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

Short and sweet. Die hard apple fan, stockholder, and believer. This has been the most terrible experience of my "apple life" thus far. I felt the typical excitement all of you have felt before after purchasing the new ATV. I finally had convinced my wife why this product was so much better than using our Xbox with the Netflix. We ordered pizza, sat down to eat and have a movie night, something we both have been looking forward to all week. (She was excited for the moment, I was excited to win her approval of the new Apple TV). We rented "All Good Things" in HD. I have the 20 mb service through Comcast and shockingly, 4:55 minutes before it was ready to play. I thought something was wrong with my end. Nope, I'm plugged directly in through ethernet into my switch which is where my drop is. I did a speed test, I'm averaging 19.2mb. I also ran a few trailers such as Iron Man 2 -- they start literally in less than 2 seconds. What gives? This type of speed, I would could literally drive to the nearest blockbuster which is 1 hour 30 minute drive and be back before I could watch this movie using my state of the art Apple TV. Sadly, I think we will be returning.

Thank you Apple.

I cannot tell you how frustrated I am with the new Apple TV. I had a V1 for a couple of years and never had the rental problems I am now having. It took nearly an hour to start watching "Get to the Greek" last night and then it paused 5 times during the movie. Man this stinks. I never had this issue with the old Apple TV.

And by the way there is nothing wrong with my internet - I do not use wifi, I use ethernet and this worked perfectly on my old V1 AppleTV.

This is just unacceptable. No wonder they put Netflix on the box because they probably know their video rental streaming does not work.

Come on Apple get it together.

How embarrassing...again!! My last post on 1 November - I had all my mates around, but they disappeared after hours watching the animal screen saver waiting for Sherlock to download...Then one month later I downloaded the new Apple TV software - thinking cool they sorted it out, finally! Yes! "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" came straight and I watched it instantly!!! So I was now ready to invite my friends over again for Sunday night at the movies at Tarsip's place - so confident that I said to everyone "you can pick out the movie!!" ...The crew picked "The Losers" so I rented it and yes you guessed it... "ready in five hours"...desperately, I said pick another... "Kick ***"...so I rented that... after dinner watching the screen saver again....everyone has now just gone home... I am home alone... I am the loser and I want to kick... come on Apple...help... There is pride at stake... I am going back to the video shop...

What a shame. AppleTV is a mess. Missing promised features, hours waiting to watch downloads. I never see the product advertised anymore or even much on display at the Apple store. AirPlay from the iPhone doesn't work as advertised too.

The most disappointing product I ever bought from Apple! Including my QuickTake 100.

*OUTRAGEOUS :-(*

There is no excuse for Apple to leave us all hanging with rentals we paid for, but impossible to view.

We rented a movie 3 days ago, then got a message that we needed *35 hours to download*. We waited one day, leaving ATV (just bought it 2 weeks ago) on all the time. The next day 50% was downloaded, and was told to wait another 15 hours...

Following day opened the rental with the "Play" button, and _*the download re-set to the beginning*_... again WAITING 32+ hours until download !

OUTRAGEOUS

Really an insult !

Same here. WiFi tests fine but ATV movie rental streaming took 3-4 hours to become available. Big fan of all Apple I have purchased up until now. Frustrated. Please address this issue so I don't have to go back to Comcast rentals (which work quickly but quality for cost stinks).

As same as everybody else, I was very excited with my new Apple TV. Sadly the movies take to long to load. I think Apple has to fix this, but in the meantime, here's a solution that worked very good:
I rented a movie directly in my iPad, it took a while to download ( as usual), but when it was downloaded in my iPad, it plays instantly, so with the new software update (iOS 4.2) I used the Airplay function and view it directly on my Apple TV and it worked awesome. I rented an HD movie, and the quality is the same. At the begining it took about 5 minutes to get the movie played, but from then I didn't have any issue. This works the same with an iPhone or an iPod touch. I know it is not supposed to work like this, but meanwhile Apple fixes this issue, you can use this workaround and enjoy it. Hope this could help.

I too am having problems today on my ATV1. I have to say that renting films/tv shows has been incredibly fast and reliable until today on my 20mb connection here in the UK.

This morning I woke up, and saw that Inception was up for rental. So I began preloading it and I headed off to work. I came home only to find it at 9% and crawling slowly. So I paused it, tried a few trailers, which were fine as was the Network 'test'.

I am at 40% now, but the now it's my sleep time and I was looking forward to the film. Nervous about renting a few other films now.

Hi guys,

I had the same thing (apple tv only 3%downloaded after 20min. I stopped the download be playing a film already downloaded, then resuming download. It was then ready to watch in under 1min. I hope this helps, Lester.

I have had the same issue renting movies. We have a brand new ATV2 (which does not have a 'downloads' menu like the first generation AppleTV).

I wish that Apple would restore the 'downloads' menu on the AppleTV so that you can keep track, pause and resume downloads.

Rented a second movie the next evening and received the message that it will take over two hours before the movie is ready to view. Since there is no downloads menu, I do not even know if the first movie ever completed so I am afraid to attempt to watch it until a good time to try it.

Which begs the question, "Why rent a movie when you have no way of telling whether it is ready to view?"

At least we still have NetFlix, which has been working great!

Just updated my AppleTV to the newest version two evening ago, when I first recognized the issue.

Mark

The thread says the question is answered yet there is no solution. This is clearly a issue for Apple, when will they address the issue and provide a solution?

Maybe Apple should spend less time releasing new products and focus on ensuring the products they do release actually work. Most of us apple users came to apple because the platforms functioned as advertised, now they seem to be just another version of MicroSoft with a different name. Please go back to developing and launching products that actually work.

Just set-up my Apple TV and I must say that I am very surprised with this issue! Until they sort it out I guess I will have to download films to itunes on my laptop and stream it. I think that is the sensible workaround until a solution is devised (although this issue seems to been have been around for over a year, I do hope they fix it because I think this is a brilliant product with great potential!!)

Just adding my name to the list. Have tried watching several movies over the past3-4 weeks and the download times are just awful. I've been using AppleTV since the first generation device and have never had this problem until just this past month or so. Not sure what is going on but with the number of complaints on the messages boards this is a REAL problem. For me its not a network/ISP issue as I can continue to stream movies via my XBOX no problem at all. In fact Netflix on the AppleTV works fine also. Such a waste of a great product.........with over 1 million being sold for Christmas this year it makes me hopeful they will get the issue resolved sooner rather than later.

well........I'll have to give this a try and see if it works for me as well..........sounds like a good workaround for the time being

WOW what a let down!!!!! Got AppleTV2 as a girt for Christmas (my first Apple product) and what a complete let down! Set it up tonight to rent my first film and it's got a 5HOUR download time!! Internet is perfectly fine on all other devices around the house, wired and wifi so not even going to entertain trouble shooting the issue after reading this discussion. Some posts date back from over a year ago, so I'm not even going to hold out for a solution, I now have the embarrassing task of going back to the person who bought me the gift to see if they have the receipt. This truly ***** and I now still stand by my views on Apple that they know how to market a product better than they make one. Very unhappy Apple customer probably lost for good! You know what they say about first impressions!! 😟