Video playback has been horrible.

HD, HTML5 on chrome or using XBMC can't play more than a few seconds and has to buffer for minutes.

Am I the only person having this issue? All of the other sites I use are having no problem. just Giant bomb, Its really frustrating with all the e3 videos I want to watch.

my connection is 25/2:

Videos I watch will just randomly stop. I restart the video and it doesn't save my spot. Getting pretty aggravating.

I am really annoyed, I am so happy to be a subscriber and support Giant bomb but the fact I can't watch any of the videos (I can watch in SD with minimal buffering, or download the HD at ridiculously slow speeds) is really frustrating... I don't want to have to go to other sites for videos.... :'(

Weird that issue just really started showing up now for E3.

Rorie pointed me to this thread in chat:

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/bug-reporting-33/i-can-t-stream-videos-anymore-1425343/#118

Must be related but just really sucks for me.

Video playback has been horrid for months. On Roku video quality is terrible and it buffers constantly, on my Macbook Pro video is near unwatchable, the only reliable ways for me to watch video content are either on my iPad, or on my gaming PC using an ethernet cable.

It's really starting to impact my satisfaction as a premium member. Even the standard def videos need to buffer.

(Also, I'm on a 75Mbps/35Mbps fiber internet connection on a quad-core computer with dedicated graphics and 16GB of RAM. The problem is most certainly not on my end.)

The video issues are really strange. I'll have weeks where it will work perfectly (HD, streaming, all that) and then just seemingly out of nowhere it will get TERRIBLE.

I was having real issues with the Fantasia Quick Look and had to switch to YouTube but then right after, I watched the Johnny V interview and streamed it perfectly in HD with zero issues.

I've had to switch over to youtube to watch quicklooks and whatnot. Real bummer. Had the problem last month too, luckily i was a subscriber so I would just download the videos and watch them later instead. Annoying to say the least.

I am having similar issues. A lot of buffering despite an 18Mbps connection, on XBMC through ATV2 videos stutter constantly. Has only been happening for a few months, or at least it has become much more apparent in that time.

Yep! Having the same issues on a 24/10 connection. Been having intermittent issues for months, really.

EDIT: Also, goddamn. This quintuple-posted somehow. I literally only hit post once and then went to a different tab.

Hey guys!

I've been having massive issues with streaming on pretty much every site I got to. I just assumed that was because I'm in Australia and and stuff but I'm not so sure anymore...Lately I was really pissed off because I couldn't even watch the GB's E3 streams on twitch. It was so bad that even using all the tools out there to fetch a direct download link off of twitch the speeds would still be going at 20kb/s (instead of 1.8mb/s). So I googled around a bit and stumbled upon this blog post:

http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/time-warner-cable-sucks-for-youtube-twitchtv/

With no real idea about what it all went I thought I might as well give it a try and it worked! Just did it a a half hour ago and I've been able to stream and download off of twitch just fine so I thought what the hell maybe GB's videos are fixed now too. And lo and behold Drew's godlike face as the HTML5 HD stream actually worked!

Edit: http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/bug-reporting-33/a-fix-for-crappy-downloads-speeds-from-giant-bomb-1433284/#5 I think this post is saying something pretty similar?

Mine has been awful for quite a while. I use YouTube when I can but that isn't an option for premium videos.

Any problems you're having aren't due to your connection; they're largely due to Akamai, our content delivery partner, and the way they struggle with our very large video files. I'm told they are going to be moving us into another kind of system that handles large files better - hopefully things will get better soon, but I don't have an ETA on that.

@rorie: Are there any other issues associated with this. Like Chrome sometime hanging for 2-5 seconds when loading GiantBomb or thumbnails for videos not always loading properly?

I really hope this happens soon as it is so frustrating to have to buffer through almost all videos.

I've been streaming all videos through quicktime (using the direct link) and it works really well, no issues there.

Watching on GB video player has been a nightmare since the redesign.

@halfdeaf: the hanging issue is something separate that we're still looking into, as far as I know. Send me a PM for any thumbnails not working and I can take a look at those - usually it's just a funky image.

The messed up thing is that problems with video playback have been an issue for a lot of people even before the switch to the new site. By now I am seriously considering canceling my subscription because if a base functionality that many other sites offer for free can't even work right months after people started complaining then it makes me doubt if any real effort is being made to fix things.

The HTML5 player randomly stops playing, and then when I try to skip back ahead in the video, it usually crashes* numerous times before it plays again. Also, pausing a video for more than a few seconds causes a crash when it resumes. I'm using Chrome.

*By "crash", I mean the player appears to try to load the content, but just stops and goes back to the initial "press play to begin" screen or becomes unresponsive.

HTML5 issues here too. Mine doesn't crash as often as it used to, but I get a LOT of hitches. Video will play then stop, audio skips back a few seconds and the video remains frozen until the audio catches up to where it was before it left off.

Remembering playback position has been hit-or-miss for me lately too.

Using Chrome and didn't have any noticeable issues until probably two months-ish ago? Not ruining my GB experience, but definitely not improving it.

I've never been that happy with results from the streamer. I tend to just download them first, and have since last year.

The HTML5 player has given me trouble since it was introduced. Every few months I'll give it a try when the flash player messes up (which is rare) and it's as broken as ever. Seems to work perfectly on my Android phone though.

My videos ave been playing fine but my spot is not remembered ever and when the video ends it auto restarts with a grey video with audio only.

They have one of the worse video players out there, I usually go to youtube for the best quality, but they don't instantly post to youtube sometimes forcing you to use this horrible player. Hopefully they'll change it.