Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

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

How is it that you think that would somehow be acceptable behavior for this device? Just because that's what it DOES, doesn't mean that's what it SHOULD do. If I'm in the middle of a rented movie, and I hit Menu — no matter what the reasons — the AppleTV should handle that gracefully, preserve the buffer, and allow me to go back into that movie and continue watching. The fact that even just PAUSING the movie causes this problem is a big issue.

If I go into Netflix or YouTube, and start playing something that will overwrite the buffer that's being used by my HD rental, then I should be given a confirm dialog that TELLS me that my HD rental will need to be downloaded again from scratch (or I can cancel and go back). I'll say it again: if their streaming is going to be so glacially slow on mediocre broadband, they need to manage user expectations a LOT better. Or, they should implement some sort of quality fallback (while also managing expectations).

Very true Punkass. I have just experienced the same issue. We have been downloading Sex and the City 2 for the past 35 hours. Finally downloaded, Tried to skip the first 7 minutes, (which we managed to watch after 9 hours, before it froze.). Anyway, whilst we tried to skip the first 7 minutes, it just beachballed then froze, and for the 2nd time has dissapeared from the buffer. Now we have to wait another 14 hours and 26 minutes to watch the movie. I will be returning the unit to Apple next week. Cant take anymore of this unit.

It concludes HD (as opposed to SD) movies are the problem, but doesn't conclude it's a bandwidth problem. It could also be at Apple's end, related to how they supply (or don't!) HD movies. Bandwidth or not, it doesn't explain or excuse the pause button triggering a full 4 hour reload.

There seems to be a simple workaround ... in the AppleTV Settings menus, within the iTunes section, disable the HD movie option ... after that, only SD movies are displayed in the menu, and they work fine. Yes, we can complain "but I want HD" ... but until this matter is resolved, HD isn't practical, so it's watch Inception in SD today, or want to watch it in HD, but can't, for reasons still not understood. I prefer the first option!

I having with movies I just rent. The apple tv is saying taking 4 hours to download. I am thinking returning apple tv. Let me know if anybody else is having the same problem this evening 12/11/10.

I rented an HD Movie on Apple TV - 20 hours until ready to watch..hmmmm...so I rented the same movie on my computer - guess what - 20 hours.

So one of two things is happening - either Time Warner is slowing this down or the Itunes store has a serious problem. This is not an Apple TV problem.

Also, we decided to rent watch from Netflix on App TV, no problems.

Same issues. No workaround yet.

Back in Oct. I got my ATV and it worked great for the first few days then this problem started. In my opinion I think Apple simply got overwhelmed with business and can't keep up. I hope they get it straightened out soon.

StuartBB wrote:
It concludes HD (as opposed to SD) movies are the problem, but doesn't conclude it's a bandwidth problem. It could also be at Apple's end, related to how they supply (or don't!) HD movies. Bandwidth or not, it doesn't explain or excuse the pause button triggering a full 4 hour reload.

There seems to be a simple workaround ... in the AppleTV Settings menus, within the iTunes section, disable the HD movie option ... after that, only SD movies are displayed in the menu, and they work fine. Yes, we can complain "but I want HD" ... but until this matter is resolved, HD isn't practical, so it's watch Inception in SD today, or want to watch it in HD, but can't, for reasons still not understood. I prefer the first option!

you didn't answer the question about being in israel.
can i assume that you are in israel but attempting to access the US itunes store?
if so, then you are actually breaking the Ts&Cs of the itunes store. Although they don't seem to be enforced you should note that it technically isn't supported.

also, using alternate DNS servers such as OpenDNS or Google DNS can also result in poor performance. (OpenDNS even admit this openly). the problem with these is that you are not directed to your closest Akamai server to retrieve the content, so for example people in the UK using OpenDNS would be directed to a server in the US to get the content rather than one in the UK.

One of the nice things about AppleTV is I can take it with me on my frequent travels. The problem is always the same for HD rentals. More importantly, it's the same as many others in this forum are experiencing. I don't do anything with DNS settings ..... I'm just a simple guy who likes HD movies! But, in the meantime, I turned HD off in the iTunes options within AppleTV settings, and it works perfectly, for SD. As many have said, it's not just bandwidth. After a 4 hour download, a "pause" for a natural break of 1 minute generates a 4 hour re-download. That can't be right ..

StuartBB wrote:
After a 4 hour download, a "pause" for a natural break of 1 minute generates a 4 hour re-download. That can't be right ..

i suspect that is a different issue than the slow HD download issue.
the pause issue might be a software bug, the slow download won't be a software bug.

I've been lucky as of this past week. I rented two films and they actually both loaded in very fast and played without issue. Anyone else that was having issues starting to have success??? Is Apple working out the kinks on their end with how the movies are being delivered I wonder?

I still suffer from very slow Home Sharing though. I'm guessing that issue will have to be ironed out with a software upgrade.

J Deschamps wrote:
I've been lucky as of this past week. I rented two films and they actually both loaded in very fast and played without issue. Anyone else that was having issues starting to have success??? Is Apple working out the kinks on their end with how the movies are being delivered I wonder?

I still suffer from very slow Home Sharing though. I'm guessing that issue will have to be ironed out with a software upgrade.

Home sharing doesn't appear to be a problem w/ the majority of Apple TV owners, in my case no problem ??

Let me rephrase. The problem seems to be specifically to people with large movie libraries (I have close to 2000 movies and clips in my itunes library) and the Apple TV becomes sluggish when trying to select the MOVIE category...or anything under that tab.

I had the same issue as everyone in this thread had after downloading Inception in HD. There was a long download, I paused the movie, movie did not continue playing, got an message saying that it could not complete my request, hit the menu button and had to re-download the movie. I contacted Apple support, they told me this was the first time that they had heard of the issue and that I should re-download the movie. I notified the support person that this thread existed on their support site and that many people in this thread have reported the issue.

After being very impressed with Apple products and Apple support in the past, this experience is rather disappointing.

If you are using Google DNS switch to your ISP DNS servers and should correct the problem with rentals giving the message of "ready in XX minutes". I called support, no help, finally came across this reference and it worked for me as well as others. I have TWC, so I used the DNS listed below.

krakas

Posts: 4
Registered: Oct 12, 2010
Re: Apple TV 2nd Gen not streaming
Posted: Oct 12, 2010 8:46 PM in response to: krakas
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All right, I've just done some testing here.

Google DNS definitely is the problem for me.

Using TWC's dns located at 209.18.47.61 and alternate at 209.18.47.62, HD TV Show rental show up almost instantly. Pause/restart instantly. Moving video past the "grey buffered area of the timeline" has a tiny bit of delay (1 to 2 seconds), but nothing unexpected nor annoying.
As for the bandwidth required, speedtest.net is telling me that I had about 6 to 7mbp/s available when I was testing.

Then, I changed the Airport's dns to Google (8.8.4.4, 8.8.8.8), I get the infamous "Ready to play next week" message, with the countdown potentially going up, if moving at all.

Changed DNS back to dnsadvantage at 156.154.70.1 and 156.154.71.1, and everything plays perfectly fine.

What I don't get is what google's dns could do that so drastically affects atv's performance, but I can't deny what I'm seeing.

Anyway, I hope that helps anybody experiencing the issue!