Whether you watch Netflix on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV, the quality of the video—and whether it stutters or skips—is determined by the bandwidth of your Internet connection. Netflix recommends 25 megabits per second (Mbps) of download speed for Ultra HD quality, 5 Mbps for HD, and 3 Mbps for SD. On the slow end, Netflix says that 1.5 Mbps is the lowest recommended speed for a broadband connection and notes that 0.5 Mbps is the absolute minimum required. So how do you tell what your real-world download performance is right now? Visit Netflix’s fast.com Web site for a quick report on how much bandwidth you have. If what you see doesn’t match with what you think you’re paying for, call your Internet service provider and make sure your connection is working properly.

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