White Screen Movies

Just called apple support regarding white screen with apple movies. As many have all ready pointed out they recommended unplugging apple tv waiting 30 sec and plugging back in. It did work for me. Wish it didn't happen at all. Makes me not want to buy any movies from itunes and just use 'other' means to get movies on apple tv.

I have the same issue with one of my Apple TV units. A restart does fix the problem, but it's hardly a great solution.

I had to swap the unit in my home gym with the (so far flawless) unit that was in my living room. 5-10 minutes of my cardio routine would be spent waiting for my Apple TV to reboot. Often, the rental would have to re-download from the begining after reboot as well.

We also got the dreaded white screen after purchasing a movie on Apple TV. What are other solutions besides power down and up? Very aggrevating - so is finding the right answer!

I have the very same problem on my first day and first purchased movie!!
it destroyed my initial wow feeling with apple TV, now I'm thinking I made a bad decision to spend 269 quid on it 😟

Very disappointed and feeling much "buyers regret" with my ATV purchase. Rebooting constantly to overcome the white screen or requesting a refund that is given but implying it's a "gift" not to be repeated (since it's probably a user error) are not satisfactory solutions. Also, about half the time I attempt to download movies I get a message that my request can't be processed at this time and to try again later. So, I've been trying again somewhere other than Apple and getting satisfactory service. Apple Help does not acknowledge the problems exists and I've begun warning my friends that Apple isn't ready to be a reliable source of movie downloads. Too bad for Apple as they have a great opportunity but are in the process of blowing it.

Anyone had a situation where re-powering the Apple TV does not solve the problem?

I had purchased three movies via AppleTV (160GB model) and waited for them to download. After they downloaded (the next day), I tried to play them. *white screen*. Came on here - followed instructions for restarting. STILL *white screen*.

Thinking I might have not powered down long enough, I had it off all night last night. Retried - STILL white screen. Have run System Diagnostics. Everything is fine.

Should I just do a Factory Restore and try again?

Interestingly enough, the movies DO play on my Win computer.

Further to this, I did a factory reset and chose NOT to upgrade my AppleTV to the latest version. I then proceeded to purchase a new movie and this time, it DID download and my other movies were available.

This has happened to me a few times. The restart has worked! Log into your itunes account and report a problem and they give you a refund right away!

The unplugging-replugging procedure worked. I was able to view the HD movie I rented that had, a few moments earlier, showed up as white earlier. But...

1. This is clearly a recurring problem and should have been fixed months ago
2. Despite all this time, Apple Support still does not have a clear correction posted to its site, not even a helpful FAQ
3. The on line Team Support member I contacted said "this is a common problem, but we don't know what causes it"
4. I had to spend 15 minutes on the phone with the tech support to get the simple advice of unplugging. What not just post this to the website?
5. These discussion forums are always helpful ... they seem to be (sometime, at least), the only source of useful tips

C'mon Mac ... if you can't fix it, at least 'fess up on the website and make the solution known up front ... today, you lose a little of my respect...

I have also had this problem on HD TV shows. Apple support told me it was a known bug that occurs only on HD content when the Apple TV is trying to waken from "deep sleep". The only solution is to unplug and restart the Apple TV. The support person said an update would be addressing this issue. He did not have a time frame for this update.

Yep, restarts to NOT work for me. I can not play "Truth in 24" in HD. The SD version plays fine, but all I get is the white screen of death when trying to play the HD version. I've restarted multiple times, by both pulling the power and waiting several minutes, and by restarting from the AppleTV's menu. I've run the diagnostics and they say everything's fine. I've even done the factory reset back to v1.1 of the software, then upgraded to the latest version, and still I get the white screen of death. I can watch other content without a problem, and the HD version will play just fine on my Mac so it doesn't seem to be a problem with the content itself.

Very, very frustrated. This is the first problem I've had with my AppleTV, but it's really a showstopper.

Ah, I just figured it out! After the factory reset I hadn't signed back in to the Apple Store. Once I signed in and then did a "check for downloads" the "Truth in 24" in HD would play. So, it seems that there is some copy protection issue.

I find that if I do a soft reboot, I can get the movie.

Is there any update as to when this bug will be addressed?

I think the white screen is telling you that the equipment playing a movie that is marked as protected cannot verify that the entire path is copy protected (HDCP). So you get a white screen. Restarting the entire chain of connections (restarting the AppleTV) resets and the HDCP chain (all the way to the TV) can be verified.

Just to chime in, this still happens to me with movies purchased or rented from the iTunes store over my Apple TV. It's pretty aggravating, as others have noted.