Note: The Microsoft Silverlight team is working to see if we can resolve this, I will report back in with the details asap.
As regular readers of this blog know, I love(d) Netfilx, I have been a happy customer since almost the beginning of the company and their streaming service moved them into a whole new stratosphere imho.
But the last 24 hours has left me feeling screwed.
It started when the latest in the never ending patches from Microsoft were installed on the computer that I have used to watch streaming Netflix movies for over a year. One of the patches involved installing IE8 which is fine, but evidently that triggered Netflix into “upgrading” my netflix player to the Silverlight version.
Of course now anything I stream from Netflix is unwatchable. Choppy video, pauses, dropped frames, you name it – total crap. So I called Netflix and in less than a minute spoke to a very nice lady in tech support that basically told me that’s just the way it is. She suggested that I buy a new computer. I asked her if I could roll the upgrade back or somehow stream the movies differently and she politely told me no, I could take it or leave it – and she was happy to cancel my account for me!
That’s not change I can believe in!
She also suggested that I contact Microsoft, yeah right lady, have you ever tried to contact Microsoft? The nice lady in the Netflix support center also said that even though I was having problems there wasn’t a widespread problem. I beg to differ:
Netflix Users Seething Over Microsoft Silverlight
Netflix takes heat over Silverlight-based player
Netflix Promises Silverlight Solution for Slow, Painful ‘Stream Load’ Issues
If anyone finds out how to opt out of Silverlight on Netflix, please post!
Netflix customers up in arms over the new Netflix Silverlight player
I could go on, but the bottom line is don’t piss on my leg and tell me that it is raining. The problem is not my computer, or my isp, or anything else on my end. The problem is that Netflix decided to go with a 3rd party’s proprietary software that is ( imho ) not ready for primetime. I have no way of knowing if it is Silverlight itself or the Netflix version – but it is much, much worse than the previous version on the Netflix player and has made the Netflix streaming service unusable for me.
Netflix has turned a long term customer and un-paid evangelist into an anti-proselytizer and an unhappy ( soon to be ) former customer.
Final note, I told the nice tech support lady that if she really thought that I was having a isolated incident that she could search Google for Netflix + Silverlight.
She told me that what she really thought was different from her job. Fair enough and Nuff’ said.
Hey there — sorry you are having problems, millions of netflix customers are having a fantastic experience. we’d love to work with you identify what the issues are and either help you resolve them on your end or use them to further increase the quality of the Netflix experience.
I can be reached at xxx@microsoft.com
-Brian
Director, UX and Web Platform and Tools
Microsoft Corporation
May 6th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Hey Brian – I was having a fantastic Netflix experience until I “upgraded” to the Silverlight player. Now, on the same computer, with the same ISP, etc. the playback is really not very good. In fact, it is unwatchable.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
JTk, I too had the worst Netflix experience of my five year history. That new silverlight player blows. I hope they fix it. Perhaps I can find a copy of IE7 or reinstall and turn off all updates. What a hassle. Keep us posted.
May 9th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Same thing happened to me. I run linux and have XP virtualized and run it only if run netflix streaming on it or need to some other windows specific.
I was testing out IE 8 for work (upgraded from default IE 6).
After I was done, sure enough when I go to Netflix to watch a film they say use silverlight.
Now they warn you you can’t go back – but I thought they meant on this computer which would be fine since I planned to revert the snapshot.
But no – it’s the whole account that can’t go back.
Instantly I noticed the difference – CHOPPY, SLOW, GRAINY with every film that worked – none of the problems I had before.
They were unwatchable.
I will be cancelling my Netflix tomorrow unless they can flip that Silverlight bit from 1 to 0.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:59 am
I have been a long-time happy customer of Netflix until it upgraded to the new Silverlight then all went down hill. Now, unhappily, I am thinking seriously about finding another provider for this same type of entertainment. What is Netflix thinking? Do they really have millions of other customers that are having great experiences? Don’t they want or need our business? What is the alternative?
I called Netflix in April and they said they are “working on it”. Last weekend my wife and I sat down for an evening movie that was supposed to be 103 minutes long…it took about 3 hours to watch the whole thing, that’s 13 intermissions ( I counted).
I use Netflix at my school for enrichment activities and recently I get nothing but complaints for choppy video from my students. Used to be that we experienced nothing of the sort, now we are left with crap. I might as well use Google Video or YouTube, at least they allow you to buffer the entire video and are free–can’t complain about that.
I hope the Netfix people read this and all the other posts on various sites because they don’t have an email address for complaints.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I have to chime in with everyone else here. Brian from Microsoft and Netflix support will go through all of these system setting gyrations only to tell you there’s nothing they can do about it.
External checks and bitrate explanations are not logical or necessary to customers who, one day are having a great viewing experience with the old Netflix player then change to Silverlight, and see their service degrade to the quality of Youtube videos. Don’t piss on my leg indeed!
May 18th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Joe C. – You called it almost exactly, Tom Taylor @ silverlight has failed 2 solve my Netflix issue. They’re working on the next version – I’ll never see it – canceled.
Microsoft and Netflix can say anything they want, the bottom line is that for many, many people Netflix worked fine one day and the day they “upgraded” to the Silverlight player the streaming service was no longer useable.
Fail.
May 21st, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Sorry to hear that you decided to cancel your Netflix account. We’ve passed on your feedback to the folks at Netflix to follow up on their end as necessary.
For anybody else reading along, the likely problem here was that James was using a netbook. Silverlight 2 does all of its work on the CPU, and so we believe that his machine was having trouble keeping up with decoding and displaying the video….
May 27th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Sorry Tom, but I don’t have a “netbook”. It is a full size laptop that can run photoshop and premiere pro at the same time – I would think that is should be abloe to stream video if it can run both those beasts at once.
That is beside the fact however. The fact is that it worked perfectly with the old player and your new player won’t work well enough to use.
You fixed something that wasn’t broke and broke it.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
My mistake – I assumed that that you had an Aspire One based on some of the info you sent me – you have a different model of Acer notebook, then.
I”m happy to continue investigating this with you – feel free to follow up with me offline (you have my email address). As Brian Goldfarb said above, most Netflix customers are having a fantastic experience, and so I’d like to get to the bottom of what’s going in your case. I strongly suspect that the improvements we’ve made to Silverlight 3 (released later this year) will make this a significantly better experience for you, but I’d like to confirm this if at all possible.
thanks!
- Tom
Tom Taylor | Microsoft Silverlight
May 27th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
As a follow up, I have the new Hulu desktop running full screen on the same Acer laptop that couldn’t run the Silverlight based Netflix player.
I guess Netflix’s loss is Hulu’s gain.
Let me stress that the people at Netflix and Microsoft were very pleasant and timely in there attempts to address this situation, but in the end I have to say that imho the Silverlight player is the fail.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I have identified the problem with my Netflix/Silverlight setup. I have a superfast PC with tons of bandwidth. However, in fullscreen mode I get about 10 dropped frames on average which makes playback very choppy.
I have been with Netflix since 2003 and am VERY disappointed and frustrated. I was previously VERY happy with my streaming service.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Yes, last night I was also forced to upgrade to the Silverlight player due to an IE8 upgrade, which I very much regret.
The instant watch is now unwatchable. When running in fullscreen mode, half the frames are dropped and the video buffer drains completely before having to wait till it is refilled and eventually drained again. In windowed mode, this does not happen. This was verified when viewing the Silverlight diagnostics A/V Stats. And you would think that Microsoft’s Silverlight would know to suppress the screen saver when a movie is playing. This is ridiculous. Everything worked perfectly with the old player. I am seriously considering canceling my NetFlix account.
This system is an Athlon64 3500+ with 1GB of RAM.
June 6th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
IE8 + Silverlight = disaster. BSOD, hangs, restarts.
After a full scrapeoff disk reformat and reinstall of XP SP2/MediaCenter 2005 & upgrade to SP3 & all updates, fresh Silverlight 2 – with no other software loaded (not even AV). Hung the first time after 29 mins.
2GB HP pavillion M400y w/ Nvidia 7600GT, with hyperthreading enabled.
iexplore process memory at 280,384 vm=277,836 threads=34, handles=877, IO reads=108,981, IO writes=75627. Smells like a memory leak to me.
This is inexcusible.
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Since this page gets hit by google when you search for silverlight and netflix..
Netfix+Silverlight=Suck
Netfix+Silverlight=Suck
…..
Bad enough you put out a not ready for primetime buggy product but then you f***ing refused to let people go back to the previous WORKING product.
You broke my product that I was paying you a fair price for and then wouldn’t let me go back. Why?
Guess where I get my movies from now? Guess how much I’m paying for them? All of that’s on you and you’ll never see another penny from me.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Hi, I found this post while looking for help with Microsoft Silverlight. I’ve recently switched internet browser from Safari to Firefox 3.2. Now I seem to have a problem with loading websites that use Microsoft Silverlight. Everytime I go on a page that requires Microsoft Silverlight, the page doesn’t load and I get a “npctrl.dll” error. I can’t seem to find out how to fix the problem. Any help getting Microsoft Silverlight to function is very appreciated! Thanks
March 7th, 2010 at 3:11 am