YouTube TV

[Update: Fixed] Google investigating YouTube TV buffering issue affecting Spectrum customers

Ben Schoon | Dec 14 2019 - 11:30 am PT

YouTube TV is a great cable alternative, but like any streaming service it can run into issues. Google has confirmed today that it is investigating a strange buffering issue that’s affecting some Spectrum customers trying to watch YouTube TV.

In a Reddit thread, Google has issued a statement confirming a nasty buffering issue that’s been plaguing some users.

A YouTube TV engineer says that the buffering problem started on November 22 and seems to be mainly affecting Spectrum users. Specifically, it seems to be affecting those who are non-Charter customers (i.e., former Time Warner Cable). Interestingly, the issue is only affecting TV devices such as Rokus, Android TVs, and similar devices. Mobile playback isn’t affected.

Apparently, Google has yet to find a concrete issue that’s causing the buffering or drops in quality, but there are some leads they are investigating. Hopefully, things will be patched up soon.

It started on Friday the 22, and seems scoped specifically to our web & living room playbacks on Spectrum/Charter cable customers only. It seems to only affect TCP traffic, not QUIC (hence why mobile playbacks are okay).

We’re continuing to investigate, and have a couple of leads — but nothing concrete yet.

Update 12/14: Apparently, Google was able to patch things up about a week ago. On December 5th, the same engineer shared an update on the situation saying that it should be fixed. On Spectrum’s end, the issue traced back to faulty equipment.

…we escalated with the affected network provider which isolated the problem to a bad router within their equipment. They’ve re-routed around it, and this issue is resolved as of last week.