Forum Discussion
Can't stream video thru Roku most of the time
Well, my Hughesnet service has been working much, much better for the past 48 hours or so. I can stream video again, although I do have a few interruptions during peak hours, but I can live with that.
If I fixed the problem, it is because I completely stumbled into it. Not sure anyone else in a hundred years would have this issue, but here goes: I am a photographer. I have a desktop computer that I use only for editing and storing photos. I have it connected with a Cat-5 cable to my router, but rarely (if ever) do I access the internet with it. I only have it on my LAN so I can pull photos from it to my laptop to share, print, etc.. Since that computer is not wirless, and I don't use it for internet access, I thought there could be no way that it could be causing any issue.
The Hughesnet router sits within about 3' of that desktop computer. While attempting to reboot my router/confirm the password, or something I accidentally knocked the router off the desk. No, I did not throw it, although I wanted to! Well, my wife was trying to watch Hulu with little success at this same time. A couple of minutes later, I heard her yell, "Whatever you did fixed it! I can watch TV now (previously the screen was showing "network error")! I jokingly told her that the only thing I did was knock the router off the desk and possibly showed it who was boss. Fully expecting to lose the TV signal again any minute, I didn't think much of it. To my surprise we were able to stream TV with no problem for the next couple of hours...something that only rarely happened in the past few days.
I could not believe my luck...just a good old-fashioned smack and the router was working! Several hours later, we were streaming TV right in the middle of the peak period with very few buffering interruptions. I was also online with my laptop taking care of some photography business. I tried to send a client a photo (which resides in a shared folder on my desktop) and suddenly I couldn't access my desktop. What could have happened? I investigate and noticed the network cable that should have been plugged into my desktop was not plugged in any more. The lock on it was broken. Seems when the router fell, the weight of it pulled directly on that network cable and yanked it out of my desktop. At the time, I could not figure why this would have caused my problem to be magically resolved, but I wasn't about to plug it back in...not just yet anyway.
I began thinking, and I remembered that there has been some kind of problem with that desktop computer installing Windows Updates. It will appear to automatically download the update, shutdown in order to install, but for some reason the update never actually installs. I wondered if somehow it wasn't downloading the update file in its entirety, or there was some kind of a glitch with it, the update couldn't install and as a result the computer kept trying to download the update files? I know that update packages are huge downloads, and if it were locked into some kind of cycle where it was constantly trying to download the update that it would use up a lot of my data. And, worse yet, I would be oblivious that it was doing so.
Now, this might all be coincidence and I might still have some problem with my Hughesnet service. But, I left the network cable unplugged on that computer for 36 hours or so and we had good service the entire time. Then, I turned off the "automatic download of updates" on the computer yesterday and reconnected the network cable. So far, so good. We have had the best experience for the past 48 hours or so that we have had since having Hughesnet installed. So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
>> Not surprising, since the highest speed we could get with AT&T was 5MBps.
That's actually fine for streaming. What you were experiencing was likely congestion (edit: it may also have been throttling from AT&T -- sometimes they do throttle speed if too many people are accessing the system -- Verizon does this as well), that is, too many people attempting to use the system at the same time.
>> So, we went with Hughesnet, figuring that 25MBps would be fine.
The HN system is designed to provide up to 25Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. However, as explained in the subscriber agreement, this cannot be guaranteed as it depends on many external factors, many of which are on the side of the user. The factors affecting speed are listed in the subscriber agreement, which is available online.
>> Sometimes we can stream, other times we cannot.
That's normal. When there's a lot of traffic on your beam, for example, you will likely not be able to stream well or at all.
>>We called Hulu and they ran several checks and told us that our latency was too high.
Latency is high with satellite connections because of the laws of physics. So your latency will usually hover betwen 600 and 700 ms. What was more likely happening was, again, congestion.
>> Last night, I ran several tests using "speedtest.net"
Pretty useless for satellite; stick to Testmy.net, especially if you would like speed issues addressed here.
>> But, I do know that my 5MBps AT&T service worked MUCH better than what I have been experiencing the past two weeks with the much faster Hughesnet.
Yes, because terrestial connections have MUCH lower latency, because the signal doesn't have to travel thousands of miles into space and back.
Your URL for Testmy.net results is: https://testmy.net/quickstats/davidandjudy
The speeds look fine and they are appropriate for streaming, provided there aren't too many people on your beam trying to use the system. Congestion is most likely the issue you are experiencing, and during prime time, this is pretty much to be expected.
Additionally, and this is just my experience, and your mileage may vary, using 3rd party products (such as Roku or FireStick) actually slows down streaming. I gave up on those and now I stream using a laptop connected to the TV via an HDMI cable. This improved streaming quite a bit (but it's still iffy during high traffic times).
I appreciate your fast reply.
Where is this "subscriber agreement" you speak of? I searched but cannot find it.
By "beam" I assume that you mean the beam from the satellite, and that has nothing to do with the users or the devices in my home? I have disconnected every device I have (including my phones), except for my television, and I have no other routers other than the Hughesnet router. So, the issue should not be traffic on my end, but I guess you mean traffic on the satellite beam?
So, in effect, you are saying that if there is congestion on my "beam" that I will not be able to watch television? And, that I cannot control how many people are on my "beam?" So, in a nutshell, I cannot expect to watch television from say 4 pm - 10 pm most days, other days I can't watch it at all, and there is nothing I can do about it?
I appreciate your suggestion about using a laptop and connecting thru an HDMI cable. I have actually resorted to that a couple of times, and it works better, but like you mentioned...it is iffy. But, when I spoke to the sales rep about possibly purchasing your service, she asked what I would use it for. I explained that I used Roku to stream Hulu and Netflix and her reply was that she used it for that purpose as well and it worked great!
Not happy.
