Apple TV taking a long time to download an iTunes Store movie rental

Just bought the new Apple TV, and seems to be fine of my N series router. It is the computer and the iPhone that are killing me. 3 -4 hours to download a movie. Dounloaded a 1gig file from work the other day and got it in 25 mins. My speed and hardware is not the issue, iTunes has crapped out in about the last 5 or so weeks.

I'd suggest anyone having problems to plug into ethernet. Whilst my n wireless is fine for my macbook pro, it doesn't work too crash hot with iOS devices, which I'm assuming is also affecting apple tv 2.

Last night the rental came up within 30 seconds to watch, compared to hours and hours before when I was just on wireless.

Mine is on the Ethernet, but it doesn't seem to be a problem on all vids, some of the newer films are fine, some are not...really needs a fix...I'd love to hear from someone that it works for, what is your internet speed and how do you have it set up?

hello from Montreal. I thought I was the only one having this problem. Bought my ATV1 last year and everything was wonderful until this Spring when everything went slow.

I actually having even issues in downloading some new podcasts as well, I have checked my internet speed and it hasn't changed since I bought my ATV, so I'm also assuming it has something to do with the ATV and not my wireless connection.

I'm surprise no one from Apple has addressed this matter here, since there are people all over the world facing the same problem.

WOW! SO EXCITED!!! Got the LATEST Apple TV 2! Ready to watch my FIRST ever RENTED movie!!! Got my friends around last to watch Apple's recommended SHERLOCK HOLMES HD for Sunday's Movie Night in Walpole Western Australia.... after three hours they had given up... everyone went home sick of looking at the animals screen saver...but I am still waiting tonight... once I got it down to Ready to play in 67 minutes!!! Now its back to 72 minutes... But the most excitement of the night was when we got it under 100 minutes!! A beer for everyone!!
While I wait..(oooh...just popped up again to 82 minutes...) I was wondering if I tried to rent it straight onto my computer in iTunes if that has shown others to download faster for a rented film... Would I have to rent it again via Itunes or does it recognise that I have already rented it on Apple TV as I am using the same account?

ps... down to 54 minutes! and the Zebra in the sunset is the best...

My ATV really *****!
I have not been able to watch one thing yet!
I rented a SD film last week. It was telling me it was going to take 401 minutes to download so I went to bed. The next night, I assumed it would have loaded. No. Back to the beginning and 300 or so minutes to go. In the meantime, I check my connection and all seems fine. Super fast and reliable. I also am able to download a film onto my iPad from iTunes within 22 minutes. Which has been normal in the past.
Today, I finally turn on the ATV, the movie is loaded and I start watching it. one minute in, I decide to pause it and go to the toilet. I come back, press play - 400 minutes to the film can play??? What??? Now I have 48 hrs to watch it? What crap! Why does it unload?
I'm really unhappy.

Not happy Apple! The EXACT words you use on your product and in your ad is "rent and watch movies INSTANTLY" 354 minutes is not instant. Waited overnight to download my instant movie and thought well, may as well get two going so I don't have to wait tomorrow, lo and behold even after a whole 10 hrs it still took another 30 mins when selected. Looks like you have been really forthcoming with help on this one, I was your biggest advocate and all I can say is I'm just so glad I didn't go ahead and buy this product for my loved ones for Christmas I would have been extremely embarrassed. Until u solve this all this is good for is a paperweight and I will be going back to ANY other form just because u have totally dropped the ball. Is even more frustrating to learn that it has not always been this way and your new version is not even close to what you hyped it up to be. You better think of something soon, all my friends and family ask me about these sort of things and you will not be getting a good review on this one by any means. TOTAL LETDOWN.

What a shame. I wish I had googled "Apple TV download rental problems" before I purchased the latest Apple TV. I tried to download a HD movie for the Kids last night and it said 125 minutes to go. Clearly not instant. 2 hours later, I checked it again and it said 84 minutes to go. The kids went to bed. This morning, it actually started to play. About 10 minutes into the movie, an error appeared on the screen. I then tried to play it again and it said 60 something minutes to download. Apple have no doubt taken my money for the rental. They are even telling me I only have 30 hours left to play it in. Fingers crossed I am actually able to play it within that time!

I am a massive Apple fan. Iphone, Mac Book Pro, Ipad. The new Apple TV does not compare to these other devices. It visually looks cool, but operationally it is no where near the quality I have come to expect.

If you want to play Youtube videos or turn your TV into an Internet Radio, then it is perfect for that, but not much else.

This probably helps no one but I decided that I'd give a new router a try as I was having the same issue. £35 from PC World and I've not had an issue with downloading HD movies since. It's a Netgear, my old one was a brand which is so bad they no longer exist. The new one gives better coverage in the house anyway.

It may just be coincidence I suppose, as I expect some of you are already using good routers.

Try explaining to a three-year old why "How to tame your dragon" will be ready in 123 minutes...
He is standing here beside me as I type saying "you all done it?"

I want my movie rental $$$ back.

Goto "General", "Reset", "Restore" after 6 items are loaded Enter passwords etc, do it for WiFi or Ethernet connections

Manage to watch one film first via Ethernet then later tried to watch again on WiFi at 802.11n 2.4 GHz working fine but third time with rent time left only played for 2 min . This seem to be a general problem Googled the question, came up with lots of stopping after short run.

Here's my experience with the movie rental feature of my new 2nd generation Apple TV. At about 8PM on a Sunday night, very excited to try out the service, my girlfriend and I choose a movie and click to rent. It starts loading and shortly afterward shows a message that says something like "Ready to watch in 1 hour and 10 minutes". Already, we're disappointed. It's supposed to be near instant, right? But no big deal. An hour later we come back and it's ready to play. Excited, we hit play and it starts playing. Fantastic.

Unfortunately there's no sound. I figure it's a problem with the optical audio cable that I just hooked up earlier that day. I pause the movie and try to fix the audio. I test it with music and it doesn't work with music either. After trying a few things, I decide to restart the Apple TV. Test with music again and the audio is now working.

So we go back to the film menu and select the film again. I notice it says "47 hours" remaining on the rental. I guess it started counting down because we played it for 30 seconds. That's fine I suppose. So we hit play again. But instead of playing, the "loading" message pops up again, followed by "Ready to watch in 2 hours and blah blah minutes". Now very dissappointed. We leave this screen on and watch its progress. More than an hour later, the film is again ready to watch. The time remaining on the rental says 45 hours. This means the rental time limit is counting down even though the movie is not playable for most of that time. Most people would call that a rip off. And unfortunately it's now approaching 11:30PM, which is too late for us to watch the movie because we work early the next day. So we watch about 10 minutes of the movie just to make sure it works, which it does, and then, dissappointed, girlfriend goes home.

Oh well, I figure I'll try watching the movie again the following night, alone.

Get home from work the following night, turn on Apple TV, select the movie, and press play. You can guess what happens. First a loading message, followed by a message that says it won't be ready to watch for more than an hour. Meanwhile the rental time limit is still counting down and there is only 20 something hours remaining on the rental. At this point, due to work and my schedule the next night, I simply won't be able to watch it before it expires.

On the same internet connection, I can completely download popular HD films on bittorrent in just a few minutes, so the problem is not my internet connection. To say I'm dissappointed in the service is an understatement. The downloading delay makes the Apple TV rental service completely useless. Beyond useless in fact, since it sets up false expectations and results in a lot of time wasted. If Apple fixes it, great. Until then, the movie rental service is useless.

Apple TV is great to relay your music & photos to a home theater system, but don't try and rent a movie from iTunes on it!

Sent the below msg to Apple Support to see if I get a response:'
"Hired movie 'Ice Station Zebra'
Took 8 hours + to download (Bigpond ADSL2 with no other download speed issues)
Then loaded movie and it said "47 hours remaining"
Started movie and hit "stop"
Hit "play" again and message came up saying "movie ready in 8 hours 51 mins"!!!! - LOADING AGAIN???
This is very frustrating and a waste of time if it doesn't save the download movie for multiple viewing within the 48 hours allotted."

Get your act together on this one Apple - it is absurd to call it instant movies at your fingertips, and is at the very least false & misleading advertising.

I am having this same problem - rental on 2nd gen Apple TV just doesn't work!

Massive delays before "ready to play" makes watching films not viable.

Very disappointed with Apple's film rental "service", as are the kids who are still waiting to watch the film (Nativity) that was rented a few nights ago...

Come on Apple sort this major issue out and restore my faith in your products!
I will not be risking throwing money at Itunes to test if the problem has been resolved!!

Once resolved please allow us all at least a few rentals for free to "test" and restore our belief in near instant film availability as was promised!

Absolutely same problem in Canada. The predicted download speeds bounce all over the place. A few weeks ago I could rent any movie and be watching it in a few minutes. I watch movies from Netflix almost instantly and they have great customer service. Itunes representatives send you emails without reading yours. Apologies but no solutions. If it wasn't for Netflix, I would throw my apple tv in the garbage. I was a big fan of this service when it first started but now with incredibly slow download speeds from Itunes it is a waste of time and money. Sure hope they recognize and deal with this issue.