Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

I think this might be the fact that ATV2 doesn't have any storage capacity. I found this out recently when I tried to watch an HD movie i'd already watched without problem suddenly saying "ready to play in 2000+ minutes". I had assumed (wrongly, as it turns out) that if I'd downloaded it once, it therefore was sitting on my computer hard drive.

This is not the case, as an Apple Support person told me. It will only be on your hard drive if you take out the rental using iTunes on your Mac computer, rather than directly via your ATV menu. It will then delete itself when the 48 hours are up, but within that time, you should be able to wirelessly stream from your computer to your ATV without problem.

I think you are right about the storage. I have yet to watch a full movie without it freezing and telling me there are 1300 minutes remaining. It simply doesn't work though 3.2
MBps download speed does not help much at all. Yet the signal strength shows full bars on the apple TV. Frustrated here!

POSSIBLE FIX!

I was able to fix the problem and watch my rentals by opening up some ports on my apple extreme.
I am not much of a techie but with some web research I found similar issues. I opened up 3 port channels, not sure which one worked but they were:

Public TCP Port(s)
49152, 49153
3689
554, 7070

--------------

to do this I opened my AirPort utility (applications/utilities)
1) selected "Manual Setup"
2) selected Advanced in the top menu
3) selected "Port Mapping"
4) selected the + and added the port settings Public TCP Port(s) and created 3 settings
5) restart Airport, but then had to unplug everything and it worked

Thanks so much. So what numbers do I put in for settings. I am hesitant to do this. Like what would be a port setting? Also does this still keep it secure?

I just put the port number in the public port section, I do not know anything with regards to security issues, but there are several discussions, google the port setting numbers and you will see several, even "from apple".

I have Airport Extreme and used an ethernet cord to the back of my ATV and it still said 800 minutes. HD movie trailers 2 minutes long usually take around 15 minutes till it starts to play. YouTube and Netflix work fine though. I did a reset and then a factory restore and then my movie said that it would take 1,000 minutes till it was ready. Great progress huh.

It sounds odd that it would exhibit this behavior even when connected directly unless your connection is slower than required. I recommend running a speed test and then use the article below to get an estimate of how long a movie should take to load.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1577

Speed test:
http://speedtest.net/

The most basic helpful step that I've seen is disconnecting the Apple TV then reconnecting it after 30 seconds. This is similar to a power-cycle and although not 100% effective, worth the try.

I gave up on my wifi connection with the ATV. All my other wifi devices work fine for streaming. I just plugged it straight into my router and this fixed pauses. This did not fix the video jitter however. I still have 20 days to return it so Im going to ride it out..

Luckily they released the Netflix App for PS3 today so no more disk, 1080p streaming and DD+ 5.1 surround sound.

Same Problem here. I'm living in germany and connected to a 3mbit DSL-Connection. Starting HD-rentals needs between a couple of hours and days. Wifi and cablebound connections the same.

That's not acceptable. Everything else just works fine (youtube, streaming of iTunes-media from another computer) and even as 3mbit is not actually "highspeed" a complete download of the rental should only need about an hour.

Loving the initial look around ATV2 then i decided to rent a few movies. I rented, This is War, which now has 26 days rental day left, and 33 hours ago i rented Le Horde, and tried to watch it last night. It said ready to watch pressed play and nothing, still downloading. Yet, my 48 hour deadline to view it has started. This is UNACCEPTABLE, how can you be charged for something if you are not able to view it. Granted i'm only getting 1.5 mbs download speed, but this was not a condition of sale from the Apple store, and no matter what way you look at it, it should not take 48 hours to download or stream a movie. Im calling the apple store today to get my rental money back !!!

mirochen wrote:
Same Problem here. I'm living in germany and connected to a 3mbit DSL-Connection. Starting HD-rentals needs between a couple of hours and days. Wifi and cablebound connections the same.

That's not acceptable. Everything else just works fine (youtube, streaming of iTunes-media from another computer) and even as 3mbit is not actually "highspeed" a complete download of the rental should only need about an hour.

3Mbps is too slow to stream the HD rentals. I was paying for "up to 3Mbps" on DSL, but when I tested the speed using speedtest.net I would get something between 1.5 and 2.5 Mbps. Had the exact same problem: low quality YouTube and podcasts would stream just fine, but the HD video podcasts and the HD itunes rentals would take forever to buffer. Netflix still streams pretty quick because, unlike iTunes, Netflix samples your bandwidth and adjusts the video quality accordingly. iTunes rentals don't do this: they give a fixed HD video quality, and it takes however long it takes.

Based on the size of a typical HD tv show from iTunes (~1.5 GB for a 45 minute show), you'd need a sustained connection of over 4.4 Mbps in order to download the show faster than than the bit rate of just playing the show. And you will really want more than that to deal with hiccups in the bandwidth. I upgraded from an "up to 3Mbps" connection to a "up to 10 Mbps" connection last saturday, and it completely solved my streaming problems. Now the HD shows, movies, and podcasts all are ready to play in under 30 seconds. Also my Netflix streaming is now giving me HD quality whereas it wasn't before. Upgrading was only an extra $5/month. worth it.

And, from my experience, I can tell you that the time estimates for how long it will take before the rental is "ready to play" are not generally reliable. They probably ping the network to see what the instantaneous bandwidth is, and give an estimate based on that. But your bandwidth will vary depending on your own network traffic, and potentially how much other people are using the network in your region. So the "ready to play in. . ." estimate jumps all over the place. Also, it apparently does not continue downloading the show when the apple tv goes to sleep.

One more thing I'll add:

I have been an apple customer for a long time (first mac was a used mac SE back in the early 1990's). In recent times, just about every newly released apple product that I have jumped on as an early adopter (iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, now Apple TV) have started out with these type of buggy glitches, but each time so far those glitches were fixed within a couple months.

With iPhone 3G it was excessive dropped calls, which was greatly improved by a firmware update from apple and an AT&T cell tower update within 2 months of the release. With iPhone 4 there was the "death grip" issue and misleading signal bar display, which was rendered harmless by putting the phone in a case and a firmware update from apple within a month and half. Now we have these reports for apple tv of buggy home sharing interfaces.

My point is, if you are an early adopter for a major new piece of consumer electronics, you should expect there to be bugs within the first couple of months. Experience tells me that these things do get resolved, though, within a couple months. So it's probably best to wait it out. I like getting these products right when they come out, but I am also realistic with my expectations so I'm not surprised when there are early glitches. If you can't deal with such things, I'd recommend you wait a couple months before buying these products, giving apple time to recognize and fix the bugs.

That said, those of you with internet bandwidths of < 4-5 Mbps: you can't expect to get instant streaming of HD programs over that bandwidth without waiting a while. That's just how it works. If you want access to that stuff instantly you need to pay to upgrade your bandwidth. I do think that Apple ought to put a disclaimer about this on the Apple TV packaging, so they get fewer surprised and disappointed customers.

Thanks for the input. After TW ( Road Runner ) fixed the speed of our internet in the neighborhood to an acceptable range above 7 MBps Apple TV2 is doing much better. Some previews are almost instant. I have to see how an HD movie goes. Thanks!

Thanks for the info. After TW fixed our internet speed in the neighbor hood things are much better now. It's all about the speed!

Hi DGalvan,

I agree with everything that you are saying, But you have to admit 38 hours to watch a movie is a bit much. I spoke to Apple today, they said they are getting alot of calls regarding ATV2. I'm sure apple will have it fixed soon, but aren't we allowed a little moan, after all it's Apple we are giving our hard earned money to. And lets not forget that their profits are up by 70 %..... thanks to the like of people like me and you.

Here's to faster broadband in Northern Ireland