Question

Quality of internet video (NETFLIX, BLOCKBUSTER, etc.) is poor, has blocky artifacts, keeps buffering, etc.?

Answer

Make sure you have a fast internet connection. To experience smooth high quality video playback, your Philips internet ready device by itself should receive a bandwidth of at least 3.2 Mbps consistently.

Smooth high quality video streaming requires high speed internet connections which maintain consistency in bandwidth. If your internet is being shared or your line quality is poor it can cause blocky artifacts and video re-buffering during playback. 

Most services such as NETFLIX, BLOCKBUSTER, etc. perform a bandwidth test when you first start playing a video at any given time. Based on the results of this test, the video is streamed to your device at the appropriate bitrate (quality).

For NETFLIX: 
NETFLIX has three grades of SD streams and a 720p HD stream. 720p HD and High Quality SD will always look better and sharper than the two lower quality SD streams.NETFLIX recommends at least 3.0 Mbps speed connection for high-quality video and at least 1.5 Mbps for basic-quality video.

For Vudu:
Vudu has three different types of streaming content: SD which requires between 1 – 2 Mbps download speeds. HD which is a 720p stream and requires between 2.25 – 4.5 Mbps download speeds. HDX which is a 1080p steam and requires between 4.5 – 9 Mbps download speeds.
 
For BLOCKBUSTER:
BLOCKBUSTER only streams DVD quality video which is equal to SD. They recommend having at least 1 Mbps download speeds.
 
To check your internet download speed please visit http://speedtest.vudu.com