Poor quality of Netflix in Czech Republic

EDIT: All quality issues are now resolved 01.11.2016

Netflix in Czech Republic sucks

Unfortunately there is no beating around the bush on this one.

Pricing

The pricing isn’t the problem, I will give them that, it is really affordable roughly 300 crowns per month for unlimited viewing on 2 devices and they claim this includes HD too.

They also offer a free trial for a month, which is generous.

What sucks about Netflix in the Czech Republic?

Very low resolution streaming. I’m all for subscribing to a convenient steaming service when it is affordable and I really wanted to enjoy Netflix but sadly the steaming quality is so poor, it has really made me question if Netflix is over rated.

Am I sure the problem isn’t on my side?

Yup I am pretty sure. I’m not trying to watch HD quality on a 56k modem, I’m on a UPC Fiber connection with a 200 mbps download rate.

Here is some proof:

As you can see my internet is comparable to some of the best provided on the planet.

I spent 2 hours in a support discussion with 3 Netflix engineers

Not 1 or 2, but 3. They asked me to try viewing in another browser, then they asked me to restart my modem, and finally after 2 hours of taking zero responsibility, they told me the problem is with my ISP.

I am fairly confident the problem is not with my ISP

Up until now I haven’t had any issues with throttling or shaping. My internet is just blazingly fast and just works.

Netflix claim that only 7 mbps is required for full HD steaming. I just don’t see UPC purposely throttling Netflix. But I could be wrong.

So how bad is it?

Pretty damn terrible to be honest. Before we get to the screenshots. Netflix allows you to change your playback settings. Obviously I did this.

Have a look:

Now what you’ve been waiting for, the screenshots: