Crazy as a Left Handed Computer

I've been using an Apple TV for sometime and was delighted when VEVO was included on the Apple TV with its three IPTV VEVO music channels; TV Hits, Flow and Nashville last year. And the music VoD service was a delight at first but now the service has become slightly troublesome with buffering occurring on an almost hourly basis in the evening in the UK for VoD music videos especially during the weekend.

Flow and the Nashville IPTV channels are stable almost always, which is great news for VEVO. But TV Hits is unfortunately absolutely useless pausing, spluttering, buffering and generally not working as one would expect; it buffers almost every 15 minutes, and this completely destroys the viewing and listening experience on this IPTV music channel in the UK, which is a pity as I'd love to watch the channel.

Now one may think that it's my setup that's the problem but this is occurring with three separate Internet providers, Sky and Zen with FTTC VDSL2 connections reporting an 80/20Mbps connection synchronisation speed and Virgin Media with a downstream speed of 152Mbps. I also have a SamKnows whitebox on my connection and that hasn't reported a speed below 61Mbps downstream during the last 6 weeks, and the latency hasn't been above 13ms to London during that period also.

On my own setup the Apple TV is hardwired to the router to eliminate the likelyhood of wifi interference and dropouts, and every single other service works correctly; iTunes movies, Netflix and even iTunes music videos that I own myself and play for hours on end without any buffering.

For the service to be successful it needs to be exceptionally reliable or it'll lose viewers, which is a pity when there is such an excellent choice of music video on demand. And I would love to watch TV Hits, but alas it's just too unreliable for any sort of enjoyment. The content delivery network really does need to be improved and quickly, so those users wishing to watch what otherwise is an excellent service, a better and more enjoyment time from the lovely music videos VEVO provide for our pleasure.

It is now almost five months later and the situation with VEVO service for TV Hits IPTV channel hasn't improved over that period even during a single day.

And I'm also seeing buffering on VoD content on VEVO in the evenings occasionally when choosing music videos to play directly over VoD. Without any other streaming VoD service issues on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime, YouTube and so on in glorious full HD it rules out other components on and across the Internet and my local network. When the reliability is 100% streaming of Netflix at 15.6Mbps using a SamKnows whitebox what can you say!

And I cannot really understand why VEVO aren't addressing these reliability issues with their service as a matter of urgency?

I'm now happy to report that the issue with VEVO hits is currently fixed and does not suffer from buffering or stuttering issues, thankfully. A big thank you to VEVO for fixing the issue

Unfortunately IPTV channel VEVO TV Hits has resorted to stuttering and buffering after two weeks of flawless performance today in the UK. Clearly the channel is broadcast using unicast on the Internet, and their servers cannot keep up with demand, which is a shame considering its such a good selection of music videos on this service. Hopefully VEVO will fix the issue with the service quickly, but it did take them six months to increase capacity previously!