Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

Except for the first movie in which I had such issues, all subsequent downloads have been flawless at 3-4 Mbps. But, of course, that would be impossible based on your statement.

Alondono... That was the point I tried to make earlier in the thread. The AppleTV used to retain the movies you rented, which made many of these problems moot. The long download times were still a problem for those of us with slower internet connections, but by temporarily storing the movies in the Apple TV's flash memory, it simply meant that the wait time to start was longer. Once the movie was queued up, the performance was great. That seems to have been broken with the next OS upgrade.

Did I say impossible? No! I said for the best experience.

Message was edited by: vazandrew

I don't even know what that means. Either it works or it doesn't.

It means it won't be instant.

I do not have 6-7 Mbps and have instant download and viewing (excepting the first movie).

I have yet to get an Apple Movie to download to my apple TV. Netflix works fine. the Apple movies, hang, and I end up trying to get a refund... but I bought the darn thing to rent high end movies. my screen for inception at this moment says, 10 hrs + to download, and I started to watch it, got 15 m, and it just stopped downloading... I'm EXTREMELY dissapointed with Apple on this one.

Well you must have a different definition of instant. I'm not going to belabor the issue, just stating the facts.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1577?viewlocale=en_US

Yea, me too.

quisiera saber cómo te está funcionando el Apple TV en PR... pregunto porque estoy a punto de comprarme uno. Vale la pena?
gracias por la ayuda

vazandrew wrote:
I think your answer has been given. I don't care if you believe it or not, was simply trying to help.

No, I think you're trying to be right. There's a difference. Problem is, you're telling me things I know, and you're failing to address the fact that this actually is a problem. Most likely because it's not your problem. Beyond that, there's a number of people out there saying they've got this problem with their 10- or 16-Mbit cable connections.

The reason so many people bring up the fact that Netflix HD movie streaming works beautifully on the ATV2 is because Netflix is a company that likes to manage user expectations (you know, like Apple used to) so you won't be surprised when sh*t goes wrong. When you watch Netflix on your computer (or Boxee, or whatever), it'll tell you when the network connection has slowed, and the picture would degrade. Managing expectations is exactly what Apple is failing at here.

Apple, on the other hand, is choosing to allow a large number of its customers to have poor experiences, rather than a "diminished" experience. Take, for example, this scenario on Netflix: if I've had continued trouble watching a Netflix movie, I'll usually get an unsolicited email from them the next day, apologizing for the difficulty, and telling me they'll credit my account for some small percentage to make up for it. I don't even care that the refund happened; I care that they noticed a problem, they mentioned it and apologized, and they said they're working to eradicate such problems.

Of course, Apple won't do that, and I wouldn't expect them to. I'm not entirely certain, but I think if your ATV2 movie rental fails to work or you never watch it, they will not charge you. I hope that's so. Now, from a different angle, let's note that ATV2 rentals *do not* currently fall back to lower quality on a slower connection, ever. What if they did? What if they managed your expectations properly, like Netflix does, and they served you something "instantly" (with commensurate price), or at least gave you the choice? I guarantee you, this thread would not be 16 pages long if the "Ready to play in 5 hours 14 minutes" screen ( http://theoptimi.st/-/1g …in what world is this okay? ) had a single button on it, labeled "rent SD instead." I know there's a global preference, but that preference is not easily self-discoverable, and does absolutely nothing to manage expectation. The AppleCare representative didn't even mention it once.

If apple degraded quality people would most definitely complain about that.

Netflix also has greater compression on their content, hands down apple provides better HD material.

There is an option to turn off HD rentals and it is easy to find. Furthermore, i'm not the only one with a flawless experience. Of course you're going to see a lot of problems here.

Message was edited by: vazandrew

Im gutted-got Apple TV2 as an early Xmas gift for me and the MRs-rented 1 movie on it the first night and it played until I needed to pause for loo break. Then it said XXX mins to play-that sucked, I shrugged it off as busy connection. Waited until the next night to finish watching it. Just rented Inception for a mellow night in and its saying 4 hours to replay after it had buffered and I had watched 35 mins of it fine! Seems like pausing is not the thing to do. Apple-sort this out, false advertising.

Are you sure you didn't hit menu?

vazandrew wrote:
Are you sure you didn't hit menu?

Same w/ me ..... twice,
to keep my smile active I rent movies from Itunes and view them on Apple TV until this problem get resolved