Netflix sees only 1 processor.

"Im guessing its only seeing one processor and thinks its 1ghz"

No, this is confusing you.
What Netflix sees is your bandwidth and installed software, plus any specs that might impede a good connection. Not having seen their code, I can only guess what has happened to you. The first thing you need to do is check your SIlverlight installation. This is the "extension" that renders the streaming video files. This silverlight helper-app is developed by Microsoft and works like Flash, competing with it you might say.

You should actually call netflix, which has excellent support. I can help here since it might help others who search for this problem. I am not an employee of any of these products and services. I was a Windows software engineer, with lots of hardware experience. for years before I became disabled. I state this because I want anyone reading this to know that my skills are not a bluff, but my experience with huge varieties of systems is now limited to my own systems. I make documentaries at home when I can tolerate sitting long enough at my PC. I use an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, and an AMD Athlon II X4 620. At the bottom are the thumbnail sketches of my systems. I have used Netflix with single-core CPUs and there is no way that I know of in use to communicate to Netflix your hardware resources, but I guess it's possible Silverlight may have added this, but your symptoms don't necessarily indicate this. If I saw a screenshot I could tell more, but I think you have a software configuration problem that caused a generic failure report. You could look in Event Viewer, but that would probably be the long way around.

I would try to call Netflix, but you can also check out PBS videos http://video.pbs.org/ - which I am pretty sure are also Silverlight rendered. You have to remember just how much data is being sent over packets on the web. Hardware deficiencies like yours are not necessarily dead-ends because their recommendations are just minimums preferred, so that when you bitch about performance, they have already warned you about what to expect. It's the doctrine of under-promise and over-deliver. You might also try Internet Explorer and Google Chrome to see if Silverlight is simply having a problem with Firefox. Opera is supposed to support Silverlight by now but I haven't checked myself.

One final note is that Netflix streaming offers automated connection-driven quality decisions that would at least try to use a lower demand option and you would have seen that report. Since you didn't mention it, that is curious to me. I would like to find out more precisely what you did and what all of the messages were.


In summary;
1) you should look your Silverlight installation and check it's correct operation. If you have a software problem, call Netflix and they will talk you through a fix. Try other browsers, other sites etc. There is always the slim chance that Silverlight itself is objecting to your hardware. If that is the problem (hardware) you can blame Microsoft.

2) I also notice you didn't mention your connection bandwidth. This is far and away the largest reason for failure to play streamed video files. As ISPs gear up, so does the requirements with HD standards creeping up to the point that soon most content will be 1080, and by that time they will start promoting whatever the next step up turns out to be. If you follow the technologies for iPad and that class, including the Amazon Kindle, you see that the current LCD display limits will be ramping up, and the whole cycle will perpetuate until the end users finally realize their eyes aren't even that good! (though I admit it does help with reading...)





AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
MSI 890FXA-GD65 mobo with 4 PCIe slots including one shared with PCI. 2 of the PCIe slots are 16X, not "either" but both at the same time. This is crucial for optimum crossfire. It supports SATAIII, USB3, and OC tools with virtually every option of how to optimize your OC settings, but I don't need this yet.
Video GPU is Radeon 6850 (the best deal I know of for nonlinear video editing workstation, the GPU can run the entire rendering process in hardware with no noticeable CPU toll)
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
12GB RAM
2 500GB SATAIII internal hard disks, separate disk is for Windows Swap and scratch disk for video editing rendering operations (video editors don't actually create output files until rendering. They simply record all of your editing decisions and then render when you "produce" the end results.
2 USB3 1TB external disks for source material (rendering can use files from these disks)
2 USB2 1.5TB external disks for storage (large projects are moved to faster disks for working, but these are simply massive storage to eliminate most if not all of the need for optical media.


backup
AMD Athlon II X4 620
"Violet" mobo
Windows 7 Premium 64-bit
Radeon 5770 GPU
8GB RAM
1 TB internal SATAII disk
500GB internal SATAII "scratch" disk.

Well you were correct. Its not bandwidth (kinda) but a software issue. I checked and I was running ie7, so upgraded to 8. Still no go.

I disabled Sygate firewall.

Worked fine....

I had blocked certain windows components as an over precaution. Im not sure which there was only three blocked. IE was allowed. Either way you were correct was not a processor issue at all. Thank you very much you're a gift to this community/forum.

peace.
Jason

I was gonna say overclock your processors by 5mhz and see what happens =D

Ha! I hadnt thought of that. All I needed was .2 by my theory. I need to learn to do that anyway. Next project.

"I disabled Sygate firewall.
Worked fine.... "

Excellent! I love Netflix. Check your version of Silverlight so that you get the latest codec versions and bandwidth rules. Netflix does constant incremental updates (well all updates are incremental, but they take smaller steps more frequently). Right now they are working on audio too, and some devices for example can't get Dolby Digital stream, though you can on PC. This is probably because they are able to work with Silverlight and upgrade more aggressively than they can with the various appliances or set top boxes. I bought my first Blu Ray player only because I wanted upconversion. I have a 42" 1080 HDTV as my largest display for PC, and I decided to try upconversion on my existing DVDs. It looks really crappy, but the box has Netflix, and it looks fantastic! It really looks as good as Blu Ray for some films. I miss the Dolby 5.1 is all, but they say they are working on it.

But really I wanted to update this thread because there are a lot of folks who don't implement firewall strategies sensibly because it is very difficult for people to understand. What you might want to know is that if you are using nonroutable IP addresses on the user PC, your firewall settings should be dramatically eased if you use it as all on that machine. You want to think of firewall as existing on your site, not on each PC, though for some they won't have any choice.

Check with your ISP or your own diagnostic tools to see what the IPs are. Maybe we can start a thread for people who want to take a look. I notice that ever since MS started to include free firewall options, people tend to use it at setting that are inconsistent in what it accomplishes.

But anyway, I see that this is your first time since you are on a trial. I started using Netflix when I got sick of the endless repeats on cable. There was NO WAY I would EVER pay per view for a movie! For $3 I can get used DVDs for 3 for $10 on old ones at Blockbuster. But once I saw that Netflix was competitive with Blockbuster I tried the mail option rather than running to and from BB. I only tried streaming because it was free with 1-at-a-time. Now it is only $2. But I tried it and I was blown away at the quality in comparison to literally every other streaming option. To this day, only occasionally you can find a youtube video that runs smoothly at 1080P but Netflix has EXCELLENT buffer tech for PC and set top boxes, and the quality is as good as the production of the movie itself. So just as Blu Ray needs to remaster at 1080P, the MPEG2 standards that came from early digital satelite were 480P, which is why that is the entry level for HDTV, to have compatibility. So most older digital content is 480P until it is remastered.

But like I said, they have done a fantastic job because MOST of the time, for movies from the recent past, if there is no Blu Ray, your choices are 480P from DVD, or 720P from Netflix. How they arranged this I don't know. I assume that Netflix cut a deal with copyright owners to work together on early remastering so that Netflix gets it first at 720P and this still allows the owners to release Blu Ray at a later date, since Blu Ray requires hard investment in discs and production costs on top of the process, but 720P remastering can be automated without most of those.

This is the time to try Netflix, since many of the films are exclusive to Netflix at 720, and some are exclusive to Netflix at 1080P, documentaries and other productions that I suppose are not considering Blu Ray realease or are simply not concerned about a Blu Ray release conflicting with the Netflix streaming option. I also think there is a beleif among some of the players that optical disks will simply be obsolete and it is in their best interests to get their existing content in the highest quality possible to build the brand and therefore remastering at 1080P is an investment in market share strategies to build a wider customer base for future products with less concern about releasing 1080P disks for older productions. Those are the 2 forks of the HD market strategies for video productions outside of what we think of as Television broadcasting.


I think that anyone who pays for pay-per-view more than a few times a year, and or who pays for HBO, Showtime etc should try Netflix, and they will find that for the price of one premium channel, they can eliminate every paying per view and may even opt out for all of the premium channels. But that is how you should think of Netflix streaming. I pay under $20 for 2 Blu Ray disks out at a time. If I limit it to standard DVD 2 at a time, that is $14.99, 1 at a time is $9.99 and streaming only is $7.99. All of these prices may have changed but I looked less than a month ago. Also each package that I mentioned here includes all you can eat streaming. I think there is even one more package which is silly when you should just do the trial, but you might want a longer trial so for $4.99 you get 1 rental and X hours per month of streaming. I forget how long the trial is so...

What I should do is figure out how to get credit for referrals, but that might lead people to think I am biased. There is nothing in it for me in anything I have said (just to be clear).

So anyway, this is a CPU thread, sorry for the offtopic stuff. We should meet up in the firewall thread:>) Extra firewall settings slows your browsing some times.