Youtube videos stream at very low speed

Satsumomo

Arghhhh! It doesn't matter if its 1am, 5am, 3pm. I cannot simply load Youtube videos!

My connection is 4096/512 ADSL, ANY other site loads correctly. I go to the Youtube test speed page? Bam! 400kb/s download. But if I try to actually watch a video? Well Youtube's bandwidth saving feature or whatever just kicks in and my videos will download between 5-45 kb/s (I have a bandwidth meter in FF) and take ages to buffer.

Firefox 3.6.18
Win7 x64
Thomson TG585 v8 router

This happens on any other browser as well. It suddenly started happening a week ago, but it's happened before. Is there something I'm missing on Youtube options or anything? It's really annoying I cannot watch a single Youtube video because I have to wait 20 minutes to load a 5 minute video.

SkyCaptain

I've been having that same issue as well and it's only recently. I'm on Comcast.

DrFrylock

I was having the same issue for about a week, week and a half. It was pretty bad. Then it fixed itself. I think it's on YouTube's end. I am on Uverse.

Satsumomo

Ah, I see... Then I guess it's not fixable on our side. One thing I did right now was open the same video in 6 different tabs, in one of those instances it actually used my bandwidth correctly. Quite annoying but well then there's nothing we can do it seems.

dobi

I've had luck sometimes by right clicking on the player, selecting "stop download", and then pressing play again. Sometimes it seems to wake up YouTube's servers.

Mr Heist

Have you tried switching your DNS server? It could definitely be worth a shot to switch to google free DNS and just see if it makes a difference (if nothing else it could help narrow down if the problem is on your end or theirs). I think there are applications (maybe websites, too?) that will show you your optimal DNS settings.

Thanatos

Google free DNS:

8.8.8.8

and

8.8.4.4

Mmmm... Cocks...

I've been on Google DNS, but have been running into slow youtube videos lately as well.
I always just assumed "Youtube sucked", I know Google bought them, but it's not like they changed much.

apricotmuffins

huh. Youtube's been slow for me too. wondered what was doing it.

Muriden

I've seen this on several streaming sites. One video loading will be perfectly fine and the next will choke under 280p. I think it just has to do with traffic at the time of playback.