Internet residencial

On Amazon Fire Stick, I would get frequent (2-3 times per month) buffering problems on YoutubeTV on both Spectrum cable internet and TMO Home internet. The only solution that worked for me was restarting Fire Stick and in some cases having to log out and log back in. Nothing to do with internet bandwidth.

Here is my theory on why this happens. Live TV was never designed for streaming devices so getting it to work required a lot of "work arounds". I think the biggest challenge was the unyielding local blackout rules around sports as well as programming differences based on where you live. This was easy to manage when you had to use physical broadcast signal or physical cable box. With streaming devices that only limit the simultaneous logins, you can have one account watching live TV in multiple city locations each with their own channel restrictions.

We already know Hulu Live TV is having problems on TMO specifically because of geolocation not working on TMO public IP.

Thus, whenever I see excessive buffering, I tend to believe it's due to the app not knowing if you have permission to see the channel or not. Since restarting or logging out/in fixes this for me, this is what I believe is the root cause. I have never had buffing issues on Netflix which only cares what country you live in. I can confirm this by testing Netflix while my Youtube TV is still have buffering issues. Netflix has no restrictions like live TV.

Lastly, everyone once in a while, Youtube TV like other streaming providers have bandwidth issues on their side, but when that happens, it’s only specific channels and there's nothing you can do about except watch from a different streaming app.