Anyone else having slow HD downloads?

I experienced the same problem last night as well. Even non-HD trailers took over 5 minutes to load and would occassionally reload while playing. Judging from everyone's comments on this forum, it sounds like an Apple server issue. Hope it gets resolved soon so that I can watch a few movies over the holidays.

Just got back from my local Apple Store and no one there knew anything about download issues on AppleTV. They suggested I download the latest firmware... However I already have the latest firmware. They then suggested I call 1-800AppleCare. It just rings busy.

Just tried downloading a couple of SD trailers to see how the it was working today. They download slow and then reload in the middle of a 2 minute and 30 second trailer!!! I'm not seeing any improvements.

Clearly no one from Apple reads these boards...

Message was edited by: clemdog

clemdog wrote:
Clearly no one from Apple reads these boards...

this is a user-to-user support forum. it's not a method for contacting apple with issues.

Glad it's not just me. I spent 4 hours today trying to diagnose the problem. I spoke with Apple, but the person really was no help -- kept saying I had network problems, which I don't. This issue impacts only the 2 ATVs in our house. Everything else runs normally (including a bandwidth intensive VPN). The speed tests are normal.

Our two ATVs just limp along, and it has extended today to regular shows. I purchased The Dark Knight today. At 4 hours, it had d/l only 41%. I gave up. I even took one of the ATVs back to factory settings. It took 90 minutes to d/l the software update, and still has the problem.

Clearly, something is wrong on Apple's end, but they haven't told their front line troops on the 800 number about it. Either than, or Cox is throttling very specific content/sources, which I highly doubt given this thread.

I've noticed since around Christmas all apple downloads from iTunes, software updates, apple.com dl's , to especially AppleTV trailers are unbearably slow. I have FIOS and I'm back to the age of dial-up. Apple Fix soon please!!!


Mike

Message was edited by: bucdup

I'm having the same problem. Have Apple TV 2.0.2 and ISP is Time Warner Cable. All HD downloads are taking about 2-3 minutes for every 1%.

Same problem here:

Time Warner
AppleTV 2

Yes, we've been using Apple TV for movie downloads since the service was first available, without ever having a problem. However, this week we tried to watch movies on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve -- in both cases it was reporting more than 8 hours to download a movie (after renting it), so we couldn't even start watching it.

Frustrating to say the least, and ruined the family plans for the special holiday evenings. Grrrr.

I checked the LAN, Apple TV and ISP/WAN speeds and everything was screaming fast on my end, so I'm assuming the Apple movie servers were overloaded with too many people trying to watch movies for the holidays.

Not a great way to create happy customers or increase movie rentals.

Yes. We have been having slow downloads. We start the movie and by the time we are half through, the download speed has slowed and we stutter through the rest of the movie. It seems ATV specific, as the download to my MacBook Pro is not having this problem. I actually download a movie to my MacBook Pro and transferred to my ATV to try to solve this problem. Wonder if something is going on with Apple's servers??? Certainly not getting an Apple-like experience from my ATV over the last few weeks.

I have TimeWarner Cable in the Dallas Area also and am having the same problem. Do we have TWC throttling throughput???

This describes very well the problem we've been seeing in Allen, Texas with our ATV. Sure would like to see Apple acknowledge a problem and make some statement about rectification.

Time Warner, here in Los Angeles - same terrible slowdown.

Cox Cable in Phoenix - always plenty fast (almost no delay for trailers and a couple minutes for HD movies) until the last few weeks when I've noticed trailers taking a minute or more to being playing and usually having to re-buffer a couple times, too, then the ~8 hour HD movie download a few days ago (hadn't rented movies for the ~2 months before that).

Whenever I've tested while experiencing the slow speeds from ITMS, my connection has consistently delivered at least 10Mbps down and 2+ Mbps up. Some providers may be throttling, but if Cox in my area is so far the only thing I can find that's affected is content from Apple's media servers. I'm betting it's an Apple problem and not all us unlucky, geographically distinct users on different providers all suddenly being throttled at the same time. 🙂

When I first bought my ATV I could rent an HD movie and begin watching in seconds. Now, like others, it takes 4-8 hours to download the movies. This is totally unacceptable.

I also used the workaround of purchasing the rental on my PC which seems to download at normal speeds then transfer to ATV over my Airport Extreme N. At least I can now get a movie going in 30 minutes. Seconds would be nicer though...

San Diego Time Warner (Pro)

Glad to see that I'm not the only one. I've noticed the brutal slowdown recently as well and a simple 45-minute television show is taking 20-30 min to download when previously a HD movie would be ready to watch in a matter of minutes.

My end is good on speed, I wonder if it's not actually Apple but the ISP providers beginning to restrict their bandwidth.

Cox Communications here in Orange County