Slow Netflix Queue Updates?

Matt writes, "I’d say about a month (I’m not really sure of the timeframe), the queue has been totally different. I have about 200 movies in my queue and before it was so easy to move them up and down. Now my queue page is extremely laggy! It could take me up to 10 minutes to reorganize my queue!"

Has anyone else noticed a problem with the Netflix Queue?

Comments

[Adam]

Netflix.com has been disastrously slow for me for weeks.

I haven't noticed any problems with my queue. I have been keeping myself relatively low, though. Around 50 discs.

[Throttled by Netflix]

I have the full 500 movies in the queue, and there's no lag for me. I have a cable modem though.

[jjfromnyc]

yes - i have had the same problem for about a month - i have about 300 movies in my instant queue - 350 in my rental queue - both take a long time to load and reorganize

[andyg8180]

Man... i thought had a lot when i had 40 in my queue lol...

I've been okay... and i usually check out netflix about 2-3 times a day... i just been noticing more movies being shipped from outside of the state to me...

[n]

My queue has been unbearably slow in IE, Firefox, and Chrome (i.e. 3 minutes for any change). I have about 450 movies. Glad this was posted, I almost emailed Mike about the same issue! Hope someone figures out what is causing this.

[croatoan]

yeah myspace takes forever to load my queue and i just have 38 in my instant and about 200 in my saved... well at least it just isnt me...

[Craig]

It's SUPER SLOW for me too...slow loading time, slow page scrolling, and slow response when changing any values/settings. I have about 450 movies in my queue, and 2 months ago I bought a new quad-core PC, and I have a cable modem. So the problem is not on my end.

A couple months or so ago it used to be super speedy, but it has been getting worse and worse until about 1 week ago it's now almost unusable. I've had Blue-Ray enabled for a long time, and the extra javascript in that stupid dropdown they just added I think is to blame for the slowness.

I wish Netflix would offer a super slimmed down, text-only, limited javascipt version of the queue that would be screaming fast. But Netflix has always gone the direction of more showy and image heavy with animation, which results in a cool but less usable site...and I don't think that trend will change. So I'm not holding my breath for them to speed up the queue.

[Susan]

Yes, I thought it was just me, but it's been getting worse in the last couple of weeks. Any answers yet on why?

I have 500 in the queue, plus 55 in the Watch Instantly.

[CJ]

Queue 62
Instant 98
Saved 273

It seems like the more titles in the Instant queue, the longer the Netflix Queue page takes to load. I might experiment around and drop some of those Instant Watch titles to see if it does make a difference...

[LR]

I've noticed Netflix was loading slowly, but fortunately not as slowly for me as for many of the others here (about 140 queued, 40 instant).

Another peculiar issue: has anyone else experienced having every single item in their queue display as "very long wait" for hours, even a day at a time? This includes both mainstream (non-new release) selections and oddball stuff, so it's unlikely the wait status was accurate.

[Craig]

@LR...
The "very long wait" issue is talked about in this topic:
http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2008/09/netflix-glitch.html

[Craig]

@LR...
The "very long wait" issue was talked about in this topic:
hackingnetflix.com/2008/09/netflix-glitch.html

[B.R.]

My Netflix queue is fast to update if you drag and drop, but if you enter the numbers in the boxes it lags and takes forever to reload the page.

Btw:

You can get a free ONE MONTH trial subscription through Netflix here:

http://tinyurl.com/3ldpc7

That definitely beats the standard 2 weeks :)

[Karva]

Yes. It's been so slow that I had to delete everything (which took a while) so I only had 20 movies left in my queue. Now it goes fast.

[Bertb]

Yes. Very, very slow.

[AJR]

Even with FIOS speed, it freezes my browser and computer while loading.

[John]

I almost hate to open my queue page- it slows and freezes my whole computer.

[Randy]

The reason the Netflix queue is loading so slowly is the amount of data that the browser is trying to download and format. If you take a look at the source code for my queue (~430 movies), it contains over 22,000 lines of code (and that is without all of the javascript overhead that is also being loaded). That is an enormous amount of formatting for any browser to accomplish in any meaningful amount of time. Netflix needs to work on slimming down the amount of code that is generated for the queue page.

[Darin]

It's really slow in IE on my good computer, but it's been a few months now for me, works fine in firefox.

On my old slow lap top I used to be able to use my queue in firefox but it takes forever to load, but once it finally does it works ok but bogs everything down so much that it needs a restart after so I don't bother anymore and just hit stop to see what they sent me before the whole queue loads.

[GaPeach]

Everything about the Netflix site is painfully slow for me in Internet Explorer, but very fast in Safari. Unfortunately you can't use the Watch Instantly feature with Safari.

[Ujaya]

The queue has been horribly slow for a couple of months now. Takes forever to load and freezes the browser while it does so.

Feh.

[BG]

Noticeably slower here too - with a cable connection. Around 340 movies listed.Maybe more info loading?

[XVarX]

It isn't bad for me. I'm using Firefox 2.x and my queue is kept to around 70 titles or less at any time.

Blockbuster Online is painfully slow in comparison and I keep even fewer titles in my queue there.

[Gir]

Not bad here either. 168 titles in queue, 3 seconds to first display, 9 seconds till status bar finished (using Firefox).

[Bill]

It's definitely the size of the queue. Netflix allows you to create multiple queues (in theory for different family members). I had about 400 movies in my single queue that was very slow to update, but when I created a separate queue for documentaries/non-fiction stuff the newer queue, which only has about 50 DVDs, updated considerably faster.

Soooooo:

1) I'm fairly certain it's not my year old PC.

2) It's annoying that Netflix assumes, when you create a separate queue, that you're doing it for a second person (for whom you have to enter separate sign-in info, etc). You should have the option of simply wanting it as a way to sort your selection (or to speed up the queue). I like to have 3 queues: one for movies, one for TV series, and one for documentaries.

[Bill]

Oh, and...

3) When you create one or more new queues, Netflix should give you the option of selecting movies you want to move from the current into the new queue, rather than having to one-at-a-time it.

[Craig]

Bill said:
"Netflix should give you the option of selecting movies you want to move from the current into the new queue, rather than having to one-at-a-time it."

@Bill...
I agree they should make a tool. I used to do that too, but then I figured out a work around: Set all of your queues as "friends" to all your other queues via the Community section. Then if you want to move movies from queue A to queue B, then just log into the B Account and go to B's Friends and look at the Full Queue for the A account, then in IE you can right-click the Add button and "Open in New Tab", then to quickly close the tabs you can ctrl+w them all. Hope that helps.

[Craig]

...continued...
Bill, in addition to helping with moving movies between queues, it's also nice to have all your queues as friends with one another so that if you're on a movie detail page, in the friends rating section it will tell you if you have the movie in another queue.
Hope that helps.

[Jeremy]

Anybody else using Opera noticing reduced functionality on the Netflix site?

I'm on Opera 9.51 and recently noticed none of the movie info pop-ups work when you mouse-over a movie title (or image) and you can no longer drag-and-drop in the queue.

I don't want to have to switch browsers just to get a decent Netflix experience!

[shadoh]

mine is dreadfully slow in IE (300+ discs), but blazing fast in Chrome. It's their activex controls that manage the fancy dragging, I think.

[KJ]

My Netflix account is driving me crazy. Very slow to load, update, scroll - we have Windows Vista and a very fast cable connection. Why can't Netflix do something about this? Do I need to delete movies from my LONG list?

[Matt]

Wow looks like I really touched on a sore subject!

[Netflix no longer works for me....]

I have 500 in both my instant queues and regular one, is that alot? :) It was laggy but manageable as of the end of last month taking 25 seconds to load but now it's unusable causing my IE browser to freeze, this is on two computers now that I've tried. We shouldn't have to delete half our queue or limit ourselves to make their service work. If I can't access my queue on a third computer which is much faster than the other two then I'll have no choice but to cancel my membership. Yes 500 is probably too much, but again it was working fine for me as of January of 2009. Sorry, I won't pay for something I can no longer use.

Thanks Matt for posting this issue. As I see it, if everyone is experiencing this even at 200 movies like you had which should be even worse by this point, Netflix is going to start losing many customers. Anyone else having recent issues? Has anyone canceled their membership because of this issue?

[Found a temp solution to my problem above....]

To help everyone out on here, I found a temp solution ergo don't have to close my account, whew.

I found out that IE is now horrible when it comes to Queue. So what I did is use Firefox when I need to access that. I use an old vs Firefox and lately it's not working correctly when using Netflix, but it still works fine with the Queue. Since you can be logged into two browsers at the same time this solution works well -- at least for now. For me it takes a around 30 seconds for 500 to load in the Queue (this is why I was using IE since it was quicker at loading the Queue until now), so now I use IE to surf while waiting; once it's loaded I have no problems with further lag.

Hope that helps those who are now having problems with IE and don't want to limit their Queue.

I did go back to the slower computer I was having trouble with earlier where the Queue wouldn't load even on firefox and found that it did work now -- just took twice as long, so I also think it has to do with server load during peak times. The more people on Netflix accessing their Queue, the slower it's going to be, so unless Netflix fixes this, there will probably be a server crash in the near future.

[Walera]

I fixed the problem by downloading the Google Chrome web browser. Now I can easily access and manipulate my Netflix queue (400 items in each of both the regular AND instant watch queues). When I was using Internet explorer, it had gotten so slow as to be pretty much unusable -- it was PAINFUL! With Internet Explorer, I couldn't even easily move the slide bar up and down to get to the top or bottom of my list.

[Becky]

It's been slow here for several months now. I've used it on 3 different computers and it's really bad. I have a cable connection too. I can't imagine what dial up users are doing if they are having this problem. The funny thing is though, I don't have any problems with my queue on my iPhone..the list loads and scrolls just fine. I'd much rather have it running smooth on my computer though

[kevin]

Wow! I saw the above comments and I thought I would give Google Chrome a try. I have about 450 movies in my queue and managing it eas painfully slow even with the drag and drop and pop up movie information disabled in the account settings. Both Firefox and Ie were TERRIBLE and Opera wasn't much better. I've had GOOGLE CHROME installed for quite sometime, but didn't think to try it. I did and the queue works PERFECTLY! Quick load, instant scrolling, no lags, very snappy! Now how long until Chrome "updates" making it "better and more secure" - or in other words - ruins it?

[Rob]

Slow for me. I'm getting javascript "unresponsive script" errors in FF lately. It only happens when resorting movies toward the bottom of my 500 movie queue, not movies toward the top.

[DaCheeze]

Ever since I did a clean install on my HTPC to WIndows 7 64bit... the response from the Netflix menuing system is god awfully slow.. menu chages take over 5 seconds per
page. Instant Queue selection is noticeably slower, and I only have 40 items in queue max...
I have tried uninstalling flash/silverlight/netflix and reinstalling with no difference.
I was running 32bit Vista MCE previously with no issue at all.

Nvidia 6150 256mb embedded video
4 GB ram
250 gb HDD OS, 500 Gb drive data
AMD athlon 64x2 5150 dual core