Apple TV 4K Having trouble playing some purchased movies.

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Level 1

15 points

Apple TV 4K Having trouble playing some purchased movies.

I can play some of my purchased movies, but other ones I can’t. This problem happens in both the Apple TV app and the movies app. The movies with issues just have a loading wheel that never stops on the movies app, while in the Apple TV app, there is no loading wheel, just a blank screen. The previews work fine for all movies. My internet is fine, as there are movies that play fine. I can play the movies that have issues on my iPad fine, so my Apple account should not be the issue. I have 2 Apple TV 4K devices as well as some older 3rd generation Apple TV’s. This problem seems to happen across both models of Apple TV. A movie I watched 3 weeks ago now won’t play.

I first noticed the problem a couple weeks ago...

I have tried the following with no success.

Automatic updates are on and I’m up to date with version 14.4 (18K802)
System Restart
changed the movies and TV app to play the video quality to “better”
changed to 1080P resolution
turned off quick start
cleared my search history
cleared my play history
Turned off home sharing (This prevented the Movies app from working altogether)
changed my DNS settings to 4.2.2.1

Any help would be appreciated.

Posted on Mar 29, 2021 9:10 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 29, 2021 10:09 PM in response to xDrew87x

I'm currently having this problem too (Mar 29, 2021), and others have reported the same problem on Reddit.

My internet is working fine, and other apps on my Apple TV are working fine too. I just can't play my purchased movies. I suspect it's some Apple TV-specific problem with Apple’s CDN (content delivery network).

Apple reps, do you have any suggestions?

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Answer 2

Mar 29, 2021 10:37 PM in response to xDrew87x

• changed my DNS settings to …

Set the Apple TV DNS setting to Auto, to have it retrieve this info from your router. Configure your router to use the DNS from your ISP. That is the always the best possible DNS. If you have an ISP that can’t handle that, then you have much else to worry about.

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Answer 3

xDrew87x Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 29, 2021 10:45 PM in response to Urquhart1244

I always have my DNS settings set to auto. I just tried this as I saw someone else suggested it in another post and figured I would list it so I wouldn’t get suggested to try it. Besides, I figured out the problem I was having.

Thanks for the DNS suggestions though. It never hurts to point things out.

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Answer 4

Rentoc

Level 1

13 points

Mar 30, 2021 4:31 AM in response to xDrew87x

I also made a post about this. I thank you for the play/pause suggestion. That has worked for me also to get movies to play. But it bypasses the movie menu screen. So i still have no way to access extras. This is a great workaround to just play the movie but something is still broken. Any movie that has a menu wont load it.

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Answer 5

xDrew87x Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 30, 2021 8:42 AM in response to Rentoc

This seems to be tied to all the movies with menus for iTunes extras and special features. A movie I watched this last weekend now has the same issue.

I saw on other threads, in addition to the play/pause button working the Siri command to play a movie will also work. I don’t use Siri, so I can’t confirm. Both options however bypass the menus, so access to iTunes extras is still a problem.

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Answer 6

xDrew87x Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 30, 2021 8:54 PM in response to xDrew87x

Update - I called tech support this morning to report this problem. We tried a system restore on one of my 4K devices, but that didn’t fix anything. When I got home tonight the problem was gone on both the recently system restored unit and the unit I hadn’t done a system restore to. I assume Apple has fixed and distributed an update for this.

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Answer 7

xDrew87x Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 29, 2021 10:16 PM in response to bl-support

I just figured it out. On the problem movies, instead of clicking the touch pad, I used the play/pause button to launch the movie. This has worked on all the movies I had the problem on.

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Answer 8

Mar 29, 2021 11:28 PM in response to xDrew87x

Amazingly, this worked for me too. Thanks.

Of course, clicking the trackpad should work, so something is clearly still broken on Apple's end.

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Answer 9

MrEWhite

Level 1

8 points

Mar 31, 2021 4:07 AM in response to xDrew87x

I can confirm this is now fixed.

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Apple TV 4K Having trouble playing some purchased movies.

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