I've been a Netflix subscriber for almost a year now and love the selection that they have over their competitors. Since I run a DSL internet connection at home, the video player determines the connection automatically and plays the best suited quality for my speed. The thing is, since DSL is relatively slower than cable, it puts DSL users (this is arguably depending on your location, and several other factors) in a disadvantage. So if you have a slower connection, the streaming quality of the movie will be poorer.
While there's nothing that you can do about your bandwidth unless you upgrade or move location, I found out that there's something that you can do about increasing your video quality. While the video quality is increased, there will be a momentary wait while the video gets buffered and downloaded. This can take longer depending on the length of the movie that you're trying to watch. If you're just going to watch something like "Heroes", then the video should start right away with a few seconds delay. In order to change the video quality settings, within the movie viewer, (this is when the video player shows up), you can hit Shift + B. This will give you a dropdownlist option where you can select your video quality in 500Kbs, 1000Kbps, and so on. The shortcut will only work if you click within the black area first before pressing the shortcut key.
In most cases, I find that 1000Kbps works decently fine. The reason I'm posting this is because I keep forgetting the shortcut key whenever I watch Netflix, and then finding myself doing a search on this shortcut online. So this is a reminder to myself and to others who seeks to improve their Netflix experience. If you know some other tricks, please feel free to let me know.