Help Youtube and Netflix Resolution Problems on LG G3

[madmax988]

Is anyone else having problems with youtube on their LG G3?

I can play youtube video's just fine on 720p or auto(auto defaults to 720p anyways). But if I change the resolution to 1440p it plays about 3 seconds of content, then the video stops and the audio continues. If I scrub forward or backwards it rebuffers plays another 3 seconds and does the same thing. This happens if I'm on 4G(5-20mbps on verizon) or wifi (16-20mbps), and even if I let it buffer all the way too the end it still happens. So it seems like it's not a buffering issue. The same thing sometimes happens with 1080p as well, although not 100% of the time like 1440p.

Does anyone know any good test videos to try to see if this is somehow related to certain videos?

With netflix I only get 720p(the highest 720p bitrate netflix has) as well, although I'm not sure if that's as high as netflix artificially supports for phones?

It would be nice to actually see some 2k content on it, as I haven't been able to yet. Those 3 seconds are amazing though...

 

[renegad3]

No issues here.

Perhaps post a link to a video that is giving you issues

Search for 4k video on youtube, and set them to 1440p.

 

[madmax988]

It happens on 100% of 1440p videos and like 90%+ of 1080p videos, for instance I tried to watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p1arSnmX40&list=UU60o55QG_Yabb1nelfSGO0w on 1440p and 1080p and it definitely couldn't play.

After attempting to view a 1440p video on my laptop (which doesn't have a 1440p screen), I got a popup below the video asking if I was Experiencing interruption? when I clicked it it said AT&T U-verse gets 82-86% HD streams, so this may be a throttling issue. Although it's weird because it shows it buffering nicely on both phone and laptop. And that wouldn't explain why it would happen on 4G as well. Although I only pull about 5-20mbps on verizon so maybe that's effecting it. I was pulling 12mbps on 4G the last time I tested it though, so that should be more than enough for 1080p and close to enough for 1440p I'm guessing.

This is really obnoxious, what good is wasting all this battery for all these pixels I'f I can't actually use them?

 

[renegad3]

Not that it helps you much, but I was able to play the video from your link just fine.

Tried it both on WiFi as well as cellular, worked fine on both.

Switching the resolution however seemed a bit strange, sometimes it would accept the setting, other times it would just go back to 720p. It worked better on cellular data than WiFi though at keeping the setting on 1440p for some reason.

If you want to try netflix, check HERE.

This is a test video that shows various stream parameters.

 

[madmax988]

Maybe it's a software problem on verizon?

I've used that same netflix clip before. I'm only getting 1750kbps 480p right now on it. Which is weird because Netflix starting paying interconnection fees to AT&T Uverse last month, and since then my laptop, smart tv, chromecast all get super hd 1080p just fine, no throttling.

So there is definitely something funky going on with either the G3 or Verizon's software.

What resolution/bitrate do you get on netflix on your G3?

 

[madmax988]

If anyone cares, I spoke with another customer service representative today, who spoke to an actual netflix technician and it appears 720x480p (1750kbps) is the maximum resolution currently available to all android devices. I previously spoke with another customer service representative who told me I should be getting 1080p or 4k video downconverted to 1440p, on lg g3. So there appears to be some confusion. The customer service representatives were fairly shocked that the resolution is so low, (I wonder if it's an artificial limitation Verizon and other carriers got them to agree to, for when you are using LTE?).

I'm pretty sure the technician today was correct though, since it agrees with their website....
Android Phones:
https://help.netflix.com/article/en/node/249?ba=GSButtonClick&q=android
Resolution: Android phones currently support streaming in 480p.

Android tablets:
https://help.netflix.com/article/en/node/237?ba=GSButtonClick&q=android
Resolution: Android tablets currently support streaming in 480p.
Netflix HD playback is available on select KitKat (Android OS 4.4) based devices.

Still no idea what wonky things are going on with youtube though.... not like there's anyone to call and chat with at youtube hq.