Netflix stands behind Microsoft Silverlight

Netflix is trying to locate the source of a series of glitches that some users of the company's streaming service are blaming on Microsoft's Silverlight video player.

"The new player is far better. It's faster, more reliable and provides greater stability. The vast majority of Netflix members have had a great experience."

--Steve Swasey, Netflix spokesman

Over the weekend, a steady stream of angry messages was posted to Netflix's blog. The complaints range from choppy video, to audio that doesn't sync with the picture, to grainy image quality.

The complaints began accumulating soon after the Web's largest video-rental service switched to Microsoft's Silverlight in November. The posts appear to have trickled in until last weekend, when a score of customers began reporting problems.

"The quality of the video looks like bad VHS," wrote someone on the Netflix who identified themselves as Steve-O. "I use an Acer Netbook over my home network and the quality is poor. Also, I cannot even see the button to make the video full screen (using Acer One Netbook with Firefox browser). However, I imagine this will make the quality even worse. What a disaster."

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said the company, which now has more than 10 million subscribers, has yet to pinpoint the cause of the malfunctions. He added that only a small percentage of customers have complained but that the company continues to look for a fix.

Swasey defended Silverlight. He said the company has received mostly kudos from customers after switching to the software last fall. A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment.

"The new player is far better," Swasey said. "It's faster, more reliable and provides greater stability. The vast majority of Netflix members have had a great experience."

The other major complaint from Netflix customers who posted to the company blog this weekend is that it wasn't made clear there was no way to opt out once they switched to the Silverlight player.

"I certainly feel that Netflix was not forthright in getting me to 'upgrade' to the new viewer (Silverlight)," said someone who posted under the name Jerry. "I don't have a beef with Microsoft. I'll support most technologies that work appropriately--and that is where we have come to a problem. The new viewer simply does not work well enough."

Silverlight has received mixed reviews in the past year. NBC chose Silverlight to stream video of the 2008 Summer Olympics and the company won some favorable reviews. For the games' opening ceremony, Silverlight helped deliver more than 70 million page views in one evening.

But after the conclusion of the games, NBC went back to using Flash. Another setback for Microsoft came when Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the group that streams baseball games over the Web, decided to drop Silverlight.

[gggg sssss]

Adobe is certainly not the be all and end all of media software, but MS screwed up royally here.

[msjonker]

Silverlight is the platform, Netflix developed using it. Unless you're involved with the creation of the Netflix player, I find it hard to reliably place the blame on Microsoft.

[ddhboy]

I don't know about that. You wouldn't go far in the creative industries, let alone get a job without knowing the Adobe tools. God help you if your a web designer or a graphic designer these days without knowledge of flash.

[timber2005]

I don't understand your (and many commenters mentioned in the story) conclusion.
It's BEEN working for months. It has NOW begun to glitch up.

Web service, glitching up... and the conclusion is to blame the software which is proven to be able to work correctly in other services.

[gggg sssss]

@msjonker MS invented silverlight to take on Adobe. The world does not need another graphics player, and silverlight is flakier ( IMNSHO) than Flash. And yes, Netflix made a bad choice going with Silverlight instead of sticking with Flash.

[dex1701]

Why don't people understand this? Flash was NEVER the video player used by Netflix. The player was Window Media Player and Flash was used to host the player in the page to provide a UI. The flash video player, frankly, isn't great either. As far as "the world doesn't need another graphics player" (whatever that means), well, we wouldn't want any industry competition, would we? No, certainly not.

[mrcjacobs]

@ gggg sssss I beg to differ about Adobe. Over 90% of all web video uses it and it works very well. I've given Silverlight numerous chances to impress me and it utterly fails. I'm also 1 of the Netflix customers that once had a great streaming experience that has been ruined by the new player.

[BigGuns149]

Merely because so many webpages use Flash doesn't mean that Flash is great. Flash seems to use far more processing cycles than it really ought to need. Flash merely seems like the lesser of two evils.

[SnidleyWhiplash]

BigGuns149, it's not the player that burns the cycles, its certain badly done content that isn't optimized. You're blaming the car for the occasional bad driver behind the wheel.

[dex1701]

Lol...I use Flash all the time. It is not great. It is unwieldy and outdated, and will soon be replaced. Adobe has a replacement in the works, and Silverlight, for all of its growing pains, has some pretty nice features from the perspective of a developer like myself. I'm actually looking forward to the end of the Flash era...it's nothing but a hassle for me. Flash was the first of a breed, became a standard, and it had a good run. It's still fine for designers, but it's not a good tool for developers at all.

[captainabab]

"The problems appear to have trickled in until last weekend, when a score of customers began reporting problems. "

I'm sure this has NOTHING to do with the Slashdot post over the weekend complaining about the videoplayer switch-over, linking to a NetFlix post from October!! I guarantee those Linux fans wouldn't be raising a false alarm to make Silverlight look bad.

20 comments in February and over 100 in 2-3 days of March...Salshdot Linux fanboys have NOTHING to do with this!!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/01/2120224

[sandonet]

It appears that the spike in comments at Netflix's blog began appearing before the slashdot post went up.

[captainabab]

Sandonet: The SlashDot post went up on 3/1 @ 8:14pm (East Coast Time) - Verify this by checking the timestamp for the most recent post at Slashdot.

The first comment on the NetFlix blog for March 1 went up at 5:38 PM (West Coast time), which is 8:38PM EST. Verify this by noticing the timestamp listed for a new comment on the NetFlix post.

There are 41 comments for January, 20 for February and all of the sudden there are 100+ for 3 days in March?

[jwmpc]

All streaming video suffers from small size of the buffer. Silverlight has to rebuffer about every ten minutes of video on my DSL connection and Flash (on Hulu) averages even less, about 3-4 minutes unless all the stars are in alignment and sunspot activity is low.

It may take a long time to download a rental from iTunes, but the quality is grand.

[sanenazok]

Oh and the iTunes is free like hulu or flat fee like Netflix? Rentals work fine using iTunes since they are downloads as opposed to streaming.

[TheDudeandHis360]

I've used Netflix Streaming on my Macbook and my Xbox 360 and never really ran into any of these problems. Not saying they don't occur but I do wonder if its overblown. I tend to suspect crappy internet connections are the real culprit. Much like VOIP. Everyone blames their VOIP provider because it doesn't work over there crappy $15 a month DSL line... Well, really?

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Used only Xbox 360 streaming. If the Internet leach isn't on for that particular night, I get great video quality and no interruptions. As for Silverlight...it's the only Microsoft product that works well on my MacBook and Mac Mini for watching video. I watched the Olympics last year that way, and I've been watching movies that way. Maybe it's a Windows glitch?

[dex1701]

It's not a Windows issue...it's the Netflix player specifically. There's also the issue of a lack of vsync (which is the problem I'm having) causing horizontal tearing. It happens in MacOS as well.

[Uilleam]

I've actually stepped up my Netflix Streaming in recent months. I find the new player to be more stable, has larger buffering, and buffers faster than the previous player. I have noticed that it is a bandwidth hog, and the larger your bandwidth, the clearer your picture. But the player doesn't crash or hang like the old one did. The audio is always in sync, which was not the case before. I've had much better experiences with Silverlight than I have Flash. I think the problem lies strictly on the site using it. Different sites use Flash, but you get a varying quality between sites and their players. It's the site's problem if the player doesn't work, not MSFT or Adobe.

[TimStreet]

Netflix sure works great on the Mac and everyone else is using Adobe Flash for serving video ads.

Is Apple's QuickTime losing the online video war?

[xcal78]

There was a war between Quicktime and Adobe Flash? Don't think so. Flash has always been the front runner of the pack since it came out.

[dex1701]

Um, no. Flash (in its current incarnation as well as its previous one as Shockwave) was around for a long time before there was such a thing as streaming Flash video. For quite a while local client software had to be used to steram video in browsers, and Windows Media, RealVideo, and Quicktime were the main products used. Perhaps you're too young to remember?

[stephbu]

Used Netflix streaming on both old and new Windows clients, on a couple of MBP's, as well as my XBox 360's. I've once encountered an encoding issue with audio delay (you'd see how easy to screw this up is if you've tried reencoding streams before) Its a hog for bandwidth on a slow line - nk. Beyond those issues it's been stellar on all platforms.

Doesn't this article read just like the /. posting too. I guess journalism is cheap these days - hyperbole is the easy line for audience interaction.

[sanenazok]

The post of "...Also, I cannot even see the button to make the video full screen (using Acer One Netbook with Firefox browser)" SCREAMS user error/user system problem. Help, help, my internets are down!

[RighteousSoutherner]

Slash who?

[pretenderkc]

i have used Netflix online viewing since it first available.
from my experience, it has a hiccup here and there but the same as all software.
as long as Microsoft being #1, there are entities who want to bring it down.


i used Netflix online viewing for the following PCs and found it to be great:
1) 1.6 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM home built
2) 1.6 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM Acer Netbook
3) 2.1 GHz CPU Duo2Core, 3 GB RAM, HP laptop
4) 2.5 GHz CPU P4, 1 GB RAM, home built
5) 2.5 GHz CPU P4, 512 MB RAM, home built

[Hep Cat]

Subjectively: Netflix video playe'rs quality on a 21Mbps line looks like crap. It's an embarassment compared to ther technologies like H.264 or Flash. Seriously - they must be saving a bundle in badnwidth costs, because Silverlight looks like hell.

Can't see why so many people don't bring up what a piece of trash it security is. Seriously - check in to a hotel sometime or

Objectively, I'm impressed they got it to work at all.

[Gasaraki]

What does video quality have to do with the player? Tell Netflix to do better encodes for their video but don't blame the player when the videos are low quality.
I don't blame Flash when YouTube videos look like shiet....

[Edgar521]

People don't bring up the security issues with Silverlight because there are no known security issues. Furthermore Flash has seen its own fair share of security issues; fortunately Adobe usually responds to these issues quickly.

[dex1701]

Hep Cat, your comment doesn't make sense. H.264 is a CODEC, Flash is a browser plug-in, and Flash Video is a (not great) streaming video format. Flash video players (yes, there's more than one video player app built for Flash....Flash itself does not constitute a video suite) can play more than one video format, and so can Silverlight. The fact that Netflix's player software has issues and the fact that they use a less than desirable streaming format has little to do with the platform it runs on for all we know at this time. There are a lot of comments here that are coming from a genuine lack of understanding of the technology.

[ofmyony]

The new player works fine. I use Silverlight 2 and the player is on par with all video streaming services. I like using it in Firefox and I like the features. The old player was not compatible with Firefox or the Mac.

Issues I have. There is no HD for the Browser. There are stuttering issues but most if not all streaming services like Hulu, Tv.com, Joost, and Sling.com suffer from stuttering issues and poor quality. The networks also have issues.

The video experience is getting better every year we just have to be patient and let the companies work out the issues. Soon we will be streaming 1080p video as smooth as butter. I can wait for a little while.

[technewsjunkie]

Funny, I recently dropped Netflix to cut my expenses. I'm using iTunes instead. It doesn't have the same inventory, but there are plenty of movies and other informational videos to watch there.

I also stated on my cancellation that I was disappointed about Silverlight - instead of FLASH that actually works!

This could be a serious strategic mistake by Netflix.

[dex1701]

Again, this makes no sense. Netflix is using their player that is built on Silverlight....Silverlight is not the player. The old Netflix player was Windows Media Player....NOT FLASH. Flash was only used to build a UI for the player. One more time: Netflix has never used Flash to stream video.

[giant_david]

It seems that the problem is in the server infrastructure at Netflix.

All clients over the net having similar problem in a defined period? That is hard to imagine a situation happening in all those clients. Perhaps a worm, but that would be easily detected.

Most likely the data-center running Windows servers went through some physical or logical security issue.

[sdf0013]

This sounds like a case of overly vocal minority and other jumping on the anti-MS bandwagon. But, I'll keep my comments to my own experience. I've watched Netflix streams on many different systems and laptops at home and over the crappiest of hotel internet connections. Other than the low bandwidth of the hotel I've never had a bad experience with streaming from Netflix with any of their players on any of my systems (2 desktops and 2 laptops).

Well, that's not completely true, and it actually my point. I had one movie that wouldn't display correctly on my system. Called customer service and they suggested it's my video drivers. This video was encoded with one of the newer codecs that was talked about in an earlier Netflix blog post. The CS rep said my video driver might not be fully compatible with that codec. Naw, couldn't be. I keep everything pretty tight on my systems and nothing else has exhibited any problems with my video drivers. But, I updated my Nvidia driver anyways. It fixed the problem.

My point is, with Netflix updating the codecs to encode movies, updating players, and customers being customers, there could be numerous suspect areas that may be impacting performance. If you've ever worked tech support, you know how the mass public is unaware about the need to update drivers. I can help but wonder if this is actually more of the problem than anyone is willing to say.

[ducttape36]

given netflix's history of glitchy streaming, i doubt it was all silverlight's fault. im sure it'll get better once netflix adjusts to the new technology and hopefully the quality will be better than ever. im getting sick of flash anyways, it seems like every other day there is a new vulnerability for it. although if silverlight becomes as popular im sure there will be ten times the amount of vulnerabilities since its microsoft.

[B-Ri]

I think if it was Silverlight that was the issue that the problems would be more widespread. From everything I've seen of Silverlight so far it looks like it might be one of the things Microsoft has gotten right. It's also a bit of a stretch to assume that all MS software has more vulnerabilities than other software. Software has bugs and issues, it is made by humans after all. What do you expect? This player has been a godsend for those of us who wanted to use macs with the streaming service. I use a Mac Mini as a HTPC and the netflix streaming service has gotten a lot of use through it. Occasionally there are stutters and glitches but I work in Tech Support and have a lot of patience. I'm just psyched that it is available and works as well as it does. Is it a replacement for DVD or HD content? No of course not but it's cool enough to watch movies and TV that you don't have or don't want to buy.

[Edgar521]

Is it possible that some of the problems are actually caused by an uptick in streaming? With the new Silverlight player Netflix streaming becomes available to more customers, so it would make sense if some of these problems were caused by additional load on the servers.

[Jeff Putz]

NBC did not "go back to Flash," it was in use all along on Hulu and its other sites. Silverlight wasn't even final when it was used in the Olympics.

For consumers, or anyone for that matter, to speculate that Silverlight is the same stupid Microsoft hate-fashion we see all of the time. Half the time the crap on YouTube looks like crap and/or isn't consistent either. Should I blame Adobe? Obviously not.

[manogamez]

I have no idea what most of you are talking about. Yes that 1500 Mb/s bitrate is a little lower but even with my crappy Dell I have no other vsync or quality issues.

The silverlight player is a HUGE improvement over the older, buggier, jerkier, craptastic excuse for a flash player that took 40 minutes to buffer on a T3 connection.

And with Windows 7 Media Center I'm getting Netflix streaming and Queue management straight to my desktop which makes movie watching an absolute joy.

I'd venture that most of you who are having problems are either using poorly updated systems or overestimating your bandwith capabilities.

This is one thing that Netflix got RIGHT.