Really, Netflix?

Netflix is fingering internet service providers, especially Verizon, for recent streaming video problems.

Customers who contact Netflix tech support are taken through the frustrating and time consuming mummery of resetting modems, told their wifi is inadequate, and encouraged to perform factory resets on streaming devices until they finally give up.

But the Netflix issues began with their 2013 "Super HD" upgrade. After the upgrade, many customers could no longer stream high definition to their TVs and began to experience seriously degraded resolution.

Now Netflix is blaming ISPs for the problems.

If download speed or deliberate "throttling" by the ISP is the problem, why is it that I can view Netflix movies in high definition on my laptop via Wifi while my Roku streaming device delivers Third World "2-dot" resolution via Ethernet cable?

Maybe Netflix customer service rep "Deneisha" spilled the beans in this February 1, 2014 internet chat:

Alright - thanks again for hanging in there with me, after doing some more investigation for you we definitely found what is going on here, based on all the details i have found on the HD feature, it seems our engineers are actually doing a site maintenance. And that includes some new features one of which was improve the HD quality that is being streamed through Roku, but reecently Roku has been making a few changes to some of their devices user interface as you should be able to see on your Roku's after updating them, and for some reason the HD signal is not reflecting on these players as they should/at all.. even when you do have awesome picture quality on your TV like you have on both your Oleva and your Apex ...but not to worry, we are almost through investigating this issue from our end here, we are also working with these device manufacturers like Roku to get this cleared up ASAP...

Really? Are you sure? Apparently she is:

I was advised that as soon as we have confirmed these updates we guarantee that you will be able to get HD on your Roku, what i will be doing right away though is flag the Roku's on your account and make a notation on your account so that our engineers are aware that you are having thing issue.. ,The good thing is you are definitely in good hands now.. we will do all we can to get this fixed for you ASAP.. and we thank you so much for ...

And yet Netflix is still blaming the ISPs.