Video Player Randomly Ending and Extreme Buffering Issues

I've been having trouble watching videos on the site since yesterday. They're taking unusually long to load and every video I've tried to watch randomly ends at some point, the video player behaving as if the video is over.

Another problem I've been having is videos have been buffering a lot more when streaming.

Is there anything I can do on my end to troubleshoot my connection, maybe isolate where the problem is?

Also experiencing both issues. The sudden ending issue since a couple of days ago, a reload fixes it but it doesn't remember where it last ended so it won't resume where it left off.

Sometimes videos won't even play whatever options I use. My net speed is more than capable and this is the only website I have not playing / buffering issues. Tried Chrome and Firefox, I've read the FAQ, nothing I read seems to fix it. This issue has been going on for a couple of months.

Now all of a sudden progressive mode is having trouble too. My network monitor says I'm downloading from GB at a maximum of 50KB/s and videos are more or less unwatchable because of the buffering.

Are there any ways I can troubleshoot to see where the faults lie? My home connection is capable of much more than 50KB/s and I don't know why it's being underutilised, is it a problem with the site? If so then everyone should be getting this problem right?

I ran into a similar issue when trying to stream the live show last week. The player would completely stop and restart itself. Playing it back from the archive doesn't cause any problems.

@thelastgunslinger: I think the live stream issue is them restarting the stream, not entirely sure.

I've been having issues a lot for awhile but it seems to be worse lately for whatever reason. I tried to watch some of the new trailers posted today and they all literally freeze at 10-15 seconds in and never play again. Firefox and Chrome. Getting pretty annoying. And since I'm whining... the resume video feature is always busted for me. Resumes from where I left off perfectly fine but never fails to freeze within 5 seconds and never play.

I'm experiencing similar issues as well. Whenever I try to watch a video, it often plays normally for a minute or two. After that it "pauses" as if it's buffering. A while after that, the player goes dark and the video ends entirely.

Refreshing the page doesn't necessarily help either. Pressing play after refreshing doesn't start the video at all. It simply stays dark as if it's buffering forever.

Happening to me right now with the pre-thanksgiving video. It randomly ended and I can't get it working again. All other videos I've tried work.

It tries to go to the saved position in the video, but doesn't load and at that point the clicking another position on the time slider doesn't work.

Latest chrome, pc, 100mbit down.

Edit: Actually trying other videos it keeps prematurely ending.

i've had this problem occur intermittently for a while but i havent said anything because refreshing usually gets me by. I'm only mentioning it now because i came here to post about the premium streams cutting in and out every minute for the past two weeks. It would be nice to get some instruction as to how we can help you guys verify the problem instead of weeks of silence

Same issue here - came by after I gave up trying to watch the live UPF for today after constant black-screen restarts every other minute or so.

Same problem with me. about a month ago tell now. Videos hang up randomly. I have noted that the problems seem to happen more often at the same time of day. checked my speed and its fine on my end. can down load GB size files in min. but if i try and just save a video from the site to try and watch it without hangups it gives download time in hours. Is the CBS building having a traffic issue? are they getting DoA?

Any word on this problem yet? I know I've been dealing with it for a number of months too - along with a good few others when you look at the intermittent threads that keep popping up about this. Honestly it's getting pretty frustrating having to rely on the Youtube videos (adverts and all) for dependable playback, or just crossing my fingers and hoping when it comes to subscriber content. I love to go back and watch/listen to old premium features while I work, and they fairly (maybe 8 out of 10 times if I was guessing) consistently just drop and act like they've finished part way through.

I know you guys are busy, and are doing an absolutely stellar job with the content as of late, but I hope this can get looked into at some point! :)

Been having issues watching old videos (such as the Breaking Brad: Demon's Souls series) via HTML5, High quality. Computer connected via ethernet to my router, and my internet seems to be fine. But it frequently freezes up for a bit. I've tried switching to Streaming (Auto quality), but the videos frequently end early. Any ideas?

I'm having this problem as well. Not every video, but some (a lot though) and especially with older vods.

This issue persists for a long time now and I'm really curious what It could be about.

My internet connection seems to be fine, since i have no issues with any other streaming services

Just to clarify on this stuff.

First, yes, we get people reporting video issues and we are aware. Second, some people seem to think we host video servers at CBSi or something, we don't.

The videos are all served from Akamai, which is the largest worldwide video/content CDN. We, like very many other sites, use Akamai to distribute large media content. And yes, they have issues sometimes, unfortunately.

When these complaints arise, our recourse is to send Akamai an email / phone call.

I've posted about this before, and others have gone into more detail on it (we should probably have it added to the FAQ or something), sometimes there are other reasons for the issues. Akamai will tell you that the ISP is to blame, that they are not following their caching strategy. ISP will generally deflect and blame it on Akamai.

I'm going to do what I can, to continue looking into this to improve the experience.

Edit: Also, take a look at this thread: http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/bug-reporting-33/a-fix-for-crappy-downloads-speeds-from-giant-bomb-1433284/#36 and let me know if that resolves the issue.