I don’t know if it’s still the case, but in the past some devices worked better than others during peak times because they used different bandwidth providers. This was the battle between Comcast and Cogent and Netflix.
For me it was buffering and low resolution, on the current AppleTV model, hardwired, with a 1Gbps connection from AT&T. Some streaming devices may have handled whatever issues Netflix was having better than others, but this was clearly a bigger problem than just the streaming device.
Remember back in 2014 or so when Netflix users on Comcast were getting slow connections and buffering pauses? It didn't affect people who watched Netflix via Apple TV because Netflix served Apple TV users with a different network.
> In a little known, but public fact, anyone who is on Comcast and using Apple TV to stream Netflix wasn’t having quality problems. The reason for this is that Netflix is using Level 3 and Limelight to stream their content specifically to the Apple TV device. What this shows is that Netflix is the one that decides and controls how they get their content to each device and whether they do it via their own servers or a third party. Netflix decides which third party CDNs to use and when Netflix uses their own CDN, they decide whom to buy transit from, with what capacity, in what locations and how many connections they buy, from the transit provider. Netflix is the one in control of this, not Comcast or any ISP.
https://www.streamingmediablog.com/2014/02/heres-comcast-net...