Is your Roku Netflix Player stuck on one-dot streaming?

Call it coincidence or call it fate, but it seems something is afoot in the land of the Roku Netflix Player. Out of seemingly nowhere, a fair amount of users are finding that their once beautiful downloads have turned to pixelated iterations of their old selves, and to no fault of their internet connection. As the story goes, some users have found that their box is forcing streaming at "one-dot," or the lowest quality selection available, rather than the four-dot connection they were using just last week. As you'd expect, the quality of the one-dot stream is rather dreadful, and for those who've tried forcing a higher quality setting, they're stuck waiting eons for buffering and such. Have you too encountered this issue? Or are the internet elves looking out for you?

[Image courtesy of PreGameLobby, thanks Tyler]

[Seth @ Nov 13th 2008 10:00AM]

DO A FLIP!

[isorfir @ Nov 13th 2008 10:14AM]

DO A BARREL ROLL! (Z or R twice)

[Seth @ Nov 13th 2008 10:23AM]

I get low ranked for a Bender quote? For shame nerds, for shame...

[jcos @ Nov 13th 2008 11:03AM]

Triple Lindy!!!

[jared @ Nov 13th 2008 11:01AM]

It made me laugh....gotta love Bender!

[DirtyVegas @ Nov 13th 2008 11:32AM]

Jeez, Bender quotes downranked? Bad start to the day.

[Mark @ Nov 13th 2008 10:12AM]

You can force full bandwidth/ 4 dots. I did it and mine works like a charm, although I did move my wireless access point a little closer to avoid hang-ups. I cut and pasted this from a Roku Forum thread: "Using the remote, hit Home Home Home Home Home Rewind Rewind Rewind FastForward FastForward (that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds, 2 FastForwards), keypresses about 1/2 second apart. You may have to try several times and the trick is to make the keypresses spaced out far enough. (Remember, the last two are >, which are on the bottom row of buttons, not the < and > keys to the side of the select button.) This will take you into debug mode."

Once you are there you select 2.2 Mbps. It works, flawlessly for me.

[puckotg22 @ Nov 13th 2008 11:29AM]

I heard that UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A SELECT START also works....just fyi

[TVGenius @ Nov 13th 2008 2:51PM]

Yep, news like this definitely means the death of Blu-Ray...

[(01) @ Nov 13th 2008 4:40PM]

Funny, I heard blowing really hard on the remote before using it helped....

[Tom @ Nov 30th 2008 11:46PM]

Laugh all you want, but this works like a charm. I am quite rural and all i get is 1mbs dsl, while my friends in the city get 7mbs dsl. not fair, but with this little trick i only wait an extra few minutes for waaaay better quality, btw, blowing on the remote only gets you light headed.

[rock99rock @ Nov 13th 2008 10:12AM]

Xbox 360 better not pull this shit in 6 days...

[Bender123 @ Nov 13th 2008 12:03PM]

Unfortunately, over the past few days I have experienced similar issues with PlayOn for the 360...Quality went from fantastic to looking like garbage in an instant.
I would think this has to do with Netflix doing some work to upgrade before the deluge of happy 360ites start crushing their system en mass.

[Brad, The @ Nov 13th 2008 10:14AM]

I don't have a Roku, just the Netflix streaming plug-in for Vista Media Center. I haven't noticed a drop in quality, but I did notice that I'm not allowed to choose my own connection speed. Netflix does the choosing. Maybe this isn't Roku's doing, but Netflix forcing lower quality streams so it can keep up with bandwidth. Just guessing here.

[ismarketing @ Nov 13th 2008 10:15AM]

Works fine here in Minneapolis. 4 dots from Comcast with 12mb service down.

[Dirty @ Nov 13th 2008 10:38AM]

My thoughts exactly.

[xblacholex @ Nov 13th 2008 10:17AM]

Sounds like NetFlix might be moving things around to get ready for the NXE next week.

[Dirty @ Nov 13th 2008 10:39AM]

Oops.... My thoughts exactly.

[Chad @ Nov 13th 2008 10:17AM]

This is exactly what happened to me, starting about a week after the initial release. I *know* it wasn't my internet connection because I tested it with a wired connection, then plugged the same cable into my laptop and got full quality. I ended up selling the box on eBay, and though I'm looking forward to viewing on my 360, I'm not getting my hopes up. I think Netflix may have a scaling problem.

[andyg8180 @ Nov 13th 2008 10:18AM]

My internet movie streaming has been up and down btwn hulu and netflix... So its either hit or miss for me unfortunately... Cox 20mbps... I run speedtests and they come out okay, so im not sure if netflix and hulu are dropping trow and mooning me as i ask for some good qual streaming...

[Nick8708 @ Nov 13th 2008 5:26PM]

I've not tried Netflix, but the only problem I've had with Hulu is the stream ending itself too early once out of maybe every 30 viewings. I live in Tempe, AZ with a 1.5 Mbps connection thru Qwest DSL. It certainly shouldn't be your connection speed.

[Gio Tron @ Nov 13th 2008 10:25AM]

I'm still waiting for MAC compatibility NETFLIX! Hello???

[Joe @ Nov 13th 2008 10:29AM]

I've watched a couple of Netflix on my Mac now - you have to get MS Silverlight for it to work - takes about two brain cells to find it and get it from the Netflix site. For an additional 7 brain cells, I understand there's a version of Silverlight in Linux, but that's too much effort, I just watch hulu on my Linux box.

[Joseph @ Nov 13th 2008 12:05PM]

Sorry you were out of the country for the last 2 weeks. While you were gone, netflix announced an opt-in for silverlight on their website. use your search bar.

[iglooheaters @ Nov 13th 2008 12:55PM]

You got iTunes.
Go buy Apple TV.

[Michael Wendell @ Nov 13th 2008 10:25AM]

Working fine for me.

[reachg @ Nov 13th 2008 10:27AM]

I am having the issue mentioned. Lately Roku only shows 2 dots. I might try the hack mentioned above

[zargon @ Nov 13th 2008 10:33AM]

If this is in fact a Roku issue, I wouldn't be surprised. Especially after their support, or lack there of, of the Photobridge where they left their entire following high and dry with a defective power supply (a large percentage had their units fail about at a year) and not valid fix (forget what they were charging to fix it, but it was WAY too much).

[lejupp @ Nov 13th 2008 11:57AM]

I fixed mine by replacing all the capacitors in the PSU with 105°C rated types. Cost was somewhere around 20 Euro IIRC.

[zargon @ Nov 13th 2008 1:54PM]

I fixed mine as well, but I don't know how many people would be able to do that. Besides, by the time I got around to it, I needed mpeg 4 support and it just wasn't cutting it anymore.

Awaiting my Popcorn Hour to replace it, should be here shortly.

[Flip @ Nov 13th 2008 10:34AM]

I experienced this problem Tuesday night, without the Roku player. I called Netflix technical support and they had me tracert an IP address from my PC, which revealed a timeout problem on one of the servers hosting their movies. Within an hour of my call, they had the timeout problem fixed and I was back up to high quality.

[Flit @ Nov 13th 2008 11:01AM]

This sounds like the problem, what region/server was timing out, to give people help knowing if they are located near it?

[Flip @ Nov 13th 2008 12:07PM]

Sorry, I wasn't told the location of the servers/host companies, but I'm in the Houston area with AT&T DSL if that helps any at all. If not, just ring up the Netflix tech support people and they'll figure out if it's a problem on their end or yours. They're quite good.

[Adam H. @ Nov 13th 2008 10:36AM]

is this ISP bandwidth capping at work?

I smell a rat.

[Thob86 @ Nov 13th 2008 10:36AM]

Mine works fine, 4 dots all the time.

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ Nov 13th 2008 10:36AM]

Javovich has got some ass on her.

[holycow @ Nov 13th 2008 10:44AM]

JOvovich...

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ Nov 13th 2008 11:47AM]

Thanks.

[Roofus @ Nov 13th 2008 1:35PM]

Stunt double?

[F. Bizzaro @ Nov 13th 2008 10:53AM]

That movie is sweet. Luc Besson is the man. Leon/The Professional is teh sickness.

[StalematE @ Nov 13th 2008 11:31AM]

No women. No kids. That's the rules.

[Mike Morris @ Nov 13th 2008 11:01AM]

I just bought one, and it worked great for the first 10 minutes, then I got stuck in one dot. Forced the connection to three, but it takes forever to load.

Not happy...

[sparrowfilms @ Nov 13th 2008 11:28AM]

I have had this issue a lot... but I've had this issue mainly over Ethernet (never over WiFi). What I have done to resolve it is to re-establish the connection... after doing that I get a full connection. It's weird, a bit annoying, but easy to resolve.

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ Nov 13th 2008 11:50AM]

Just do a power cycle most of you and you will get speeds back.

Sheesh the biggest issue with most of the stream and play services and devices is that the internet is still not quite ready for them. The end user (YOU) has internet speeds which just barely makes it possible. What happened to the old dream of lightning fast net? Where are my 1 second full movie downloads?

[vypergts @ Nov 13th 2008 12:24PM]

I keep mine plugged into a switched surge protector since otherwise the thing is just on all the time even when you aren't watching it. There's no boot up time on it and it really makes sense. So I'm basically power cycling every time I use it. More people should do this.

Agree with you on the pitiful net connection speeds. I have gigabit ethernet in my house, my ISP is the bottleneck...

[rock99rock @ Nov 13th 2008 12:51PM]

When has ISP not been the bottleneck?

[lawschoolbound @ Nov 13th 2008 1:05PM]

They are coming soon, to Japan

[CloaxaMaxima @ Nov 13th 2008 12:09PM]

Mine works like a charm

[trainee @ Nov 13th 2008 1:59PM]

I user the windows software player, and while I haven't been forced to a lower quality I've been hit for incredibly long load times...

[couchpundit @ Nov 13th 2008 2:09PM]

I can think of A LOT WORSE frames for the video to freeze than Milla Jovavich wearing that naughty little mummy wrap thing. Pretty much anything from "Norbit" comes to mind...