New Apple TV User - HD Movie Download Times?

Question

New Apple TV User - HD Movie Download Times?

Hello Everyone,

Just purchased a 160GB TV, and updated to latest firmware. I have an Airport Extreme and never had any problems with my Fast DSL line in Montreal download (SD) content directly on my MacBook Pro.

Since I am new to TV, I wanted to know what you guys have experienced in terms of download times for HD Movie Rentals. I rented Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and it gave me "Ready to Play in 1 hour". That is a heck of a difference compared to what I had on iTunes on my Mac. I really wasn't expecting this...

Is this the norm, can any of you shed some light? Cheers.

Nick

MacBook Pro 15'' 2.4Ghz, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Oct 10, 2008 2:25 PM

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Answer 1

k-man55

Level 1

30 points

Oct 10, 2008 2:40 PM in response to Nicolas Online

That's probably about right with DSL. Here are Apple's estimated DL times from the ATV spec page.

Standard Definition
6 Mbps: less than 30 seconds
2 Mbps: about 1 minute
768 Kbps: about 1.5 hours

High Definition
6 Mbps: less than 1 minute
2 Mbps: about 2 hours
768 Kbps: about 8 hours

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Answer 2

Oct 10, 2008 3:09 PM in response to k-man55

Holy! My connection is around 2Mbps, so it goes from 1 Minute in SD to 2 hours in HD!!!!! That's crazy, the HD file must be like 120 times bigger then! Does anyone know how big an HD file is?

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Answer 3

k-man55

Level 1

30 points

Oct 10, 2008 3:36 PM in response to Nicolas Online

It's not THAT much bigger (maybe 1.5 GB vs 4 GB) but as I'm sure others can explain better it's the bitrate that makes it take longer to begin watching an HD movie. B/c the HD movies have a higher bitrate it will have to buffer longer on a 2MB connection.

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