Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

I tried to "restore" my Apple TV, as suggested up-thread, but the AppleTV automatically restored it using the new iOS upgrade. I haven't tried to rent a movie yet. To be honest, I'm a little reluctant to try it.

I did get an email from Apple saying they would refund me for the movie I rented, but was unable to watch. I do appreciate that. Hopefully a solution is on the horizon!

i'm having the same issue. HD trailers play immediately; ATV1 also played immediately. AirPlay works fine. The one movie I've purchased from Apple, however, continually indicates a download time of 1-3 hours.

Same problem here. Tried to rent a movie tonight, Apple TV said over 7 hours until movie would be ready to watch. I get almost 8 mbit download speed when I do a speed test. The Apple TV says my network connection is fine when it is tested at the 6 mbit rate. Apple has a serious problem here.

One more voice to add confirming this is a very real problem.

Worst of it is is that the ATV does not retain anything in the buffer (OS 4.1).

If I could at least start the download overnight so that it was there the next evening--that would be a huge improvement.

Not the experience advertised though as a principle use is to pick a movie by browsing the library and then in a short while (enough time to make popcorn) start watching.

Try explaining to your kids why the lack of buffering is why you can't finish family night.

My network is fine outside of pulling anything down from the Apple servers. 100% of the issue is with Apple to resolve:

1. Fix iOS to allow retained buffering for the valid duration of the rental. BTW, even with a large part of the buffer full, try rewinding to catch something you missed. On my unit, anything that was ahead of where you rewinded to is now flushed and the "Ready in xxxxx minutes message shows up! Then,

2. Fix your servers to match demand--especially from Friday to Sunday evenings. Maybe North Carolina will help.

Rating: 9/10 on the hardware. Rating: 0/10 on the movie rental experience as a whole.

Same problem — 45 minutes into the HD movie it stops. Says it will be ready to play in nearly three hours. I have a 10 meg line and it runs at nearly that. Network check reveals no problem. It's the Apple servers.

I think Reflective Turtle hit it on the head. The biggest issue is that the Apple TV no longer holds anything in it's buffer memory. With that buffer working, your connection speed really doesn't matter any longer. Hopefully this can be fixed quickly, as this is the issue keeping many of us from enjoying our neat, little black boxes!

MightyMac,

The article you suggest has some great hints and fixes, but if you use a non-HDMI cable, you will get the error or if you try to Airplay an HD content movie that was downloaded from iTunes, you get the error as well. The later is truely a bug, since the connection from the ATV2 to the TV is the verifying link, not the air.

It's November 30, 2010 @ 7:53p PCT and still experiencing the same issue. I just rented my first HD movie on the new ATV and it just sits at loading. I started to play it and says I now have 23 hours to view it, but it'll be ready to play in 12 hours and 34 minutes. Nice!

APPLE - HELLO!!! ARE YOU OUT THERE? ARE YOU LISTENING?!!!!!!!

Hi,

I had a problem with the streaming is when rent a movie and click play i get this error message "An error occurred while loading this content" and i get it sometimes while playing a preview of the movie.

I tried to restore the device without updating it to the new update but i couldn't find any way to do that. It automatically update it self, is there any way to restore the device without updating it ?

Message was edited by: XCube

I have the same problem, I think is the band wide, In My case is 1.63 MB(Mexico), what is your band wide.

This is just ridiculous... My first rent and it says... 86 hours?!?!?! Yeah right... like I'm going to wait, especially when you have a 48 hour limit.

I'm a huge Apple fan, but this time... I'm simply and fully disappointed.

If only I could have my rental money back then at least, I wouldn't be angry.

Just posted this to a different thread, but I'm repeating it here...

Not happy right now. My wife had the bright idea that she wanted to watch a new release tonight (Knight and Day). It was pouring rain outside so I didn't feel like driving out to try and get a copy of it at the Blockbuster 12 minutes away. So I gave in and said we could rent it from iTunes. My wife's one request is that I get everything "ready" before we all moved up to the movie room (I've experimented with several other streaming devices and things don't always go smoothly, so she's gotten a bit impatient with it all).

Anyways, so I buy the movie, and get it going on downloading. I've got a 12mpbs+ connection, but I waited about 15 minutes before telling her we should be good to go. We all settle in and I hit play, only to find that the progress bar looks like it's only downloaded about 5 minutes worth of the movie. What?!?

Anyways, I hit play and it starts to play. About 5 seconds in, I hit pause. Then I hit play again but instead of it starting up, I see the spinning circle. I wait. And wait. And wait. No luck. I switch over to play a Netflix movie and it starts within 10 seconds. I go back to try starting my iTunes rental, but still the spinning circle. I reboot it. No luck. I reboot my cable modem and router. No luck.

Finally, I wait a bit longer and enough has buffered so that it lets me start up the movie. Great. Then 10 minutes into the movie, it pauses. And the circle spins. And I wait. And wait. Then I get my laptop and run an online speedtest (here: http://speedtest.vudu.com/cdn1/). It says I'm currently getting 12mbps down.

So what is the problem?!?! Did I mention that my wife is now asleep? I want my money back for this rental, and I will never rent from iTunes again.

I just want to add my voice to the rest. I have been experiencing no problem with the ATV until last night when I rented an HD show and experienced the same long wait, with the "Ready to play in xxx minutes", which increased in the number of minutes the longer I waited. My wife and I finally gave up. The ATV is at the latest release.

I primarily use ATV to stream from Netflix and my computer. Until the recent update, I had no problems. Since then, streaming from the computer is still fine, but now I can't watch a Netflix movie without constant stops for buffering. Sounds like the problem is in the new update.

Same issue and its worsening. First noticed it a few weeks back with just some stuttering in the movie, this happened with a few rental afterwards, but last week, my wife wanted to see Eat, Pray, Love, it started to play and then I got ~300min until ready message. Of course since the movie had started, it started the 24 hour clock, left the AppleTV on all night and it played fine the next day (with just barely enough time on the count down clock to get it started), I assume it downloaded the whole movie to it's memory.

Have not and will not rent from iTunes again until this is resolved. There are many other choices out there for same day as dvd rentals that just plain work (my directv for example and its 1080p for 1 buck more, movie gets downloaded the night before to the internal hard drive I think, no waiting ever).

btw, my cable modem speed is 30/2, so thats not the issue.

Apple needs to fix this ASAP.