Wow. Watching any portal-based IPTV provider directly from my Spectrum internet connection was impossible last night. Video would constantly stop and start. I've long suspected traffic shaping was the issue.
Setup a VPN from an Asus RT-N12D1 router to a VPN provider in Amsterdam, connected my mag 254 box to that router. I updated the stock firmware to the most recent non beta version and then configured my PPTP credentials on the wan interface.
This is a completely different, better experience :)
Reposting something I posted ages ago as people still do not get it:
"That's simply not true. Think about it for a second: IPTV has effectively /zero/ impact on their networks. Effectively no one uses it. YouTube and Netflix do have impact. Those are what would be throttled/traffic shaped.
The issue here is that IPTV providers have shitty networking setups and they cannot deal with the load that comes late in the day, so some users find it more effective to VPN to a host with better peering with the IPTV provider to get a more stable stream. Quality peering and the bandwidth to handle load is the responsibility of the IPTV provider, not the end users ISP.
Throttling/Shaping are one of those phrases that get thrown around to handwave the crappy setups IPTV providers have. It is almost never the case. No major non-mobile ISPs do mass throttling of HLS traffic."