Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

Suffering the same issues. Long waiting times and freezing movies that won't restart!

I didn't read the whole post so I'm not sure if someone said this but Netflix throttles the movie quality according to your speed. Thats the purpose of the test before the stream starts ( doesn't show this happening on apple tv). And I have no problem with my 1.5 mb dsl. Starts right away and doesn't stop and is DVD quality. I'm happy. iTunes looks like it's hd no matter what kind of connection. My movie last night said 338 minutes. I rented it on DirectTV right after that and watched it right away. They need to adopt the netflix way of streaming. I am happy with my netflix quality. Just give me my iTunes movies. Maybe that's what the nc data center is for. Who knows.

Very interesting and informative. Apple indicated to me to expect a firmware update soon. They are well aware of this problem. Obviously a hobby of theirs!

Very interesting and informative. Apple indicated to me to expect a firmware update soon. They are well aware of this problem. Obviously a hobby of theirs!

Okay, that about does it. I'm not buying any other first generation Apple product until it's been out for six months or so (I know that this is not the first generation of Apple TV, but it's the first generation of this incarnation). I'm tired of being treated as a beta tester. I've got the same delays as everyone else. They don't make the product unusable, but they make its most touted function unusable.

From here on out I'll give all the testers (suckers buying the first generation) six months to ferret out the stuff Apple should have found in pre-sale testing.

I like being a beta tester. Fun to see the changes, remember when the iPhone had no apps.

In all seriousness though, it's hard to test this stuff with every TV and every Internet connection and every way people have their home entertainment set up. Not to mention how much strain will be on their servers.

Still it's a little ridiculous on their part but because the device is basically the price of many cables in best buy I cut them a lot of slack.

Once they figure out all this stuff and start putting apps on this thing it will be a great device.

I found a solution that worked for me.

I ordered an episode of Time Tunnel about six hours ago. After a long spinning beachball a message came up saying I had 65 minutes to wait for it to download.

I watched a few movies on netflix and came back only to find it now said i had 119 minutes!!!

two hours later it STILL said 119 minutes.

After fiddling around I found a "Stop Downloading" option under Settings/General/Itunes Store.

I pushed that and stopped the download. THen returned to the TV listings and clicked on the episode again. It started downloading again only this time it said "15 minutes". 15 minutes later it was ready to watch.

Definitely seems like a firmware issue and the thing is just hanging up and spinning its wheels. Hopefully there will be an update soon. If so I have no complaints.

But Im hesitant to order another apple movie/tv show to see if the trick above works. I'm going to avoid Apple and stick with netflix til its sorted out.

Yes Jolly I found that also to click stop downloading and try again worked for me too allowing instant viewing. I didn't watch the video at the time though to see if it was going to rebuffer.

Waiting for the firmware update, will that come through our normal Mac Software update on our computers? or will we have to check on the Mac TV do you think?

I found this as well. I thought it was working until the timer kept going up and up.

From Richardya: "In all seriousness though, it's hard to test this stuff with every TV and every Internet connection and every way people have their home entertainment set up. Not to mention how much strain will be on their servers."

I'd agree with some of that, but from what I've heard anecdotally this problem isn't related either to esoteric TV/entertainment system setups or odd Internet connections (for example, mine are fairly vanilla on both counts). Rather it seems to be either a problem with the firmware or strain on their servers, which you do cite.

If it's the firmware, note that we haven't been talking about folks trying to do wild and wacky, and thus unpredictable, operations with their Apple TVs. The problem relates to a user trying to rent a video and watch it. If they released the product without thoroughly testing that headline functionality, well, that's dumb enough to merit my (and others') complaints.

Similarly with the strain on their servers--I get the idea that the Apple TV has been a relatively popular item, but not so over the top crazy popular that the strain on the servers shouldn't be within whatever use projections they did before release. If the problem is in fact with their server capacity, I'd again fault a lack of planning.

This seems to be a recurring problem--Apple releases products with claims about all the cool stuff they'll do, but for about six months after release those cool things are crippled by their lack of polish on the product. There's a long period of silence from Apple, or outright denials of a problem, followed by a fix somewhere in the future. I think Apple makes some cool products, but they're only really usable without frustration once they're out of the Beta stage, which is apparently the first six months after release to the public.

Message was edited by: CET2055

Yes - but in many cases they catch the problem before it is discovered. Why they didn't field test this product before launch is beyond me. Updating the firmware should be coming soon and you do that after being notified on your TV screen. You can also check software update on your TV screen. Go all the way to the right in the menu and you will figure it out.

The thing is that I don't think everyone with a new Apple TV is having the same problem. Maybe it is just a few of us having this problem. If you read all the reviews about this Apple TV, no-one talks about this. I have only found testimony of this issue in this thread and maybe in a couple more.

rmeaux wrote:
I'm not sure if someone said this but Netflix throttles the movie quality according to your speed. (...) And I have no problem with my 1.5 mb dsl. Starts right away and doesn't stop and is DVD quality. (...) They need to adopt the netflix way of streaming. I am happy with my netflix quality.

No, no, no, if I am renting a HD movie I want a HD movie, I don't want my movie quality according to my Internet connection. I don't mind pre-downloading the movie if necessary. It is very easy to leave pre-downloading the night before.

If people prefer to watch as soon as possible over quality then give us the option but one of the reasons I bought this Apple TV is to be able to rent HD movies.

I have had the same problem as everyone else.

I did two things:

1. Went into my modem/router and changed the DNS addresses to fixed, as provided by my ISP.
2. Turned the firewall off on my router.

*This has fixed the problem completely.*

Sorry I cannot tell you which on of these did it, or if it was a combination!

The first few days that I had my Apple 2 TV I was able to watch movies in minutes. Now I am having the same problem. Do you think Apple is overwhelmed with rental business?