Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

So who do you change your settings on your modem. I have one of those Time Warner modems. What kind do you have. Or do you mean your router alone? Like I have a Airport Extreme router and can change the settings in there but not sure about the modem.

You just need to login to your router (I do this via IP address on my Belkin) and look through the setting until you find the Firewall section.

Turn it off.

If this doesn't work it could be the DNS change that worked for me.

Post how it goes!

I also tried the fix of going to the "Settings" "general" "iTunes" and hit the "stop loading" button. Went back to my movie and hit play and it was playing in seconds. Must have got hung up. I noticed that this time it said "authorizing" after hitting play so I assume this is a fresh connection to iTunes. Before I kept hitting "play" and it just said "Loading.."

Hi,
I have same problems here in France...
I rent yesterday Iron Man 2 in HD and my waiting time was 788min !!! Waouh !
1 hour later, it was only 57min... but changing all the time.
No play at all, but time left to watch the movie is yet 47hours...!

I don't have any firewall on. I'll try itunes fix next time.

+"After a long spinning beachball a message came up saying I had 65 minutes to wait for it to download."+

Can you actually see a spinning beachball pointer on your TV screen?! I wouldn't have thought such an image would be useful output of an AppleTV!!!

Or was it that circular arrangement of lines (what could be regarded as another kind of "please wait" indicator) in the centre of the TV screen that you saw?

—tonza

Message was edited by: tonza -- added a little to the question for clarification

Was having the same issue. Taking hours to download just a 30 minute episode. I have a movie that still won't finish downloading, varying from 120-3000minutes to download.

I turned off the firewall. I also switched the setting to Rent High Definition OFF in the iTunes setting. Now media is downloading in minutes.

The movie that was attempting to download before the change is still not downloaded. I'm guessing that is still trying to download in HD. Everything else is working great.

I've got 3000 kbps from AT&T DSL.

I rather have HD, but this is better than nothing. Note it looked pretty good.

I'll try switching the Firewall back on today and see if the HD setting alone was/is the culprit.

Yes I am also running into the same issue. I rented two films. I was only able to watch one. After waiting close to an hour. I gave up on the second film from Apple and switch to Netflik. The stream started after a few minute s with no issues.

I experienced the same problem and I suspect a problem with the connection to iTunes on my iMac.

When I switched off the iMac (which was in sleep mode), the HD-Movie started almost immediately, before the expected download time was around 400 minutes.

Maybe there is an issue with the connection to iTunes media when the host is not more available because in sleep mode?

Interesting. Incedible- well maybe not that Appke did not field test this properly!

The response that I got from Apple support on this issue is that the Apple TV unit needs to be connected to Itunes on a computer on the same network. He stated that the unit no longer has local storage. He clearly stated that a standalone Apple TV unit on a wireless network, without being connected to a computer with ITunes, could only use Netflix for movies.

It's got to be a firmware or hardware or server problem of some sort. I have a very fast pipe - 35 Mbps (Verizon Fios) and could not watch Ironman 2 for all the stops and freezes and eventual total stop. Previews stop midway and the wheel spins endlessly to catch up. I hardwired the ATV with Ethernet today thinking that would improve things but have seen minimal improvement if any. As they guy on SNL used to say "FIX IT!"

I had the identical problem with Iron Man 2.

I had no initial problems and was very impressed. Watched a HD film last weekend and it was very quick to load, paused and started again no probs and never stopped once.

This evening I've been trying to watch a rental for a couple of hours now and I think I'm going to have to give up. I've read most of the posts in this thread and I really can't believe it's a problem with the download speeds. I've run some checks, even while Apple TV is mucking about, and I'm still getting reasonable results. The only thing I can see is different is that I'm trying to watch a more a popular film (and a horror film at at that, on Halloween). It is almost tempting to try a film no-one in their right mind would rent (which is more or less what I did last weekend) but I'm not prepared to shell out any more moolah on this.

It's pretty clear that on some level Apple TV is seriously flawed, whether it's Apple's servers, the seeding tech or whatever. And, while it may be easily rectifiable, Apple's silence is deafening.

For me the whole point of the product is to be able to listen to my tunes in the living room and to be able to cut out the trips to the video shop and make watching films accessible and fun again. If it's only going to do the former then I'll take it back and buy an iPod dock. It's clearly not fit for purpose as it stands.

i'm having the same exact problem... netflix streams instantly, but apple rentals won't stream at all... does anybody from Apple read these discussions? if so, do they have a response?

There is a response on page 6 that worked for me. Was so easy that I had to repost it.

On the ATV, I went to Settings, iTunes Store, and clicked "Stop Downloading". Then back to the Movies menu and tried the rental again. It started immediately.

Annoying after so long waiting, but it did work for me.