Problems watching via Showtime streaming app?

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Eater of Iguanas
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Posts: 114
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 9:17 pm

Problems watching via Showtime streaming app?

Post by Eater of Iguanas »

Hi, all. Apologies if this is not quite the right place to address technical issues like this, but I wanted to see if anyone else had experienced this, has any suggestions, or at least wants to commiserate.

I had an enormously frustrating experience watching the first four hours on premiere night (I went out of town on vacation a few days later for two weeks, so haven't been able to follow up until this weekend). The video stream via Showtime app on my Apple TV was atrocious... freezing up and/or pixellating with enormous frequency. I had noticed before in my infrequent forays into their "Live TV" stream that this would happen, but it was much worse than usual.

More surprising: freezing happened even more frequently while watching hours 3 & 4 after 11:00 (like, every five minutes, at least), although picture quality was much better. I've never had such a problem before while streaming on-demand content on Showtime - last month after newly subscribing, I watched the first season of HOMELAND and a few on-demand movies with no complaints. It was a maddening experience and if it had been anything other than the first new TWIN PEAKS in 26 years, I would've given up quickly instead of crawling through it.

I watched Part 5 this past Thursday night, my first opportunity post-vacation, with no problems. So my theory is that this is a matter of the number of people watching at any one time, which is obviously highest when a new episode first drops.

I've never had a lick of trouble on any other streaming service on my Apple TV, so I can't see how it has anything to do with my own device or my wifi service.

To put salt in the wound: I thought I might have a solution via the Showtime app on my iPhone, which for some reason does a vastly better job of streaming. Great, I'll just buy a Lightning Digital AV Adapter and connect the phone to my TV and stream it that way! Plus be able to carry it with me anywhere. Just discovered today that the [expletives deleted] Sho app for mobile devices doesn't allow itself to be routed through this adapter.

So part 6 tomorrow will be my first time since the premiere that I've tried to watch live, and I'm sadly kind of dreading it. The new show is a challenging-enough experience without the fog of technical issues.

Anyone have any insights, or solutions I haven't thought of? Besides waiting and watching it on a later night, which for obvious reasons is just [more expletives deleted]?

Errrrgh. Thanks in advance.
Elric99
Roadhouse Member
Posts: 32
Joined: Sun May 21, 2017 9:03 pm

Re: Problems watching via Showtime streaming app?

Post by Elric99 »

I am watching via Showtime subscription through Amazon Prime, and streaming through an Amazon Fire TV Stick ($40, but got it free when I subbed to Direct TV Now).

My experience with the live stream during the Ep 1/2 premier was sub-par, with occasional frame glitches. However since then I have only been using the on-demand streaming, which seems to be available at the same time the live stream starts, and the quality is excellent. Last week with episode 5 I turned on the tv 2 minutes after the live stream started, and the on-demand version was already available.

The quality of the Amazon on-demand stream is the highest quality I think of the current streaming options, from what I've seen they use a higher bitrate. Also it has the "X-ray" option when you pause it you can see which actors are in the current scene and other tidbits.

Unfortunately Apple has been in a dumb dispute with Amazon and not allowing the Amazon app on Apple TV, but I did read last week they are finally going to add it this fall. Too late for Twin Peaks though.
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