Forum Discussion
Problem AGAIN with speed in evening!
bkeeper -our last discussion ended with upgrade and cancellation options. I have private messaged you about upgrading and what I can do for you.
Amanda
Have you upgraded to Gen5? If so, has your speed time improved or is it about the same? We have Gen4 and have had it now for about 3yrs and what we've found out, about the slow Prime Time streaming is that, alot of it depends on the site you are streaming from. Good example, if you are streaming a show from say PBS, it doesn't seem to have a problem, but if it is from Youtube or a very popular site, there is a MAJOR problem. Lots, and lots of buffering which does get quite annoying. We live out in the boonies and for us, satellite internet is the ONLY game in town. I've talked with others in the area and they are with one of the other satellite internet companies and they all seem to have that same issue. I am not sure if there are any companies out there, anymore that don't have buffering issues or not. We use to have DSL, about 5yrs ago, and it also had buffering issues when we use to try and stream videos/movies while on Amazon, but there again, alot of it depended on if the show was one of the popular ones or not. If it wasn't there would be no buffering issues, but if it were one of the popular ones, you can get ready for lots of buffering. We don't have cable or satellite tv either where we are, just over-the-air antenna, so we do a lot of our missed tv watching early in the morning and there is no buffering issues. The worst times, for the buffering are between 4p-10p, I guess that is why they call that the "Prime Time" and that is when a lot of people are online. Anyway, we still have never converted over to the Gen5. Is that any better??????
Though I don't do much streaming, aside of Youtube, I did stream a couple of things through DirecTV's On Demand service when I first upgraded to Gen5. The things I streamed through On Demand were flawless, and the Youtube videos through current have rarely buffered, only doing so two or three times since I upgraded at the end of March.
One other thing of note is that, with Gen5's increased FAP speed, people have still been able to stream when they run out of their monthly data alotment, though only in the lower definitions. There's no guarantee of this, of course, but it has worked for those who have deliberately run out of data to test such and have written about it.
Just for reference, I disconnected the DirecTV receiver from Hughesnet after my On Demand test as their receivers can use data for things other than On Demand, and due to it being uncontrollable it's recommended that people don't connect a DirecTV receiver to the service.
