A few nights ago I decided to download the digital copies of movies we bought for Christmas. When I got to one of them ("Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"), I found that the download was extremely slow: so far, after about 10 hours of download time, it has downloaded about 16.7 MB of 2.13 GB. This is over a line at work that consistently achieves over 30 Mb/sec. I'm pretty sure it is the movie, because this morning I did a simultaneous download of another movie ("Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian"). I was able to download a 1.48 GB movie in under 5 minutes while the slow movie downloaded less than 1 MB. Pausing the movie and resuming it at different times doesn't seem to have much effect, although things seem to be somewhat better today: I've downloaded about 7MB in 2 hours, where previously I had downloaded less than 10 MB in 8 hours. Has anybody experienced anything like this before? More importantly, is there anything that can be done about it?
Same for me. Eventually got fed up and downloaded another movie and got a couple of meg of data a second rather than about 7MB in about half an hour. Seriously annoying. *Can anyone download Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince*?
After 30-40 hours of downloading, I had received almost 90 MB. I had also reported the problem to Warner Brothers, who simply pointed me to the iTunes help pages, and to Apple. This morning the download was interrupted, which had never happened before. When I restarted it, it fairly zoomed along. It looked like it would complete in about 5-10 minutes, so I assumed that someone had done some sort of reset of the file somehow. With more than 1.5 GB downloaded (according to the progress bar), I left for 5 minutes to get something to eat, but then when I came back I found that I'm back to a super-slow download with only 3.6 MB received, without any interruption or restart that I'm aware of. So, basically it's 5 days later and I'm no closer to downloading this thing than I was on Sunday.
So I logged a support call via email with Apple and was told "I have removed the old copy of the rental and have added a fresh copy of the movie to your download queue". Then got instructions to check for available downloads so it would start again but it said all purchases had been downloaded for this account. Ugh. Mailed them again because I don't want to pay twice for same movie (and possibly not be able to download it again), if I get anywhere will post an update.
Still the same. Conversation with apple ongoing. For some reason "we" are waiting for my order to complete processing before doing anything else... I think. It ain't working anyway. Pants. Anyone else have this trouble?
So, is mine... it has been more than 2 hours and only 8 Mb of 2.03Gb have downloaded - typically this should've been done in less than 30 minutes (which is also awfully slow, given that I have a super fast connection).
i was having the same problem on a 'work' computer that i have at home, then realized that my documents (the default save location of itunes) was redirected to the server. This made my download very slow because the server was located over VPN. Moved it to a local folder and downloads were quick.
Add me to the list...of the 20 or 25 "digital copy" of movies i've downloaded to itunes, Harry Potter is the only problem item, and the issue is the same as everybody else; 5 hours and 16 MEGabytes downloaded...what in the world?
Note that Warner also has the goofiest other policies...one DVD had me download some actual software to get the digital copy and other warner titles had the digital copy as windows media only so...whats the point of that?
After spending a lot of time on the phone with Apple investigating many possibilities, they've convinced me that the problem lies with WB and not with Apple/iTunes. I was told that for digital copy movies (not those purchased directly from the iTunes store but those you get "free" with some Blu-Ray packs), the download is actually done not from Apple but from the servers of the movie distributor, in this case WB. So, it's off to open a problem with WB. (Actually I opened a problem on Tuesday, but their web page only says that they'll respond within 5 business days -- not a good sign.)
It's possible that something may have been done to improve the download, although it's still incredibly slow compared to other downloads. This morning, after about a week of downloading for 6-8 hours a day, I had downloaded about 110 MB. Things today have been
much quicker, and I've now downloaded over 1 GB. (I pause the download every hour or so and back up the contents of the Downloads folder in order to minimize data loss in case the dreaded 9003 error occurs, which has saved me two or three times.) The status bar now indicates that the download should complete in another 3 hours.
Of course, it's also possible that nothing in particular was done, and it's just that as my download progresses, more and more people have given up, resulting in fewer and fewer people fighting over small bandwidth.
iTunes is so slow. Today is the first (and probably the last) time I have downloaded a iTunes movie (The Blind Side). It is taking 4 hours. Shame on you Apple. When I watch Hulu the downloading is minimal and works so fast! You need to get with the program or get out of the movie business! Really disappointing that a major player like Apple can't even compete with NetFlix or Hulu when it comes to downloading. I have paused several times to try to get it to speed up and to no avail. iTunes movie download speeds are simply UNACCEPTABLE! Shame on you Steve Jobs!
I have you all beat. 3 of my movies are doing this and have been that way for 6 months because i have given up on them and stopped them downloading for reasons i will speak of momentarily.
One of those 3 movies is set to take more than half a year to download. It is literally coming down at a couple of bytes per second. So not even 1 kb/s. This is not aided by the fact that after so long on the download 2 of them cause my PC to blue screen and reset itself. (And i know for a fact it is these movies. Once the download is stopped, it never happens. Start them again and it happens every 10 mins or so. I've tested it extensively.) Now i have had PC problems in the past, but have not had a "blue screen" for many years now. People have said, blue screening does not happen after Win 98. I hate to say it but, YES IT DOES. Hence i have stopped them downloading.
I can't get a refund out of Apple because they insist on trying to fix the issue with solutions that are neither fully tested nor practical. Half of their solutions are only available because they worked for a couple of people and therefore "MUST" be the answer we all need. It cannot "POSSIBLY" be a fault at iTunes end. Yeah right?!
I simply cannot believe this problem is ongoing. I have had it with these certain movies for over 6 months already.
Downloaded a movie today and it took less than half an hour. Went for another one and it's up to it's old tricks again.
You get several answers from several groups of people, ALL of which are wrong!!
1. The general interent community will tell you, "it's your ISP". No it isn't. Other films download fine and i get whopping download speeds from other companies.
2. Apple will tell you, it's Warner Bros fault. NO IT ISN'T. I'm not even downloading it from them because they didn't make the movie!!!
3. Apple might also say..."remove these two files from your iTunes directory and restart the download. That is the problem". No, really, it's not. It may have worked for others, but it will not work for me no matter how many times you tell me to do it.
4. Apple again..."Download the latest version of iTunes". Erm...how many times have i thought to do that i wonder...It's been at the latest version since the newest version came out so that is also NOT the problem. And yet again, it will not solve the problem no matter how many times you tell me to do it and no matter how many times you tell me to reinstall it.
Same problem here. I downloaded this as a rental, about 3 days ago, as of now it is stuck at 582 kb with 10,000 hours to go. Anybody have any luck finishing this download?
There is some comfort in knowing I am not alone in this...
A few days ago, I downloaded "Serenity" fine; quickly with no problems at all. The very next day I bought "Lord of the Rings Trilogy" and was plagued with horrendous download speeds. We're talking 20KB/s when everything else on my Available Downloads(Old episodes of shows I have no need for)are fast. I would like to blame all the movies on iTunes, but for some reason I was able to get "Serenity" just fine.
If I would have read this before trying to rent a movie on iTunes, I would have never done it. I'm stuck in a download cycle that is gone over 2 days now. I have tried multiple connections and still have to download 2GB -- only 10% of the movie has downloaded so far. Never again.
Has anyone found a solution yet?
I downloaded over 30 TV shows and 15 movies almost 9 days ago. It has onlty downloaded
**FOUR*** yep $=4!!! Freaking crazy right! EVERYTHING ELSE ON MY COMPUTER IS LIGHTNING QUICK.
