Perhaps a different angle on what I experience? Yesterday i had issues similar to OP description.
Some additional info from my case:
A: I saw this when trying to catch back up on the videos released the last two weeks. So on approx page 30 when viewing latest releases.
B: Loading and buffering was a lot slower than what I'm used to
C: Varied a lot from video to video how bad it was. Some(more popular videos?) was totally fine on high bitrate. Others was unwatchable on low bitrate(less popular videos?).
D: Tried to watch the 2 latest SLR Original videos, they buffered quick and streamed without issues.
E: When re-checking a video that had issues yesterday, it works OK today. Still a bit slow buffering, but no freezing/stopping
F: Not sure if related, but when checking backlog for 2 weeks old videos they sometimes load for a long time. Longer than I'm willing to wait. But if I exit the video and open it again, it starts to play immideately.
My guess is that videos that have not been viewed recently, it has to be either read from a to slow disk, or loaded into a cashe/buffer, and this process is sometimes to slow.
Example of video with slow buffring and frequent stops yesterday, that works OK today:
DeoVR Kelly & Alyssa Intimate Friends II
DeoVR version: 14.7.3088
Meta Quest version: 74.1017