HALP! My MBA Forgot How To Play Netflix!

[OnceUponAMac]

This is driving me crazy. I have a 2010 MBA that has been SUPER choppy on Netflix for about 2 weeks now. I've examined (what I consider to be) the usual suspects:

1. The fan runs like crazy, even shortly after a reboot, but the temp monitor shows the thing hovering in the 50s (C).
2. I (tearfully) purged my 120GB SSD and now have 43GB available. No improvement.
3. Turning off every app besides my browser does not resolve the issue.
4. I don't have these problems with YouTube or Hulu.
5. I get the same results with Firefox and Chrome.
6. Shutting off other WiFi devices doesn't help.
7. I don't have this problem on any other machine (2 Linux, 2 PCs)

Scouring the interwebs, it seems like a lot of people had this problem at the end of 2011, but most threads just sorta drop it by 2012 (mystery patch?). Anyone have ideas?

 

[jedolley]

This is driving me crazy. I have a 2010 MBA that has been SUPER choppy on Netflix for about 2 weeks now. I've examined (what I consider to be) the usual suspects:

1. The fan runs like crazy, even shortly after a reboot, but the temp monitor shows the thing hovering in the 50s (C).
2. I (tearfully) purged my 120GB SSD and now have 43GB available. No improvement.
3. Turning off every app besides my browser does not resolve the issue.
4. I don't have these problems with YouTube or Hulu.
5. I get the same results with Firefox and Chrome.
6. Shutting off other WiFi devices doesn't help.
7. I don't have this problem on any other machine (2 Linux, 2 PCs)

Scouring the interwebs, it seems like a lot of people had this problem at the end of 2011, but most threads just sorta drop it by 2012 (mystery patch?). Anyone have ideas?

Netflix uses Microsoft Silverlight (Youtube and Hulu do not). You may want to check to see if there is an update. Also there is a setting in Silverlight for "hardware-accelerated playback" which should be checked by default, but you may want to check anyways.

 

[chazmink]

I just went through this and completely deleting and reinstalling Silverlight fixed it.

Good luck.

 

[Sam4nd]

Do you use Google Chrome? I know the current version of SilverLight is not supported by Google Chrome and they recommend using Firefox or Safari.

My wife was using Netflix today on her Pro and it was doing the same thing that you described. Sure enough when she switched from Chrome to Firefox the problem was gone so give it a try if it applies to you.