help viewers get the most out of their Fandango at Home experience. Here, Fandango at Home customers may post information, questions, ideas, etc. on the subject of Fandango at Home and Fandango at Home -related issues (home theater, entertainment, etc). Although the primary purpose of these forums is to help Fandango at Home customers with questions and/or problems with their Fandango at Home service, there are also off-topic areas available within the Fandango at Home Forums for users to chat with like-minded people, subject to the limitations below.

Please post all comments in English. When posting a comment in the Fandango at Home Forums, please conduct yourself in a respectful and civil manner. While we respect that you may feel strongly about an issue, please leave room for discussion.

Fandango at Home reserves the right to refrain from posting and/or to remove user comments, including comments that contain any of the following:

1. Obscenities, defamatory language, discriminatory language, or other language not suitable for a public forum
2. Email addresses, phone numbers, links to websites, physical addresses or other forms of contact information
3. "Spam" content, references to other products, advertisements, or other offers
4. Spiteful or inflammatory comments about other users or their comments
5. Comments that may potentially violate the DMCA or any other applicable laws
6. Comments that discuss ways to manipulate Fandango at Home products/services, including, but not limited to, reverse engineering, video extraction, and file conversion.

Additionally, please keep in mind that although Fandango at Home retains the right to monitor, edit, and/or remove posts within Fandango at Home Forums, it does not necessarily review every comment. Accordingly, specific questions about Fandango at Home products and services should be directed to Fandango at Home customer service representatives.

Terms of Use - User Comments, Feedback, Reviews, Submissions

For all reviews, comments, feedback, postcards, suggestions, ideas, and other submissions disclosed, submitted or offered to Fandango at Home, on or through this Site, by e-mail or telephone, or otherwise disclosed, submitted or offered in connection you use of this Site (collectively, the "Comments") you grant Fandango at Home a royalty-free, irrevocable, transferable right and license to use the Comments however Fandango at Home desires, including, without limitation, to copy, modify, delete in its entirety, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from and/or sell and /or distribute such Comments and/or incorporate such Comments into any form, medium or technology throughout the world.
Fandango at Home will be entitled to use, reproduce, disclose, modify, adapt, create derivative works from, publish, display and distribute any Comments you submit for any purpose whatsoever, without restriction and without compensating you in any way. Fandango at Home is and shall be under no obligation (1) to maintain any Comments in confidence; (2) to pay to users any compensation for any Comments; or (3) to respond to any user Comments. You agree that any Comments submitted by you to the Site will not violate the terms in this Terms of Use or any right of any third party, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, privacy or other personal or proprietary right(s), and will not cause injury to any person or entity. You further agree that no Comments submitted by you to this Site will be or contain libelous or otherwise unlawful, threatening, abusive or obscene material, or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings or any form of "spam."

You grant Fandango at Home the right to use the name that you submit in connection with any Comments. You agree not to use a false email address, impersonate any person or entity, otherwise mislead as to the origin of any Comments you submit. You are, and shall remain, solely responsible for the content of any Comments you make and you agree to indemnify Fandango at Home for all claims resulting from any Comments you submit. Fandango at Home takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any Comments submitted by you or any third-party reserves the right to refrain from posting and/or to remove user comments, including comments that contain any of the following:

1. Obscenities, defamatory language, discriminatory language, or other language not suitable for a public forum
2. Email addresses, phone numbers, links to websites, physical addresses or other forms of contact information
3. "Spam" content, references to other products, advertisements, or other offers
4. Spiteful or inflammatory comments about other users or their comments
5. Comments that may potentially violate the DMCA or any other applicable laws
6. Comments that discuss ways to manipulate Fandango at Home products/services, including, but not limited to, reverse engineering, video extraction, and file conversion.

Additionally, please keep in mind that although Fandango at Home retains the right to monitor, edit, and/or remove posts within Fandango at Home Forums, it does not necessarily review every comment. Accordingly, specific questions about Fandango at Home products and services should be directed to Fandango at Home customer service representatives.

Terms of Use - User Comments, Feedback, Reviews, Submissions

For all reviews, comments, feedback, postcards, suggestions, ideas, and other submissions disclosed, submitted or offered to Fandango at Home, on or through this Site, by e-mail or telephone, or otherwise disclosed, submitted or offered in connection you use of this Site (collectively, the "Comments") you grant Fandango at Home a royalty-free, irrevocable, transferable right and license to use the Comments however Fandango at Home desires, including, without limitation, to copy, modify, delete in its entirety, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from and/or sell and /or distribute such Comments and/or incorporate such Comments into any form, medium or technology throughout the world.
Fandango at Home will be entitled to use, reproduce, disclose, modify, adapt, create derivative works from, publish, display and distribute any Comments you submit for any purpose whatsoever, without restriction and without compensating you in any way. Fandango at Home is and shall be under no obligation (1) to maintain any Comments in confidence; (2) to pay to users any compensation for any Comments; or (3) to respond to any user Comments. You agree that any Comments submitted by you to the Site will not violate the terms in this Terms of Use or any right of any third party, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, privacy or other personal or proprietary right(s), and will not cause injury to any person or entity. You further agree that no Comments submitted by you to this Site will be or contain libelous or otherwise unlawful, threatening, abusive or obscene material, or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings or any form of "spam."

You grant Fandango at Home the right to use the name that you submit in connection with any Comments. You agree not to use a false email address, impersonate any person or entity, otherwise mislead as to the origin of any Comments you submit. You are, and shall remain, solely responsible for the content of any Comments you make and you agree to indemnify Fandango at Home for all claims resulting from any Comments you submit. Fandango at Home takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any Comments submitted by you or any third-party.
See more
See less

Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 3
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous 1 2 3 template Next
    #1

    Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

    For about two weeks I am experiencing buffering when trying to play rented or library HDX titles using a Bluray player. I've been using Vudu for several months without issues - but now the service is virtually unusable. It's no fun to watch a movie in 30 second snippets with 10 second interruptions...

    There wasn't any change in my home network nor the ISP (AT&T U-verse). Buffering appears to occur for any title, although the same title may play fine at other times. Here's a sample, annotated graph of traffic observed by the router when I played HDX movie 1, played HDX movie 2, played HDX movie 3, and then played HDX movie 2 again over a period of about 20 minutes last Thursday night. Movie 2 consistently exhibited the buffering problem, while the other movies played fine at the time.



    Friday night, none of those movies played without constant buffering, nor did the movie I had rented for the evening.

    After lots of speed testing, power cycling, trace routing, and what-not, I concluded that the best explanation of what is happening is that Vudu servers are congested. Vudu just doesn't have enough capacity to stream all those movies to their customers at prime movie watching time.

    I've had lengthy discussions with Vudu support, but so far they've been unable to resolve the issue.
    The promise of the Vudu service is great, but execution is lacking.

    Thoughts?
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

    It's probably your ISP, honestly. I used to have U-Verse and always had issues with their central node near my house. Vudu is more than capable of supporting thousands of streams, how else is it able to survive for this long? Call AT&T and talk to their upper tier techs so they can send someone to your location and have them physically move you over to a different "card" or node. It worked for me but I finally had enough of their network issues and left them for Comcast.

    Comment

      #3
      Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

      While it's possible that AT&T is intentionally or inadvertently throttling my connection and/or VUDU's, it's also very improbable given the chart shown in my post. AT&T would have to inspect every packet, and only throttle packets of select streams (HDX 2), while not throttling other VUDU streams going to my router.

      As I said, very improbable. I'm going with the simpler explanation.

      Comment

        #4
        Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

        ISP's sniff packets for bit torrent transmission for studios like HBO and SHOWTIME, so why can't they do this for Vudu? Especially when these providers also offer VOD as well. There is a simpler reason as you just hinted. Have you gone over your allotted usage for the month. Many people think that their internet is "unlimited" but certain ISP's do have a cap where they will throttle you down after a certain threshold has been met.

        Comment

          #5
          Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

          Originally posted by Vudu Witchdoctor View Post
          ISP's sniff packets for bit torrent transmission for studios like HBO and SHOWTIME, so why can't they do this for Vudu? Especially when these providers also offer VOD as well. There is a simpler reason as you just hinted. Have you gone over your allotted usage for the month. Many people think that their internet is "unlimited" but certain ISP's do have a cap where they will throttle you down after a certain threshold has been met.
          So you're saying that AT&T don't throttle HDX 1, then a couple minutes later they throttle HDX 2, and then they do not throttle HDX 3, and again a few minutes later they throttle HDX 2 again. That's some theory you have there... AT&T really must dislike that HDX 2 stream specifically, and approve of the others.

          And no, I haven't reached anywhere near my traffic cap. If I test viewing the VUDU titles at off-peek hours - like in the morning or after midnight, there are no buffering issues for any HDX movies.

          In my dealings with VUDU support after I sent them the traffic graph, I asked them if their servers might be at or over capacity. After that question, they "forwarded my issue for review by engineering". This was a week ago - there has not been any more "help" since then, and no answer to my question either way.

          Comment

            #6
            Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

            You mentioned that movies play fine during non-peak hours and they're buffering during peak hours. To me, this sounds like an ISP issue. Maybe the local hub is being overloaded during peak hours. Vudu can't do anything to fix something that may be on the ISP's end. I would also assume that Vudu's servers have way more capacity that a local AT&T hub has so I would really think that the issue is with AT&T.

            Comment

              #7
              Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

              Originally posted by moviebuff13 View Post
              You mentioned that movies play fine during non-peak hours and they're buffering during peak hours. To me, this sounds like an ISP issue. Maybe the local hub is being overloaded during peak hours. Vudu can't do anything to fix something that may be on the ISP's end. I would also assume that Vudu's servers have way more capacity that a local AT&T hub has so I would really think that the issue is with AT&T.
              I appreciate your input, but I'm not sure that you actually looked at and understand the implications of the traffic graph. Assuming that AT&T's local node is the culprit, how would you explain that only one movie has buffering issues over a certain time period, while during roughly the same time period, other movies play without buffering? You're pointing fingers at AT&T, because that fits your theory. In your mind, there is no way that VUDU could possibly be the culprit. I'm conjecturing that VUDU uses several servers to stream the movies, and in this case it just happened that HDX 1 and HDX 3 were on different servers than HDX 2. Only the HDX 2 server was congested at that time. That theory makes sense to me, just as your theory makes sense to you.

              I'm just trying to figure out whether or not there is a solution to the random buffering problem. I have pretty much ruled out my local networking and playback devices as culprits. That leaves VUDU as the source of the video streams, and my ISP. I have no facts to blame AT&T, yet. VUDU support wasn't very helpful beyond some basic trouble-shooting of my local network (power-cycling the modem, router, bluray player; surely, if there was a way to "CTL-ALT_DEL, they'd have had me try that as well, lol).

              Right now, I'm asking VUDU if they can confirm that they have enough capacity for me. Until they actually answer that question, and/or advise that, based on some evidence, I should take this up with my ISP, we're kind of going in circles in this thread.

              Comment

                #8
                Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                I have had vudu for awhile and it keeps on buffering on me whenever I rent hdx movies and it is making me watch movies in sd while I already paid for a hdx movie

                Comment

                  #9
                  Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                  Greetings,

                  I have had a Vudu account for several years now, I have Verizon Fios with 50/25 Download/Upload speed.

                  I have converted a lot of my collection to Utlra Violet database and I have also purchased several movies from Vudu.

                  Recently, I would say about 3 months now, I can't watch any movies without buffering every minute or two.

                  I kind of given up watching Vudu and I am a little sad because I don't want to abandon my collection.

                  I can watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu without any problems at all except for Vudu.

                  So please do not tell me it is my ISP because I have no problem with any of the other services except Vudu.

                  In fact, Vudu was great several months back and that's how I fell in love with the service.

                  I thing Vudu service is getting saturated and they don't want to admit fault at this time.

                  They over subscribed their service and keep up with bandwidth during peak time

                  Vudu please fix this issue or you will lose all the customers you have.

                  If I buy and HDX movie, I want to watch HDX version not SD.

                  By the way, I am not leaving this forum, I will keep posting until this issue is addressed.


                  Thank you for you your attention.

                  Zman

                  Comment

                    #10
                    Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                    Originally posted by zman80 View Post
                    Greetings,

                    I have had a Vudu account for several years now, I have Verizon Fios with 50/25 Download/Upload speed.

                    I have converted a lot of my collection to Utlra Violet database and I have also purchased several movies from Vudu.

                    Recently, I would say about 3 months now, I can't watch any movies without buffering every minute or two.

                    I kind of given up watching Vudu and I am a little sad because I don't want to abandon my collection.

                    I can watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu without any problems at all except for Vudu.

                    So please do not tell me it is my ISP because I have no problem with any of the other services except Vudu.

                    In fact, Vudu was great several months back and that's how I fell in love with the service.

                    I thing Vudu service is getting saturated and they don't want to admit fault at this time.

                    They over subscribed their service and keep up with bandwidth during peak time

                    Vudu please fix this issue or you will lose all the customers you have.

                    If I buy and HDX movie, I want to watch HDX version not SD.

                    By the way, I am not leaving this forum, I will keep posting until this issue is addressed.


                    Thank you for you your attention.

                    Zman

                    Hi Zman,

                    Have you contacted our support team as of yet? If you have, could you respond with your case number.

                    Comment

                      #11
                      Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                      Yes I did open a case with Vudu support: #140713-000712



                      Originally posted by DanielH View Post
                      Hi Zman,

                      Have you contacted our support team as of yet? If you have, could you respond with your case number.

                      Comment

                        #12
                        Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                        Originally posted by zman80 View Post
                        Yes I did open a case with Vudu support: #140713-000712
                        I pushed your ticket to someone, you should hear back shortly.

                        Comment

                          #13
                          Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                          I have a similar problem with buffering. I have spent a lot of $ moving my movie collection to Vudu and for a long time now I can't watch a movie without some buffering and many movies have a lot of buffering.

                          All other streaming services work fine and never have an issue (Amazon, Netflix, Roku, HBO) all work fine. Only Vudu has issues.

                          I would like to ask Vudu to help solve this issue. I feel I have lost my online collection at this point because I can't enjoy anything without interruption.

                          Note: It is not the local network or ISP (Verizon FIOS 75/35 Mb). All other streaming services work fine without interruption.

                          Could someone representing Vudu comment on what is being done to address these issues?

                          Thank you!

                          Comment

                            #14
                            Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                            Originally posted by David9070 View Post
                            I have a similar problem with buffering. I have spent a lot of $ moving my movie collection to Vudu and for a long time now I can't watch a movie without some buffering and many movies have a lot of buffering.

                            All other streaming services work fine and never have an issue (Amazon, Netflix, Roku, HBO) all work fine. Only Vudu has issues.

                            I would like to ask Vudu to help solve this issue. I feel I have lost my online collection at this point because I can't enjoy anything without interruption.

                            Note: It is not the local network or ISP (Verizon FIOS 75/35 Mb). All other streaming services work fine without interruption.

                            Could someone representing Vudu comment on what is being done to address these issues?

                            Thank you!
                            Have you created a ticket with customer care yet? If so, may I have your ticket # please.

                            Comment

                              #15
                              Re: Buffering makes Vudu service unusable

                              I'd like to +1 this thread. I've been using Vudu for streaming HDX movies for a few months now and love the service, but lately I'm getting a bunch of buffering errors asking me to 'downgrade' the movie resolution to continue watching. The error message specifically says that *my* bandwidth is insufficient. The problem I have is that my bandwidth (according to multiple speed tests) is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50/25 (down/up mbps). I've verified this while the movie is paused due to the buffering issue. I'm running on a Sony NSZ-GS7 that is hardwired to my router. My guess would be that the issue is on the Vudu end, but I don't have any evidence of that other than my speed tests and the lack of buffering on other services (Netflix, etc.). Just my 2 cents. Thanks.

                              Comment

                              Previous 1 2 3 template Next
                              Working...
                              X