Youtube Slow streaming - ideas?

Hi,

I have a fast computer and Comcast 13 mbps broadband connection. Youtube videos usually stream rather quickly, but lately I've noticed a slowdown (especially in high quality / HD vids).
I know my connection is still fast because I'm able to download files with great speed and web pages load great.
It seems that youtube doesn't do a good job of download the video (streaming) it. It shouldn't be stuttering or stopping with such a fast connection.

I know that there's a program called SpeedBit Video Accelerator which is suppose to help out in these situations, but I'd prefer not to have to have some software constantly using RAM just to make youtube stream slightly quicker.

Does anyone have any tips?

Thanks

 

It could just be YouTube's fault. Lately YouTube buffers pretty slow for me and I'm on a high speed connection.

 

ya that's what I was thinking too. Youtube needs to improve their buffering speeds, especially with the new HD videos.

Has anyone had any experience with the SpeedBit Video Accelerator ?

EDIT: I just tried SpeedBit. It was terrible. Not only did it take up 30 mb of RAM, but it doesn't seem to work in FF3.

Still looking for ways to speed up the buffering speed....

 

what av / firewall do you have? some of them use a proxy or "tunnel" the info through them first and it causes this issue..

 

I use AVG as my AV and the default Windows Firewall.

 

try disabling (i know you dont want to get infected while doing so. go to a youtube you know is safe that has been scanned first by avg) them both and see if it helps. i know from experience with ones that use a proxy and you tube this tends to be common

 

I tried disabling both temporarily, but still noticed terrible buffering speeds on high quality and HD videos. Only about 3 seconds into an hd vid on youtube, and it starts to stutter or buffer. Even some regular quality videos have to buffer half way through. This is unacceptable.

I assume it's Youtube since Hulu videos work great and everything else is fast.

I just wish I could fix this problem since I like youtube best.

 

ok well something is definitely wrong because I went onto my other desktop computer, and went to Youtube and tried to load the same HD video that loaded really slow on my laptop. On this desktop (which btw, is far older and slower, less ram, etc), the HD video buffered very fast. No stuttering at all.
So it seems to be something to do with my laptop.

Any ideas??

BTW, on a side note - on the desktop computer, while I was watching the video, the status bar at the bottom of firefox was very active and switching from loading from some ip adress to loading from cache.google or something. When I watched the video on my computer, it only said loading from that random ip address. Could it be that my computer isn't allowing more than one connection or something??

UPDATE: for some reason, the past hour or so on youtube has been fast with no buffering problems even with HD videos. I wonder why?

 

Like I told you, its just Youtube...if you are on Youtube a lot like I am, you will notice that sometimes its slow, nothing you can do about it. Stop bothering with your other program's settings.

 

ok thank you.

 

is the desktop wireless though??
are you running the same security on the desktop?


i know for 100% i had a client with this issue using nod32 ess. we tried everything and finally their subscription was expiring and theywanted to switch. we uninstalled it and i installed (their choice) norton is 2009.. now it runs awesome and doesnt slow down one bit.. the only other thing i could suggest is a quick uninstall of the security program.. try it on a video you know is safe and see how it runs. you can always reinstall quickly if its not the issue.


may totally not be your issue but imo worth a shot. ive seen it with my own eyes with a few different suites now doing this..

 

I have AVG and Windows Firewall on both computers. It seems to be running pretty good right now, so I guess Youtube just has some good days and some bad days.