Buffering

What device are you using?

Are you using Ethernet or wifi?

Ethernet 

What device are you using? DirecTV Stream box, Roku, Fire Stick, smart TV (What Brand), etc?

I see from your other post it is a Samsung Smart TV. There are some issues with that Samsung app. Many have posted problems with it. Me for one, it is very buggy. We dumped it and replaced it with a Fire Stick, and the problems went away. 

Samsung tv, ethernet,  netgear modem/router 5g for soundbar.  Nothing else buffers, just direct tv.

They know they cant fix it.

Calling All Samsung Smart TV App Users Subscribing to DirecTV Stream

I had another issue with DirecTV and I received a call from an agent representing the Office Of the President.  We got on the subject of Buffering.  He stated the "On Demand" function was not really on demand.  It was download and watch later.  The "On Demand" was a misnomer.  I think that is false advertising and he agreed.

Searching the Dish site revealed they have the same issue.  I know Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix do not have this issue.  It is a technical problem that should be corrected and consistent with the other streaming services.

I have a DSL service with a bit rate in the 2.6-2.7 Mb/s that can not be upgraded.  This has no bearing on the TV or application.

If you have DirecTV satellite service, you are posting to the wrong forum.  Try here.

If you have DirecTV Stream service, then you were given bad info - on demand is really on demand - there is no place to download a video to. 

And DSL service with a bit rate of 2.6-2.6 Mbps certainly has a bearing on streaming video.  That is a very very marginal speed to support HD streaming - DTV suggests 8Mbps per stream, but 5Mbps is likely good enough, assuming it is solid.  It is not at all surprising you would have issues with sub-3Mbps bandwidth.  If that really can't be upgraded, then DTV Stream (and quite possible any live streaming service) is likely not a good choice for you.

Thanks for the link, I'll post it there.  I still don't understand how Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime can steam with no problem at my DSL speed. 

They are different services than DIRECTV STREAM which constantly needs to receive data from the server. Meanwhile, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime are all already stored ready for you device to use.

I think another way to phrase it is that the the services offering only on-demand content can use more computationally intense compression schemes (used by the codecs that define the format that the video is sent to the end recipient) since they don’t have to do it “on the fly” (in real time) but do it off line, taking as long as it takes.  So their compression can be better, meaning the equivalent video stream requires less bandwidth.  

For HD video, codecs that produce high picture quality and require less than 3Mbps of bandwidth are probably right around the limit of what can be done on the fly right now.  That can change, as newer (perhaps less computationally intense) codecs are developed and/or better hardware to implement the codecs is developed.  From the other direction, there are certainly efforts underway now to try to ensure that all areas in the country have access to much higher bandwidth than <3Mbps DSL.  Hopefully one or more of these will help address your issues relatively soon.