Video Streamers’ Most Frustrating Quality Issue is Also Their Most Frequent One

May 1, 2017

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Video

Stalling and rebuffering video is a far more persistent and aggravating problem than slow loading times, according to a survey of streaming video viewers [download page] from Mux. Unfortunately not only is stalling video the most frequent problem encountered by streamers, but it’s also the most frustrating.

By contrast, viewers are less likely to come up against low picture quality – and this is also their least frustrating problem.

Consumers have a fairly low tolerance for rebuffering, the survey – which focused on video streamed to TVs, such as Netflix and Hulu – reveals. The majority of viewers (52.7%) will tolerate 2-3 rebuffering attempts before they’ll stop watching, whereas 1 in 5 will give up after only a single rebuffering event. These figures show a lower tolerance for rebuffering than found in another survey released late last year, in which just 8% said they’d abandon a video after a single rebuffering event.

Overall, 85% of consumers have stopped watching a video because of stalling and rebuffering, Mux reports.

So who’s to blame? Two-thirds of viewers blame the rebuffering issue on their internet service, whether that be their internet service provider (35.8%) or home WiFi network (32.6%). Only 21.3% blame it on the streaming service itself. A similar percentage of respondents (71.9%) blame either their internet service provider or home WiFi for slow load times.

These problems could present a problem for the industry, as virtually all (95.5%) of consumers surveyed feel that reliability and quality is very important to their video streaming experience. Users of streaming services undoubtedly believe there is room for improvement. Almost three-quarters feel that the rebuffering rate could be improved and 6 in 10 feel that video load times could be better.

About the Data: This report was based on a survey of 1,035 US consumers on video streaming services watched on TV such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu or YouTube. Respondents watched at least 1 hour of streaming video each month.

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