By Phillip Swann
The TV Answer Man –@tvanswerman
TV Answer Man, we love Netflix but we don’t always get a great picture. It’s usually good but sometimes it’s not. We sometimes wonder if it’s because our Internet plan is too slow. Is there any way to check this? — Maddie, Knoxville, Tennessee.
Maddie, I sometimes receive e-mails from Netflix subscribers who say their picture looks excellent most of the time, but then all of a sudden, the picture quality seems to diminish a bit. The 4K picture will fall to HD or the high-def picture will fall to standard-def quality. The decline in quality usually doesn’t last very long, but when it does, it can be quite annoying.
There’s a obvious reason for this problem. Your Internet service’s speed varies and sometimes it will dip below the minimum requirement for a high-def or 4K picture.
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(Netflix says you need a minimum speed of 5 Megabits (Mbps) to watch high-def and 15 Megabits to watch 4K programming.)
When this occurs, Netflix may post an on-screen message asking if you want to change the HD setting to SD, or the 4K setting to HD. I would not advise doing this very often. You are paying for HD and/or 4K and you want to watch your show or movie with the best picture quality possible.
If the picture quality falls off for a relatively long period of time, I would suggest re-starting the program to see if that will improve the speed.
And when I say, re-start, I mean just begin the show from the point where you stopped watching. You can do this by hitting Stop and then returning to the Menu and hit the Resume button. This will take you back to the scene you were watching so you don’t have to start from the beginning.
Now to your specific question, there are two things you can do to check the speed and resolution of your Netflix picture. First, you can go to Fast.com and do a test of your ISP’s speed. (Fast.com is Netflix’s own web-based speed test.)
Besides the online speed test, there’s another way to check your Netflix streaming speed and it’s located right in your Netflix app. If you go to Netflix’s ‘Get Help’ section, there’s a feature called, ‘Check Your Network.’ Click on it and Netflix will measure your connection speed and the reliability of your connection to Netflix’s servers. If you don’t see Get Help, click Settings and then Check Your Network.
The speed of your Internet connection is important information and you might want to check it occasionally to ensure you are getting the best picture possible.
Maddie, hope that helps. Happy viewing and stay safe!
Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvanswerman.com Please include your first name and hometown in your message.
— Phillip Swann
@tvanswerman
You can access a screen, that displays complete playback information on a computer screen, by pressing the following keyboard, keys, (SHIFT, CONTROL, ALT and D Key), this will bring up a page full of playback information and will give you the download rate. You must know that the download rate, for streaming is quiet, low by HD standards.