Apple TV download speed way too slow

Question

Level 1

14 points

Apple TV download speed way too slow

My Apple TV used to work perfectly. Here is my setup:

Comcast Cable - Tests well above 6mbps on standard tests (up to 13mbps on speedtest.net). I don't have any other problems with my connections.

Airport Extreme - The only things that are connected to it (at the moment) are the Apple TV, and my MacBook Pro, which isn't even on.

Downloading HD movies used to only take 2 minutes before they were ready to watch. Now, the movies constantly stop part way through, and I have to wait for them to download some more, and sometimes they just stop altogether, and I have to retry the download.

Nothing has changed about my setup since the Apple TV stopped working properly. Could it be my ISP throttling me? I'm not a high bandwidth user by any means: I rarely rent movies, and I don't download anything on bittorent or the likes.

If it's not the ISP, are there any other known solutions to this problem? Please help!

Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 22, 2009 10:23 PM

Reply

Answer 1

cdjohns

Level 1

0 points

Jun 27, 2009 11:20 PM in response to Adam Singer1

Any solutions to this? I'm having the same issue. Time Warner in Los Angeles. getting 14mbs download speed but atv takes a couple of hours before a rented movie is ready to watch. Saw a lot of older threads on this. Is this a atv problem?

Reply

Answer 2

Jun 28, 2009 12:16 AM in response to cdjohns

in both cases I would say the ISP has throttled your net connection. On my 25Gb($80.00 Telstra Australia) data plan I was throttled for downloading 26 TV Eps, 2 Movies & about 10 podcasts. If you can login to your router have a look at the connection statistics or isp homepage usage stats.

If you can find an isp that has unlimited downloads for iTunes ( iinet is an example for australia)

Reply

Answer 3

Jun 28, 2009 7:07 AM in response to Adam Singer1

DId this to me friday night. I updated the tv and worked like before, immediately.

Also, new firmware update this morning for airport extreme.

Reply

Answer 4

cdjohns

Level 1

0 points

Jun 28, 2009 12:37 PM in response to brownieAU

I think i'm being throttled also. Any ideas on how to prove this? Would be nice if atv reported download speed or total time to download a movie. Is this available anywhere? Not that it will help but I'm going to complain to my ISP about this Paying good money for a fast connection which they are not providing.

Reply

Answer 5

Jun 28, 2009 10:49 PM in response to Adam Singer1

I'm having the same problem. I just bought my aTV and I wanted to test it with an HD movie download last night. I have it running over my wifi, so I wasn't expecting it to be blazing fast, but I also wasn't expecting it to crawl as much as it did.

It said that it would be ready to view in 9 minutes, I waited the 9 minutes, hit play, and it stopped after only about 15 minutes of the film. I gave it another 20 minutes to buffer some more, and it died on me in another 30 minutes of viewing. I had to let it finish the download over night.

I was very pleased with the picture and sound quality, but the DL seemed waaay slower than it should have been.

Reply

Answer 6

Totem

Level 2

409 points

Jun 28, 2009 11:30 PM in response to unclepheel

This has been happening on and off since last Christmas. In January, I had a few films that were very slow to download. For whatever reason, things have been back to normal for awhile. Usually, the ATV will let you watch a film within 2 minutes, and will download within 20 minutes.

Try this: Turn of Apple TV-->Settings-->General-->Network-->Test Network

Run according to your specific download speed.

Some contributors felt that the problem went away after doing this.

Good luck.

Reply

Answer 7

Jul 15, 2009 6:16 PM in response to Totem

I was having exactly the same problems. The last 4 movies too forever to download. While downloading a movie that was predicting a 2 hour wait, I executed the suggestion above:

Try this: Turn of Apple TV-->Settings-->General-->Network-->Test Network

Bing. My movie was instantly ready to watch, like the good old days.

Reply

Answer 8

Jul 17, 2009 3:09 PM in response to brownieAU

Hi But is iinet really free? i don't think you can just use apple tv for free download. you need to use their little store using your computer and the content is limited. i dont think any aussie ISP has true apple tv free downloads. anyone know of one?

Reply