any way to force a lower quality stream?

[apple.snapple]

Hey all. I have an issue with ATV3 and WatchESPN. ESPN plays beautifully in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, but NEVER in the evenings. In fact, my 50 mbps TWC package drops to about 5-8 mbps from about 5 to 10 pm.

So, the result is a stuttering, freezing, lagging mess. I have to back out to the game list and restart the stream every 10-15 minutes.

My question is, is there any way to reduce the stream bitrate in any way? With netflix, I can go on netflix.com and set it to stream at a lower bitrate. Is there any way to do this with ESPN?

Thanks.

 

[JeffPerrin]

Well, if worse-comes-to-worse, you can change the Apple TV to standard definition.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203422

 

[JAT]

Maybe you should upgrade your internet connection. "50" is the maximum and cable, as you see, is usually not at the maximum.

 

[apple.snapple]

Maybe you should upgrade your internet connection. "50" is the maximum and cable, as you see, is usually not at the maximum.

Well, it's either 50 from TWC or 5 from DSL.
In fact, we were thinking about downgrading to 20 since the times we actually need the internet, we never get above 10.

Regardless, thanks for the suggestion.

 

[StinDaWg]

Hey all. I have an issue with ATV3 and WatchESPN. ESPN plays beautifully in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, but NEVER in the evenings. In fact, my 50 mbps TWC package drops to about 5-8 mbps from about 5 to 10 pm.

You need to call TWC and get that fixed. I have the 50/5 package and I get a consistent 56 Mbps down/5.75 up at all times.

Either that or you've got someone in your house torrenting without your knowledge, lol.

 

[apple.snapple]

You need to call TWC and get that fixed. I have the 50/5 package and I get a consistent 56 Mbps down/5.75 up at all times.

Either that or you've got someone in your house torrenting without your knowledge, lol.

Yeah, this is a road I've been down for the last 5 years or so...
They send a tech, say "I don't see a problem", and they stand by their "50 mbps MAX" talk... as in, it can be ZERO and still be within terms of use.

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

Yeah, this is a road I've been down for the last 5 years or so...
They send a tech, say "I don't see a problem", and they stand by their "50 mbps MAX" talk... as in, it can be ZERO and still be within terms of use.

I feel your pain, brother. This is the reason why I refuse to stream anything that I care about watching - I may get 60Mbps 'peak', but there are times that dies off to next-to-nothing, and for that reason it can't be relied upon.

Ten years from now, we'll look back on this crap and wonder how we ever put up with it.

 

[JoelTheSuperior]

Basically sounds like you've got contention issues in your area.

Unfortunately ISPs are known for basically not fixing these ever so it wouldn't be a bad idea to downgrade to be honest - you definitely wouldn't lose anything during peak times anyway (assuming you keep the same modem - a drop to DOCSIS 2.0 wouldn't be much fun).